Retro revival 'Star Citizen' smashes through funding goal

Chris Roberts, credited with lead design duties on those three classic games, left the games industry at the turn of the century and went into film -- his work there ranged from directing Freddie Prinze Jr. in a Wing Commander adaptation to producing the Nicolas Cage gun-running flick Lord of War.

But in October 2012, having announced a return to games with Star Citizen, the game's website struggled under the load of interest after fans started weighing in to help with the new game's costs.

At that point, his Cloud Imperium Games studio opened a Kickstarter drive, asking fans to consider pledging there, meeting that supplementary goal of $500,000 in a mere five days for a combined $2 million total and counting.

Its Kickstarter performance already puts it among the service's top 20 video game projects; currently top of the pile is role-playing game revival Project Eternity ($3.9m), followed by adventure title Double Fine Adventure ($3.3m) and another role-playing game revisitation in Wasteland 2 ($2.9m).

In common with Star Citizen, all three were proposed by well-known and well-respected veterans of the game industry. With three weeks remaining until its November 19 cut-off, the crew of Cloud Imperium has a good chance to join those upper echelons of fundraising success.

Star Citizen on Kickstarter: kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen
Star Citizen website: starcitizen.robertsspaceindustries.com