History

I am serious about gaming!

My name’s Robert, and I was into “Geek Culture” WAY before it became trendy and cool. I have been playing board and card games for over 40 years. Collected comics for over 40 years. Played the FIRST edition of Dungeons and Dragons. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000, followed by a TI-994A. I owned one of the very first Atari game consoles. I opened my own hybrid comic and gaming shop in 2003, and made life-long friends that still game with me to this day.

So when I saw an opportunity to jump back into gaming with “Ophidian 2350”, I jumped in with both feet. Together with one of my best friends of more than 12 years, we started Hack and Slash Games to make great games!

Actions speak louder than words, so here is the proof.

We have invested in the purchase of over one million dollars worth of “Fleer Entertainment” Ophidian 2350 product. Over EIGHTEEN THOUSAND pounds of cards (packs, boxes, starter sets, boosters, displays, etc. etc.) have arrived in our Texas holding facility while we build momentum for the relaunch of this game.

AND we aren’t stopping there!

Along time ago in a galaxy far away… A geek’s paradise was born!

It was the year 2003, when I opened up Middle Earth, a place where I attempted to turn everything I thought was cool into an income stream. It was a hybrid store that had comics, manga, computer games (LAN center), X-boxes, card and board games, specially energy drinks and caffeine lased food! We had a back room where folks could play games, and run tournaments. We also did “bootleg theater” with projectors and fresh popped corn. In many ways we were cutting edge, with a 10 MEG fiber pipe when the average LAN center only had a single T1 (keep in mind this was 2003, when AOL was still popular). We had a one mile WiFi access point that we used to resell internet access like a private ISP. We performed computer repair, and had hosted Counter Strike servers (killerzoo.com and killcrew.com) before valve/steam even existed. We held Lock-ins where up to 20 people stayed awake all night playing video games.

We sold Magic The Gathering and held tournaments on Friday nights, and even had our own MTG League. I wasn’t a huge MTG fan, as I felt it was more a game of luck that anything else so I was pretty excited when I heard about a new card game called Ophidian 2350, that was more dependent on strategy. The game came out to rave reviews, and I was one of the first stores to showcase the game, and really push it over MTG. The game did really well in our store, but died when the folks that published it (Fleer Entertainment) went bankrupt three months after the first print run. (This had nothing to do with the game, but rather the tanking of the baseball card market which was Fleer’s primary money maker.) The game disappeared off shelves, and no one was able to order any more of it.

Fast forward to 2013. By this time I had moved on to other things. Middle Earth changed into Quantum-Net (with a more technology focus), and was eventually sold to a third party who ran it into the ground. I moved on to other projects, but maintained a close relationship with many of the customers who had now become close personal friends. I always keep my hobbies, and still play computer games, board and card games to this day.

I’m a geek and proud of it!

I kept up with the creators of the Ophidian 2350 game and would check on their original website from time to time to see if they ever planned on bringing the game back. There was some light discussion on their website at the beginning of 2014 about bringing the game back but nothing really happened, so I just filed the notion and went about my businesses.

Then one night I was bored and started surfing eBay for collectibles and saw someone selling large quantities of the game. This perplexed me, so I contacted the seller to get more details and found out he had over 10 pallets of the game. A light bulb went off. If the creators of this game wouldn’t or couldn’t bring it back, then I would. I contacted the creators of Ophidian 2350 and after a long back and forth with lawyers I was eventually able to procure a five year license to bring the game back to market. My intention is to bring back the game and use crowd funding to generate the second and third expansions which were never printed by Fleer.

AND since I’m having to do the research on printing and marketing, I figured it’s time for another business venture where I turn everything I think is cool into an income stream!

Together with one of my former employees, we started Hack and Slash Games and the rest if this story is still being written!

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/hackandslashgames

Below are some pics of Middle Earth in it’s first incarnation back in 2003.

Man how time flies!

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