In the video game world, there are many forgotten franchises. Games that were huge successes in their time and that, perhaps because it is considered that times have changed a lot, have now been almost definitively shelved. Not having received a new Castlevania or a new F-Zero in over 20 years seems almost ridiculous, considering the infinite potential of both franchises, but fans have to resign themselves to the reality of things: there is little that can be done if companies have no interest. And this is despite the fact that we have chosen two franchises that are still alive, with Castlevania even having returned from the dead with the announcement of a new game for this year.

Because there is always hope. Even franchises that seem dead and forgotten sometimes return in the most unexpected ways. This has happened with the .hack franchise, one of those sagas that seemed we would never see again even though, during the 00s, they became really popular within a very specific sector of anime fans. And we are going to tell you everything you need to know about it, including why there are people popping champagne for its return.

The franchise that made transmedia popular

.hack is a Japanese multimedia franchise created and developed by CyberConnect2 and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, designed from its origins to establish synergies between different media. The story would be told through video games, anime, manga, and novels, all occurring in parallel, none being adaptations of any other. Each would tell a specific aspect of the world, focusing on common characters or situations among them, but each developing its own themes and stories.

The first iteration of this story was called Project .hack and involved, in addition to CyberConnect2, some of the most talented anime studios of the 2000s, such as Gainax and Bee Train. The result was a huge popularity of the franchise, especially of its video games and animes, even causing a significant impact in the West.

But what is .hack about? It’s about a world like ours, but in an alternative reality, where technology has evolved in a different and substantially faster way. Because of this, an alternative to the Internet has emerged, favoring virtual reality in interaction with technology. However, a global disaster in the computer network in 2005 caused by a virus called The Kiss of Pluto causes an MMORPG called The World to collapse, resulting in an extremely peculiar situation. Everyone who was connected at that moment became trapped inside the game. And those who die inside it also die in reality.

Although this is a well-known and overused premise today in manga and anime, even in young adult literature and science fiction, it was not at the time of its publication in 2002. And that made it tremendously popular. It quickly swept among young people in Japan and the West alike.

A franchise with many layers

The anime hack//Sign, directed by Kōichi Mashimo and produced by the Bee Train studio and Bandai Visual, served as a prequel for everything that was to come. Establishing its main characters, a tone focused on the psychological and sociological themes of being trapped in a foreign world, and embracing a tone bordering on thriller in which the studio had been specializing over the years.

This would serve as the basis for the tetralogy of PlayStation 2 games that would form the foundation for the franchise. .hack//INFECTION – Part 1, .hack//MUTATION – Part 2, .hack//OUTBREAK – Part 3, and .hack//QUARANTINE – Part 4 would imitate the style of an MMORPG within an action RPG, developing the themes of the anime more deeply, focusing more on the characters and The World, concentrating on the consequences of an increasingly unstable video game where all players are approaching, ever closer, to an inevitable apocalypse.

The tetralogy was extraordinarily well received and is still considered a masterpiece among its many fans. But the franchise didn’t stop there. After that, they made .hack//frägment, an MMORPG based on .hack, as well as several miniseries based on the universe. All of which would lead to a new project: .hack Conglomerate.

With new protagonists and the same structure as the original, with an anime .hack//Roots, occurring before the events of the main video game, .hack//G.U. Vol.1//Rebirth, .hack//G.U. Vol.2//Reminisce, .hack//G.U. Vol.3//Redemption, and .hack//G.U. Vol.4//Reconnection, although it had much more development, with more animes and more mangas and more spinoffs in video game format, the success of .hack Conglomerate was much more discreet. While many of its fans enjoyed this new iteration, many others considered it a lesser version of the previous one. And the critics in general did not see the same freshness that they found in the original tetralogy, even if Bee Train continued to offer the same quality on the anime side.

Although the franchise had six years of releases, by 2012 they had already finished with the last title, .hack//Versus, a fighting game that was only released with the Blu-ray launch of .hack//The Movie in its Japanese version. At least, until now.

CyberConnect2 has announced to celebrate its 30th anniversary the release of .hack//Z.E.R.O, an action RPG set in the universe of the .hack franchise. With no Bandai Namco behind it, we currently have no release date or announced platforms, except for a teaser from Kamikaze Douga, the studio behind animes like Pop Team Epic or Ghost of Tsushima: Legends.

Surely we still have to wait to see more of .hack//Z.E.R.O, but what we have seen so far is already impressive and has left us wanting more. And while it is true that the franchise did not end on its highest note, it is no less true that CyberConnect2 has demonstrated over the last fifteen years that they are a top-tier studio capable of making excellent games. That is why it is interesting to return to the .hack/ universe and see what they are capable of without having to rely on the burden of transmedia once again.