Midway signs up Hall and Romero for San Diego studio

Tom Hall and John Romero, formerly the key names behind Ion Storm and Monkeystone Games, have joined Midway's San Diego development studio to work on a variety of new projects for the publisher.

Hall will be working as creative director on a number of titles at the studio, while Romero will be working as project lead on a forthcoming action title - with GameSpot citing a Gauntlet remake as a likely candidate.

Both men have a lengthy history in the Texas game development scene, having worked on titles including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem and Rise of the Triad. More recently they formed Ion Storm, where Romero created the expensive flop Daikatana and Hall worked on the sadly underrated RPG title Anachronox.

The really interesting question, however, is where this new move for the pair leaves Monkeystone Games - the handheld and wireless development outfit which they formed after Ion Storm's Dallas studio was shut down, and which was developing one of the key titles for Nokia's N-Gage, namely Red Faction for THQ.

It's unlikely that the departure will affect the status of Red Faction, which is probably close to completion by now, but having rolled John Romero out on stage to sing the praises of the game deck at E3 last May, seeing him move over to home console development only days after the launch of the N-Gage worldwide is exactly the kind of PR Nokia don't need at the moment.