Babylon 5 MMO on the way?

Babylon 5 creator and all-round genius J. Michael Straczynski has hinted that a massively-multiplayer online game based on the incomparably superb sci-fi series could be in the pipeline.

Speaking to US website Gamecloud, Straczynski said: "Every year or so, Warner Bros. makes noises about a B5 game... And they're making them again this year.

"Whether or not this actually goes anywhere this time, we'll have to see. Certainly the B5 universe is almost tailor-made for a game, especially an immersive, online experience."

Too right it is - after all, an MMO would feature plenty of NPCs wandering round in the background, and the best bit about Babylon 5 was always the millions of extras wandering around performing ridiculously exaggerated movements whilst wearing stupid hats.

So what happened to the Babylon 5 game that Sierra was working on a few years ago, anyway?

"I was consulting on the game and writing parts of it, but they were shouldering most of that stuff," Straczynski said.

"And yeah, I was very disappointed, because we shot a lot of footage for the game with the cast, and it's the last B5 footage ever shot... And it's gone for all time." Why, why, WHY? We blame the Narn.

Straczynski said that although he's a gamer, he doesn't get much spare time these days - "I've been up to my ears on deadlines, so the only one I've played of late was the latest iteration of Doom, which needless to say I cheat-coded my way through for the most part. Who has that kind of time?" Not us, J., since we're too busy working our way through our complete DVD box set of your greatest contribution to the world. Again.

Babylon 5 fans may like to know that Straczynski is currently promoting a new series of script books - "A total of fifteen volumes containing all 92 Babylon 5 episodic scripts plus two B5 TV movies, each averaging more than 400 pages."

Each volume includes an extensive introduction and episode commentaries, and Straczynski says: "These books are the closest I will come to going to everyone's house, one at a time, and saying, "This is what happened, once upon a time..." Spose we might as well stop sending those invites.

The first volume in the series is available via the official website, priced at a very reasonable $39.99.

As you might have guessed, we're extremely excited about the prospect of an MMO starring crazy-haired fatso Molari, bum-headed lizard man G'kar and that baldy lady with the superglued-open eyes who's in Lost these days. Let's just hope it's out some time before the dawn of the third age of mankind.