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'Firefly' cast to reunite for online game

The entire cast of Joss Whedon's cult sci-fi Western will lend their voices to a new online role-playing game.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney
2 min read

firefly-online-trailer.jpg
A clip of the upcoming Firefly Online game. FireflyOnlineGame/YouTube/screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET

A new "Firefly" TV series or movie may never happen. But fans of the Joss Whedon cult classic at least will be able to appreciate their favorite cast members in action in a new online game.

Revealed Thursday at San Diego Comic-Con, all of the stars -- or at least their voices -- of the original "Firefly" series will reunite for a mobile role-playing game, according to blog site io9. Initially announced more than a year ago, Firefly Online will let gamers interact with one another in a virtual scenario based on the "Firefly" universe.

The return of all the original cast members for the game means we'll be able to hear Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Gina Torres as Zoe Washburne, Alan Tudyk as Hoban 'Wash' Washburne, Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra, Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Jewel Staite as Kaylee Frye, Sean Maher as Dr. Simon Tam, Summer Glau as River Tam, and Ron Glass as Shepherd Book.

Tudyk will also voice other roles beyond that of Wash, io9 added. Actor Michael Fairman will portray crime lord Niska, who "Firefly" fans may remember as a particularly brutal individual who took great pleasure in torturing Mal and Wash in one episode.

"Firefly" gained cult status after airing for just one season in 2002 before being cancelled by the powers-that-be at the Fox network. Fans soon gravitated to the show despite, or perhaps because of, its short life. Created by Avengers director Whedon, the series combined elements of the science-fiction and western genres and offered a unique cast of characters who often were at odds with each other but survived on the lone spaceship as a family.

Firefly briefly returned as a 2005 motion picture called "Serenity." Since then, the show's cult status has actually grown, meaning there's always a thriving market for anything "Firefly" related, especially a game that can recreate the spirit of the series and characters.

In the upcoming game, you take on the role of captain to hire a crew and lead them from one mission to another to stay afloat. Designed for the PC, Mac, iOS, and Android, the game is still in development with no specific release date yet announced.

Fans of the show can now take a peak at the game via a new trailer that debuted Thursday. Dubbed "If I Were a Captain," the trailer asks ordinary people how they would command a Firefly-class ship, interspersed with several scenes from the game. The trailer ends with Nathan Fillion, aka Captain Tightpants himself, quoting a popular line from the series by telling us that he would be the type of captain that would "aim to misbehave."