 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2022) |
| Galactic Dan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publisher(s) | The Fourth Dimension (company) |
| Designer(s) | Ian Holmes, James Davidson |
| Platform(s) | Acorn Archimedes |
| Release | 1992 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Galactic Dan is a video game for the Acorn Archimedes, originally published by The Fourth Dimension (company) in 1992. It is a first-person shooter set in space.
The game is a fast first-person shooter featuring ray-traced sprites and sampled sound effects. The player runs and jumps around a 3D maze of walls and platforms, rescuing hostages while avoiding or shooting robots on hoverboards, and solving simple puzzles.
The game was positively reviewed by Acorn User and ARM Club magazine, the latter calling it "a fast moving vector style game, featuring some stunning ray traced graphics... turns out to be the best thing I have seen from 4th Dimension in ages - great fun!"
Galactic Dan was a state-of-the-art first-person shooter for the time, but was eclipsed by Wolfenstein 3D which was released around the same time.
Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with a knife and a variety of guns.
Descent is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS to feature entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots.
Total Annihilation is a real-time strategy video game created by Cavedog Entertainment, a sub-division of Humongous Entertainment, and was released in September 1997 by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Two expansion packs were released, The Core Contingency on April 29, 1998 and Battle Tactics on July 20. After the closure of the Cavedog Entertainment in 1999, the intellectual property fell to Infogrames.
Battlezone is a first-person shooter tank combat game released for arcades in November 1980 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a tank which is attacked by other tanks and missiles. Using a small radar scanner along with the terrain window, the player can locate enemies and obstacles around them in the barren landscape. Its innovative use of 3D graphics made it a huge hit, with approximately 15,000 cabinets sold.
Catacomb 3-D is a first-person shooter video game, the third in the Catacomb series, the first of which to feature 3D computer graphics. It was developed by id Software and originally published by Softdisk under the Gamer's Edge label, released in November 1991. The player takes control of the high wizard Petton Everhail, descending into the catacombs of the Towne Cemetery to defeat the evil lich Nemesis and rescue his friend Grelminar.
The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner, originally released in Japan as Tobidase Daisakusen, is a 1987 third-person rail shooter platform video game developed and published by Square for the Family Computer Disk System. It was later ported to cartridge format and published by Acclaim for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
2.5D perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little or no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwise appears to be three-dimensional and is often simulated and rendered in a 3D digital environment.
The Build Engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman, author of Ken's Labyrinth, for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, the Build Engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sectors, and uses simple flat objects called sprites to populate the world geometry with objects.
Shooter video games or shooters are a subgenre of action video games where the focus is almost entirely on the defeat of the character's enemies using the weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons are firearms or some other long-range weapons, and can be used in combination with other tools such as grenades for indirect offense, armor for additional defense, or accessories such as telescopic sights to modify the behavior of the weapons. A common resource found in many shooter games is ammunition, armor or health, or upgrades which augment the player character's weapons.
Apocalypse is a futuristic 3D space shoot 'em up game released in 1990 for the Acorn Archimedes written by Gordon J. Key and published by The Fourth Dimension.
The Fourth Dimension (4D) was a major video game publisher for the BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Acorn Archimedes and RiscPC between 1989 and 1998. Previously, The Fourth Dimension had been known as Impact Software, which specialised mainly in BBC Micro games. Some of 4D's staff had worked for Superior Software. Notable release included Cyber Chess, Stunt Racer 2000, Galactic Dan and Chocks Away.
Galactic Pinball is a pinball video game for Nintendo's Virtual Boy game console. The game was released on July 21, 1995 in Japan and on August 14, 1995 in the United States. It is set in the Milky Way galaxy, and has players maneuvering a puck around one of four pinball tables available in the game. The Virtual Boy's standard red-and-black color scheme resulted in criticism of this and other games on the platform for causing nausea, headaches, and eye strain. It uses parallax, which allows the game to display three-dimensional effects. It has received a mixed reception; it was praised for its authenticity, while reception to its physics and controls were mixed. It has received criticism for its lack of ambition and originality.
Zarch is a computer game developed by David Braben in 1987, for the release of the Acorn Archimedes computer. Zarch started off as a demo called Lander which was bundled with almost all releases of the Acorn Archimedes.
RayForce is a vertically scrolling shooter by Taito for the Taito F3 arcade hardware and released in 1994. It was ported to the Sega Saturn in 1995, Microsoft Windows in 1997, then rereleased for iOS in 2012 and Android in 2017.
Star Fighter or Star Fighter 3000 is a 3D flight-based shoot-em-up developed and published by UK company Fendet Software, and released in 1994 for the Acorn Archimedes. The gameplay is mission based and involves elements of strategy and planning. The player can order wingmen to fly in formation and attack specific targets.
Third-person shooter (TPS) is a subgenre of 3D shooter games in which the gameplay consists primarily of shooting. It is closely related to first-person shooters, but with the player character visible on-screen during play. While 2D shoot 'em up games also employ a third-person perspective, the TPS genre is distinguished by having the game presented with the player's avatar as a primary focus of the camera's view.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of games helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon is a 3D first-person shooter video game developed by British company Pocket Studios and published by THQ for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. Based on the events of the original Star Wars trilogy of films, the game allows the player to pilot various space ships in the battles against the antagonistic Galactic Empire. The story follows the pilots of the space ship Millennium Falcon, Han Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca, as they help save the galaxy from the Empire's forces.
Gordon J. Key authored video game software for the Acorn BBC Micro, Electron and RISC OS platforms in the 1980s and 1990s. His most well-known works were published by The Fourth Dimension. He is also credited with additional programming routines in FedNet's futuristic flight combat game Star Fighter 3000 (1994), and authored Party Machine for the Amstrad CPC.
The Dungeon is a single player real-time role-playing video game featuring a 3D first-person perspective with texture mapping. It was published by The Fourth Dimension for the Acorn Archimedes home computer in 1993.