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Rescue on Fractalus! | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Lucasfilm Games |
Publisher(s) | Epyx Activision Atari Corporation |
Director(s) | David Fox |
Designer(s) | David Fox Loren Carpenter Peter Langston Charlie Kellner Gary Winnick |
Platform(s) | Atari 8-bit, Atari 5200, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Commodore 64, Color Computer 3, ZX Spectrum |
Release | 1985 [1] |
Genre(s) | Action, first-person shooter [2] |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Rescue On Fractalus! is a 1985 first-person shooter [2] computer game created by Lucasfilm Games. It was originally released for the Atari 8-bit family and the Atari 5200 games console. It was also ported to other popular platforms of the day, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum (by Dalali Software Ltd), Amstrad CPC, Tandy Color Computer 3 and Commodore 64. The game was one of the first two products from the fledgling Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group led by Peter Langston. David Fox was the project leader and designer. Music was mainly composed by Charlie Kellner. [3]
The game uses fractal technology to create the craggy mountains of an alien planet, [4] where the visilibility was drastically reduced by the dense atmosphere. The player controls a fictional "Valkyrie" space fighter [5] : 11 (converted for search and rescue duty) from a first-person view, attempting to land and pick up downed Ethercorps pilots. [5] : 2 Some of these mountains hold anti-aircraft guns, [4] which have to be avoided or destroyed. Due to the varied terrain, the direction finder has to be used to locate the pilots, whose visual beacons are often masked by mountain ridges.
At higher levels, the enemy Jaggis begin flying kamikaze saucers. The mission area also moves into day/night boundaries. Night missions are particularly difficult, requiring diligent use of the altimeter to avoid crashing. [4]
Flying consumes fuel. The way to replenish this supply is to rescue downed pilots who bring their remaining fuel supplies on board.
The thick atmosphere is sufficiently acidic that downed pilots' craft are being slowly disintegrated. An exposed pilot's survival time outside his craft is less than a minute, due to his flight suit and helmet literally dissolving. This makes it imperative that the player rescue pilots as quickly and efficiently as possible.
After landing within sufficient "walking" proximity to the pilot, the player shuts down the engine, also turning off the ship's shields. [5] : 4 Turning on the engines prematurely would incinerate the exposed pilot and the shields would prevent him from entering the ship. [5] : 7 The downed pilot then disembarks his crashed ship, runs down to the Valkyrie's cockpit, and knocks on the crew entry door; the player can then open up and let the pilot in to complete the rescue. Failing to open the door kills the pilot; his knocking on the hatch becomes at first frantic, then slower and more feeble as he perishes in the corrosive environment. Sometimes the pilot found is an Ace Pilot, indicated visually by their purple helmet. These are worth ten times the score awarded for a normal pilot to the player. [5] : 9
As a twist on this relatively straightforward premise, added at the suggestion of George Lucas, [6] [7] some of the "pilots in distress" are actually hostile aliens in disguise; this twist was kept out of the game's manual and marketing. [8] After landing near a downed pilot, the player watches him run off-screen, and then has to wait for several tense seconds—if it were human, the familiar, frantic "tap-tap" noise would be heard from the ship's hatch; otherwise, the alien Jaggi would suddenly jump back into view, sans helmet, roaring and trying to smash into the cockpit. Unless the player restores the ship's shields, the windscreen cracks open and the pilot is killed. Likewise, inadvertently letting a Jaggi pilot into the player's ship has disastrous results — it begins to dismantle the ship. In early levels, the Jaggi can be distinguished by their green heads versus the white human helmets. However, in later levels the aliens evidently learn to don the human helmet and become identical in appearance. This, along with an unpredictable pause between the human/alien approach and the tap-tap/alien jump makes for a very tense experience. According to head developer David Fox, this shock moment made Rescue on Fractalus! "the first computer game to really scare people". [6]
Rescue on Fractalus!, together with Ballblazer , were the first two games developed by the fledgling Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group. The Games Group had been established in 1982 on a $1 million funding from Atari, Inc. in exchange for the "right of first refusal" for Atari as publisher. [9] Both games were developed with the Atari 8-bit family and the Atari 5200 console in mind.
During development, Rescue on Fractalus! was named Behind Jaggi Lines!. This name refers both to the Jaggis, the fictional race of hostile aliens in the game, as well as the lack of spatial anti-aliasing in the game's graphics, resulting in jagged diagonal (or curved) lines, colloquially known as "jaggies". [6] The squiggles visible on the Jaggi's suit when it attacks are actually the initials of the development team rotated by 90 degrees; Atari at the time famously barred developers from having their name displayed in games. [10]
The original developers of Rescue on Fractalus wanted the game to be set in Star Wars universe but were not allowed to do so by George Lucas. [11]
The games were ready by March 1984 [12] and were first publicly revealed on a Lucasfilm press conference on May 8. Cartridge versions for the Atari computers and the 5200 were planned to be the released first in the third quarter of 1984, with disk versions for the Commodore 64, IBM PC and Apple IIc and IIe coming under the Atarisoft label in the fourth quarter of that year. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] Rescue on Fractalus! and Ballblazer were also scheduled to be released for then-upcoming Atari 7800 console. [18]
On July 3, Warner Communications sold all assets of the Consumer Division of Atari, Inc. to Jack Tramiel, and the agreement with Lucasfilm fell through. On the Winter Consumer Electronics Show on January 5–8, 1985, with both Rescue on Fractalus! and Ballblazer not yet being released on any platform, Epyx became a distributor for both games, which would be released in disk format for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 computers. The Atari 5200 versions were not part of the distribution deal. [19] By August 1985 the games have been finally released to the market. [1] [4]
Besides the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 computers, Rescue on Fractalus was ported to the Apple II and TRS-80 Color Computer; and to Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum computers by Activision, who published the game in Europe. While the IBM PC port announced in 1984 never materialized, Tramiel's Atari Corporation eventually released the Atari 5200 cartridge version in limited quantities in late 1986, manufactured from the stock inherited from the July 1984 buyout of Atari, Inc.; [20] and the cartridge version for the Atari 8-bit computers in December 1987, packaged for their new XE Game System. [21]
The Atari 7800 version was ultimately cancelled before the game was completed. In 2004, an unfinished prototype was found in the possession of its original programmers, with a significant amount of gameplay elements not implemented. [22]
Computer Gaming World stated that Fractalus and Ballblazer "are slightly weak in the finer points of game design, but ... set a new standard for arcade-style games that will set out future expectations". [23] In 1996, the magazine named Rescue on Fractalus! the 82nd best game ever, with the editors remarking that "many keep old computers around just to play it". [24] Commodore User thought the game was "nothing special" and said it "provides reasonable, if unchanging, gameplay with a good flight simulator, but it lacks something, probably a proper identity". [25] Zzap!64 were impressed by the game, awarding it a score of 91%. They said that it was an excellent shoot-em-up. [26]
LucasArts and Factor 5 began work on a sequel titled Return to Fractalus for the Amiga in the late 1980s, but it was decided that the hardware couldn't handle the concept being worked on. An Amiga port of Rescue On Fractalus to be published by Rainbow Arts was announced in a February 1991 issue of The One , but was never released. [27] By 1994, Factor 5 believed that the current generation of 3D consoles had the technology the Fractalus sequel required and again began work on the game. Eventually, the work on game was converted to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron for the Nintendo 64 instead. [28]
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600 at the time of the 5200's launch. Created to compete with Mattel's Intellivision, the 5200 wound up a direct competitor of ColecoVision shortly after its release. While the Coleco system shipped with the first home version of Nintendo's Donkey Kong, the 5200 included the 1978 arcade game Super Breakout which had already appeared on the Atari 8-bit family and Atari VCS in 1979 and 1981 respectively.
The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it one of the first consoles with backward compatibility. It shipped with a different model of joystick from the 2600-standard CX40 and Pole Position II as the pack-in game. Most of the announced titles at launch were ports of 1981–1983 arcade video games.
Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.
The Atari XE Video Game System is an industrial redesign of the Atari 65XE home computer and the final model in the Atari 8-bit family. It was released by Atari Corporation in 1987 and marketed as a home video game console alongside the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega's Master System, and Atari's own Atari 7800. The XEGS is compatible with existing Atari 8-bit family hardware and software. Without keyboard, the system operates as a stand-alone game console. With the keyboard, it boots identically to the Atari XE computers. Atari packaged the XEGS as a basic set consisting of only the console and joystick, and as a deluxe set consisting of the console, keyboard, CX40 joystick, and XG-1 light gun.
Choplifter is a military themed scrolling shooter developed by Dan Gorlin for the Apple II and published by Broderbund in 1982. It was ported to the Atari 8-bit family the same year and also to the VIC-20, Commodore 64, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, MSX, and Thomson computers.
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, known as Zoom 909 in Japan, is a pseudo-3D rail shooter released as an arcade video game by Sega in 1982. The player controls a spaceship in a third-person perspective, adapting the three-dimensional perspective of Sega's earlier racing game Turbo (1981) for the space shoot 'em up genre. It used the Buck Rogers license, referencing the space battles, though Buck himself is never seen.
Jungle King, re-released as Jungle Hunt, is a side-scrolling action game developed by Taito and released for arcades in 1982. It was originally distributed as Jungle King, then quickly modified and re-released as Jungle Hunt due to a copyright dispute over the player character's likeness to Tarzan. Jungle King, along with Moon Patrol released a month earlier, is one of the first video games with parallax scrolling.
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H.E.R.O. is a video game written by John Van Ryzin and published by Activision for the Atari 2600 in March 1984. It was ported to the Apple II, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, MSX, and ZX Spectrum. The player uses a helicopter backpack and other tools to rescue victims trapped deep in a mine. The mine is made up of multiple screens using a flip screen style.
Ballblazer is a futuristic sports game created by Lucasfilm Games and published in 1985 by Epyx. Along with Rescue on Fractalus!, it was one of the initial pair of releases from Lucasfilm Games, Ballblazer was developed and first published for the Atari 8-bit family. The principal creator and programmer was David Levine. The game was called Ballblaster during development; some pirated versions bear this name.
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Koronis Rift is a 1985 computer game from Lucasfilm Games. It was produced and designed by Noah Falstein. Originally developed for the Atari 8-bit family and the Commodore 64, Koronis Rift was ported to the Amstrad CPC, Apple II, MSX2, Tandy Color Computer 3, and ZX Spectrum.
Ace of Aces is a combat flight simulation video game developed by Artech Digital Entertainment and published in 1986 by Accolade in North America and U.S. Gold in Europe. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit family, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, MSX, MS-DOS, Master System, and ZX Spectrum. Set in World War II, the player flies a RAF Mosquito long range fighter-bomber equipped with rockets, bombs and a cannon. Missions include destroying German fighter planes, bombers, V-1 flying bombs, U-boats, and trains. In 1988 Atari Corporation released a version on cartridge styled for the then-new Atari XEGS.
Beamrider is a fixed shooter written for the Intellivision by David Rolfe and published by Activision in 1983. The game was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and MSX.
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