Skull Cracker | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | CyberFlix |
Publisher(s) | GTE Entertainment |
Director(s) | Rand Cabus |
Producer(s) | Robb Dean |
Designer(s) | Robb Dean |
Programmer(s) | Don McCasland Bill Appleton |
Artist(s) | Eric Whited Anthony S. Taylor |
Writer(s) | Mark Cabus |
Composer(s) | Scott Scheinbaum |
Platform(s) | Windows, Mac OS |
Release | 1996 |
Genre(s) | Beat 'em up |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Skull Cracker is a 1996 supernatural beat 'em up video game [1] developed by American studio CyberFlix and published by GTE Entertainment on Macintosh and Windows. It is sometimes considered a spiritual successor to the 1991 title Creepy Castle , which the game's head of technology William Appleton had previously written for Reactor Inc. Skull Cracker was conceptually designed by Ben Calica. [2]
After the release of Titanic: Adventure Out of Time , Cyberflix released this old project which had been sitting in the vaults for a few years. [3] The game was demoed on October 28, 1995 at the Double Tree Hotel (Crowne Plaza) in Rockville. [4] It also previewed at the 1994 Summer Consumer Electronics Show along with other Cyberflix games, presented by Paramount. [5]
The developers described it as an "old-fashioned side-scrolling arcade game". [3] The game sees the player battle through 16 levels of the undead and monsters. [6] The game contains 50s-style monsters and 90s-style urban grit. [7]
GameSpot offered a scathing review, panning the title's "bad art, poor animation, limited controls, no decent action, lame gameplay". [8] MacLedge felt the game was a letdown from Cyberflix's previous work. [9] Inside Mac Games praised the title's intriguing storyline, witty humor and exciting gameplay. [10] Cyberflix head Scott Scheinbaum would later say "Every company makes mistakes, and that was ours...It should have come out a year and a half before it did", noting that 1994 technology seemed stale by 1996. [3] World Village noted the game was a departure from the history-based title Titanic. [11]
Starship Titanic is an adventure game developed by The Digital Village and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive. It was released in April 1998 for Microsoft Windows and in March 1999 for Apple Macintosh. The game takes place on the eponymous starship, which the player is tasked with repairing by locating the missing parts of its control system. The gameplay involves solving puzzles and speaking with the bots inside the ship. The game features a text parser similar to those of text adventure games with which the player can talk with characters.
Survival horror is a subgenre of horror games. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical action games through limited ammunition or weapons, health, speed, and vision, or through various obstructions of the player's interaction with the game mechanics. The player is also challenged to find items that unlock the path to new areas and solve puzzles to proceed in the game. Games make use of strong horror themes, such as dark mazelike environments and unexpected attacks from enemies.
Pyramid was a gaming magazine, publishing articles primarily on role-playing games, but including board games, card games, and other sorts of games. It began life in 1993 as a print publication of Steve Jackson Games for its first 30 issues, though it has been published on the Internet since March 1998. Print issues were bimonthly; the first online version published new articles each week; the second online version is monthly. Pyramid is headquartered in Austin, Texas. It replaced Steve Jackson Games' previous magazine Roleplayer.
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game developed by CyberFlix and published in the United States and United Kingdom by GTE Entertainment and Europress respectively, for Windows and Macintosh. It takes place in a virtual representation of the RMS Titanic, with the player assuming the role of a British spy who has been sent back in time to the final night of the Titanic and must complete a previously failed mission to prevent World War I, the Russian Revolution, and World War II from occurring. The gameplay involves exploring the ship and solving puzzles. There are multiple outcomes and endings to the game depending on the player's interactions with characters and use of items.
GamePro was an American multiplatform video game magazine media company that published online and print content covering the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software. The magazine featured content on various video game consoles, personal computers and mobile devices. GamePro Media properties included GamePro magazine and their website. The company was also a part subsidiary of the privately held International Data Group (IDG), a media, events and research technology group. The magazine and its parent publication printing the magazine went defunct in 2011, but is outlasted by Gamepro.com.
Popful Mail: Magical Fantasy Adventure is a side-scrolling platform game developed by Nihon Falcom. It was originally released for the NEC PC-8801 home computer in 1991 and the PC-9801 in 1992. The game was later ported to the PC Engine CD-ROM by NEC Home Electronics, to the Sega CD by Sega, to DoJa mobile phones by Bothtec, and to the Super Famicom and Microsoft Windows by Falcom.
The Legend of Lotus Spring is a graphical adventure computer game co-developed by Women Wise and Xing Xing and released on Valentine's Day in 2000 in North America. It was originally released by Xing Xing in 1998 in China.
Dust: A Tale of The Wired West is a computer game made for PC and Macintosh. It was released on June 30, 1995, and was produced by Cyberflix and published by GTE Entertainment.
CyberFlix Incorporated was a computer game company founded in 1993 by Bill Appleton. CyberFlix was based in Knoxville, Tennessee. They made many interactive story-telling games in the 1990s, but stopped any and all productions in 1998 before finally going out of business in 2006.
Lunicus is a 1993 computer game developed by Cyberflix and published by Paramount Interactive. It shares many traits in both graphical style and gameplay with some of Cyberflix's other games, like Jump Raven. It was rated as 1993 CD-ROM game of the year in the magazine MacWorld.
The Secret of the Nautilus is a 2002 adventure video game, inspired by Jules Verne's science fiction novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It was developed by Cryo Interactive and released for Microsoft Windows based PCs.
William "Bill" Appleton is an American entrepreneur and technologist best known as the programmer of the first rich media authoring tool World Builder, the multimedia programming language SuperCard, a best-selling CD-ROM Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, the DreamFactory REST API platform, and Snapshot Org Management for Salesforce.
Star Wars: Pit Droids is a puzzle game developed and published by Lucas Learning. It was originally released for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh on September 13, 1999. It was later ported to iOS and released on February 9, 2012. The game develops skills such as hypothesis testing and geometry.
Search for the Golden Dolphin is a first person educational adventure video game released in 1999 for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Macintosh. The game was developed, produced, and published by Cinegram Media Inc. in association with the Mystic Seaport museum, as part of Cinegram's Digital Treasures series.
Mummy: Tomb of the Pharaoh is a point-and-click adventure video game released on August 31, 1996, by Interplay Productions on Windows and by MacPlay, a division of Interplay Productions at the time, on Macintosh. It is a sequel to Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster. The game was developed by Amazing Media, directed and produced by Jeff McDonald, Keith Metzger, and Loring Casartelli, written by McDonald and Metzger, and composed by Márcio Câmara. Malcolm McDowell stars as Stuart Davenport, one of the main characters of the game.
The Forgotten: It Begins is a 1999 adventure/puzzle video game developed by Ransom Interactive and published by DreamCatcher Interactive. A sequel was to be released called The Forgotten II: The Collection. The Forgotten narrative was originally supposed to last over 7 games ("modules"), but these were never completed.
Auryn Quest is a jump and run adventure game based on Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story and his film adaptation of the same name. Originally developed by Discreet Monsters, "bad luck and mishaps" left the company bankrupt, and the game was eventually completed by Attraction. Initially an ambitious adventure game, bankruptcy forced the release to be reworked into a first-person action, 3D platformer jump game vaguely based on its source material. The first entry in a subsequently abandoned series, it became the sole game project for Discreet Monsters.
The Secrets of Da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript is an adventure game developed by Kheops Studio and published by Tri Synergy on June 7, 2006 on the PC. In 2009 it was released on the Mac OS X.
Santa Fe Mysteries: The Elk Moon Murder is a video game, the first in the Santa Fe Mysteries series, followed by Santa Fe Mysteries: Sacred Ground. In The Elk Moon Murder, a famous Native American artist named Anna Elk Moon is murdered in the American Southwest.
Checkered Flag is a 1994 racing video game developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar. It is a conversion of the 1991 Atari Lynx video game Checkered Flag. In the game, the player controls a Formula One car competing against computer-controlled opponents in races across multiple locations. Gameplay consists of three modes, and the player can choose various weather conditions or customize the vehicle's characteristics.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)