The game features a first-person perspective. The protagonist sees a display, a rectangle shaped visor (acting as a monocle for Agent 5). This user interface helps to reduce the movie size and maintain relatively high frame rates. Controls work as four interface buttons located below the screen. They move Agent 5 forward and backward, and rotate Agent 5 left and right.
The Journeyman Project was billed as interactive movie adventure game, where the player is presented with several clues and puzzles that must be solved in order to move on or finish the level. Items that the player finds can be helpful or harmful as he attempts to explore his surroundings. The most important of these items are the seven bio-chips, which enhance the player-character's abilities in various ways. The game's user interface stores the bio-chips in a special "bio-chip panel", which serves as a "quick-menu" for activating and deactivating the various chips.
Story
What an Agent sees when he activates the time machine
The game takes place in the distant future, after the Earth has been united into a peaceful global community. A scientist has discovered the technology of time travel but because of its dangerous nature, the prototype machine, "Pegasus", has been placed under government control and further attempts at traveling through time or developing time travel technology are forbidden by law.[2]
The game begins as humanity welcomes the first alien delegation to visit the planet, and prepares to answer positively to an invitation to join the interplanetary "Symbiotry of Peaceful Beings". During the induction ceremony, the government-operated Temporal Security Agency (TSA), which was established to enforce prohibitions on time travel and safeguard the timeline, detects three temporal disturbances that have altered history; the Agency mobilizes Agent 5 to correct the disruptions, which have altered the timeline so that the Symbiotry never extended its invitation.
The Morimoto Mars Colony
Upon retrieving a cache of unaltered historical data from the distant past, Agent 5 discovers that the anachronisms are related to Earth's first contact with the Symbiotry; ten years prior, the aliens had extended their offer, and planned to return in one decade to receive Earth's answer. An unknown party has altered the timeline to prevent contact with the Symbiotry, either through preventing them from reaching Earth or changing humanity's reaction to the aliens' arrival.
The disruptions occurred during three key events in Earth's recent past:
The conference of 2112 which led to peace and prosperity through the unification of Earth over opposing voices. The robot "Poseidon" is sent to launch a nuclear missile and detonate it above Ghorbistan so that fear prevents the countries from proceeding with the acceptance of the treaty.
The first acknowledged contact with an alien ship in 2185 above Mars. The robot "Ares" is sent to accomplish two tasks: to destroy the Morimoto Mars Colony so that humanity connects the aliens with the colony's destruction and grow skeptical of their intentions, and to destroy the aliens' ship to demonstrate that humanity is willing to use violence against them.
A symposium for deliberating the aliens' offer in 2310, where the speech of Dr. Enrique Castillo persuaded the opposing scientists to accept joining the Symbiotry. The robot "Mercury" is sent to assassinate Castillo so that the opposition prevailed.
After preventing the robots' missions and collecting evidence from each time period, Agent 5 discovers that the person responsible for the disruptions is Dr. Elliot Sinclair, the inventor of the Pegasus time machine. He fears that the aliens are a malevolent force rather than a peaceful race, and is doing everything in his power to make Earth an unsuitable candidate for joining the aliens.
In all three scenarios, the player has two ways to neutralize the robots—one "peaceful" and one "aggressive"—which will affect the player's overall score. The player also gains bio-chips from each robot when he completes each scenario successfully.
Elliot Sinclair, giving instructions and confessing his intentions to his last Prototype, Poseidon, as seen on an Optical Memory Bio-Chip
After correcting the anachronisms created by Dr. Sinclair, Agent 5 learns that the doctor decided to take matters into his own hands and assassinate the alien delegate sent to receive Earth's answer. Agent 5 finds Dr. Sinclair hiding on top of an apartment building and holding a rifle, ready to fire on the delegate as soon as he arrives. After a brief scuffle, Agent 5 arrests Dr. Sinclair, allowing history to take its proper course.
Development
The Journeyman Project was completed in 1992 and released in early 1993 after 2 years of development. The game impressed the gaming press with its use of high quality rendered environments, stylistic artwork and digital audio.
Due to performance difficulties, the game was re-released in 1994 as Journeyman Project Turbo!, with an updated executable that drastically decreased loading times and improved animation quality.
Two sequels (Buried in Time and Legacy of Time) were released in subsequent years, and a fourth game was in the design stage before Presto Studios closed in November 2002; it was eventually shelved in favor of work on Myst III: Exile.
A redesign of the game, with the subtitle of Pegasus Prime, was released for the Power Macintosh; it featured updated graphics, enhanced and updated sounds and puzzles, and improved video technology. Plans to release it on multiple platforms were cancelled. In April 2014 the game was released on Windows through GOG.com.[3]
The Journeyman Project sold 150,000 copies,[7] and spawned the Journeyman Project series, which together sold roughly 500,000 units by July 1996.[8] The game was self-published and retailed for $90, with a per-sale profit of $40–50 for Presto Studios. It had been developed on $70,000.[9]
Computer Gaming World in July 1993 called The Journeyman Project "visually stunning" and its world "believably fantastic". The magazine stated that the game was "as tough as they come" and recommended built-in hints, but concluded that "It is all the more rewarding after puzzling past each conundrum".[2] In April 1994 the magazine said that the game had "wonderfully rendered 3D worlds" with "Solid acting by real pros", concluding that it was "Definitely a game with which to wow the neighbors".[10]
Derek Pearcy reviewed The Journeyman Project in Pyramid #2 (July/Aug., 1993), and stated that "This game - this environment - is the finest experience available on the Macintosh platform. While maybe not the intellectual challenge that other programs might offer, it is the clarity of vision and attention to detail that should take this game out of the store and into your home".[11] Stating that "it isn't a game — it's an experience", InfoWorld in December 1993 praised the Macintosh version's graphics, sound, and puzzles, but advised players to use a hard drive because of slow CD-ROM access.[12]MacUser named The Journeyman Project: Turbo one of the top 50 CD-ROMs of 1995.[6]
Releases and bug fixes
The game suffered from performance problems and slow animations due to its early reliance on Macromedia Director. These problems were mostly overcome with the version 2.0 release and retitled as The Journeyman Project Turbo! under the publisher Sanctuary Woods in 1994.
The Journeyman Project v1.0 (1993) – original self-published release for Macintosh
The Journeyman Project v1.1 (1993) – bug fixes
The Journeyman Project v1.2 (1993) – performance upgrade, fastest Mac version until TJP Turbo
The Journeyman Project MPC v1.0 (1993) – first release for Windows 3.1
The Journeyman Project Turbo (1994) – unified release for Mac and PC with major speed improvements
↑ "Broderbund Software Strengthens Its Growing Entertainment Studio With The Journeyman Project 3" (Press release). Novato, California: Business Wire. July 8, 1996.
The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc as the core of the Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006.
Alternate Reality (AR) is an unfinished role-playing video game series. It was created by Philip Price, who formed a development company called Paradise Programming. Published by Datasoft, AR: The City was released in 1985 and AR: The Dungeon was released in 1987. Price was unable to complete the second game in the series, and The Dungeon was finished by Ken Jordan and Dan Pinal. Gary Gilbertson created the music for both games.
Alien 8 is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game. It was released for the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC and MSX in 1985. The game is a spiritual successor to the best-selling Knight Lore, which was lauded by critics for its isometric graphics. In the game, the player takes control of a robot, Alien 8, whose job is to ensure that all of the cryogenically frozen passengers on board a starship remain viable during the ship's voyage.
Frederik Pohl's Gateway is a 1992 interactive fiction video game released by Legend Entertainment, and written by Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu. It is based on Frederik Pohl's Heechee universe. It was followed by a sequel Gateway II: Homeworld, in 1993.
The Journeyman Project is a series of award-winning first-person science fiction adventure games, created by Presto Studios and released by various publishers, including Bandai, Sanctuary Woods, and Red Orb Entertainment.
Space Ace is a LaserDisc video game produced by Bluth Group, Cinematronics and Advanced Microcomputer Systems. It was unveiled in October 1983, just four months after the Dragon's Lair game, followed by a limited release in December 1983 and then a wide release in Spring 1984. Like its predecessor, it featured film-quality animation played back from a LaserDisc.
Flashback, released as Flashback: The Quest for Identity in the United States, is a 1992 science fiction cinematic platform game developed by Delphine Software of France and published by U.S. Gold in the United States and Europe, and Sunsoft in Japan.
King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is a point-and-click adventure game, first released in 1992 as the sixth installment in the King's Quest series produced by Sierra On-Line. Written by Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen, King's Quest VI is widely recognized as the high point in the series for its landmark 3D graphic introduction movie and professional voice acting. King's Quest VI was programmed in Sierra's Creative Interpreter and was the last King's Quest game to be released on floppy disk. A CD-ROM version of the game was released in 1993, including more character voices, a slightly different opening movie and more detailed artwork and animation.
Rama is a point and click adventure game, developed and published by Sierra On-Line, and released on DOS and Microsoft Windows in 1996; PlayStation version was released in 1998, but exclusively in Japan. The game is based upon Arthur C. Clarke's books Rendezvous with Rama and Rama II, combining elements of their plots with a story that sees the player assuming the role of a replacement crew member for an expedition to investigate an interstellar ship and uncover its mysteries.
Pipe Mania is a puzzle video game developed by The Assembly Line for the Amiga and published in 1989. It was ported to several other platforms by Lucasfilm Games as Pipe Dream; the company distributed the game in the US. The player must connect randomly appearing pieces of pipe on a grid to a given length within a limited time.
Marathon is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Bungie, and released in December 1994 for the Apple Macintosh. The game takes place several centuries into the future in outer space and sets the player as a security officer attempting to stop an alien invasion aboard a colony ship named the Marathon.
Iron Helix is a FMV adventure video game made for Windows, Macintosh, and the Sega CD. It was an early example of a CD-based game, including video elements integrated with conventional 2D maps and controls. The game was designed by Drew Pictures and distributed by Spectrum HoloByte, with Peter Stone of Xorcist creating the soundtrack as well as all sound design.
The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time is a computer game developed by Presto Studios and is the second game in the Journeyman Project series of computer adventure games.
The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time is a computer game developed by Presto Studios and is a sequel to The Journeyman Project and The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time.
Lunicus is a 1993 video 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.
Nomad is a 1993 space trading and combat game developed by Intense! Interactive and Papyrus Design Group. It was published by GameTek for MS-DOS.
Protostar: War on the Frontier is a 1993 science fiction video game produced by Tsunami Media that blends elements of role-playing, space exploration, space combat, and strategy. The player commands a spaceship from a first-person perspective in real-time capable of traveling to the various planets in the game world and launching an explorer vessel to traverse their surfaces. Several sentient alien races inhabit the region with whom the player interacts through friendly conversation, intense spaceship combat, or barter at their planetary trading posts. One of these races, the Skeetch, is aggressively threatening to conquer the Earth; the player has been recruited to convince the other sentient races in the region to join humanity in an alliance against the Skeetch. A secondary goal of the game is to earn money by performing actions such as selling alien lifeforms and minerals collected on planetary surfaces to obtain the funds needed to upgrade the player's spaceship and improve the odds of survival in confrontations with the Skeetch and other hostile entities. Computer Gaming World criticized the game for failing to break new ground and for its "muddled" blend of science fiction themes, but did recommend it to players new to this genre.
The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime is an adventure computer game developed by Presto Studios and published by Bandai in 1997. It is a complete remake of the original Journeyman Project, using some of the actors from The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time.
Silicon Dreams is a trilogy of interactive fiction games developed by Level 9 Computing during the 1980s. The first game was Snowball, released during 1983, followed a year later by Return to Eden, and then by The Worm in Paradise during 1985. The next year they were vended together as the first, second and last of the Silicon Dreams.
Sanctuary Woods Multimedia, Inc. was a Canadian-American multimedia developer and third-party game publisher. It was one of the early multimedia companies developing products for CD-ROM distribution. The founders, Brian Beninger and Toni Beninger, were both experienced technologists who saw the potential for developing family-oriented and educational multimedia projects when Apple Inc. released Hypercard.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
