| Ubik | |
|---|---|
 Cover art | |
| Developer(s) | Cryo Interactive |
| Publisher(s) | Cryo Interactive |
| Composer(s) | Eric Los |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation, Windows |
| Release | 1998 |
| Genre(s) | Action, Strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Ubik is a 1998 video game by Cryo Interactive, based on the novel Ubik by Philip K. Dick.
In the year 2019, Joe Chip is working for Runciter Associates in Los Angeles, where he is tasked with preventing enemy companies from spying on his clients.
The player has to lead, train and equip a team of five combatants (including Joe Chip) and complete missions in 3D-rendered maps. Though the backgrounds are prerendered, players can choose from a limited number of different camera angles for each scene. [1] Shooting is a key aspect of the gameplay. The missions include killing all enemies, rescuing hostages and stealing corporate secrets. [1]
The developers thought long and hard about how to translate Dick's work into a video game. Fans of the time associated him with the world of the Blade Runner movie, so the team felt compelled to stick to this. However, they wanted to avoid a wholly science fiction route and instead stay somewhat true to the book. They thought that Dick's 1960s description of the future was more in the tone of Starsky & Hutch, whereas they wanted to update this with a Blade Runner or Total Recall dark cynicism. [2] The PlayStation conversion was difficult due to the hardware not supporting z-buffering. [1]
John Saavedra of Den Of Geek thought the convoluted plot wasn't suitable for a strategy game. [3] Brutoom of Hardcore Gaming 101 thought that the game merged different genres together, and pushed creative boundaries. [4]
Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
Philip Kindred Dick, often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness. He is considered one of the most important figures in 20th-century science fiction.
Ubik is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while cryonic technology allows recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation. It follows Joe Chip, a technician at a psychic agency who begins to experience strange alterations in reality that can be temporarily reversed by a mysterious store-bought substance called Ubik. This work expands upon characters and concepts previously introduced in the vignette "What the Dead Men Say".
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a 1968 dystopian science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth's life has been greatly damaged by a nuclear global war, leaving most animal species endangered or extinct. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who has to "retire" six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids.
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Bionic Commando, released in Japan as Top Secret is a run and gun platform game released by Capcom in arcades in 1987. It was designed by Tokuro Fujiwara as a successor to his earlier "wire action" platformer Roc'n Rope (1983), building on its grappling hook mechanic; he was also the designer of Commando (1985). The music was composed by Harumi Fujita for the Yamaha YM2151 sound chip.
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Blade Runner is an American cyberpunk media franchise originating from the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, featuring the character of Rick Deckard. The book has been adapted into several media, including films, comics, a stage play, and a radio serial. The first film adaptation was Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982. Although the film initially underperformed at the American box office, it became a cult classic, and has had a significant influence on science fiction. A novelization and a comic adaptation of the film were released in the same year. From 1995 to 2000, three novels serving as sequels to both Blade Runner and the original novel were written by K. W. Jeter, a friend of Dick's. A film sequel to Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, was released in 2017. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Blade Runner in 2012, a short film was released, and in the lead up to the release of Blade Runner 2049, several more short films detailing events that occurred between 2019 and 2049 were released. The influence of the franchise has helped spawn the cyberpunk subgenre.
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