Urban Runner

Last updated
Urban Runner
Urbanrunner.jpg
Cover art
Developer(s) Coktel Vision
Publisher(s) Sierra On-Line
Designer(s) Philippe Lamarque, Silvan Boris Schmid
Engine
  • Gob  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Platform(s) DOS, Microsoft Windows
Release
Genre(s) Interactive movie
Mode(s) Single-player

Urban Runner (originally subtitled Lost In Town) is a French produced computer game developed by Coktel Vision and published by Sierra On-line.

Contents

The game is an interactive movie spanning four CD-ROMs. [2] The plot follows an American journalist in Paris who has been framed for murder during the course of an investigation.

Urban Runner was not very popular at the time of its release, due to high graphics and monitor resolution requirements. The minimum requirement was 640×480, with 256 colors. For the best quality, 640×480, 32-bit color was needed. Few reviews have been published concerning the game.

The lead is played by Brandon Massey, who also played the lead in the Sierra title Police Quest IV: Open Season (1993), making his second and final appearance in a Sierra game.

Plot

Max Gardner (Brandon Massey) is an American journalist in Paris, where he investigates a story about a big drug dealer who is covered by some influential politician. To get the dealer talking, Max offers him incriminating photographs in exchange for some information. When Max arrives at the meeting point, the drug lord is dead and Max is mistaken for the killer.

While evading the authorities, Max continues his investigation and finds an ally in Adda - the murdered drug dealer's lover - and the two of them work to uncover the conspiracy behind the murders.

Gameplay

The game itself is an interactive movie controlled with a mouse. As with many games of this type the player progresses by collecting items, talking to characters and solving puzzles. The player will also accumulate Clues - pieces of information which are essential to solving the mystery - which are separate from the inventory and cannot be given away or lost.

Should the player be having difficulty in progressing, they begin the game with three Jokers to use, which act as a hint system. [3]

The player's viewpoint switches from Max to Adda at certain points in the game and sometimes gives the player a choice of which character to control. However, both characters must have the puzzles in their respective areas solved to progress.

Gameplay can be divided into Clue and Action sections. Clue sections are puzzle-based with no time limit; players may have to explore an environment, talk to characters or interact with objects to progress. Action sections give the player a short amount of time to make a decision - making the wrong choice usually results in character's death.

Compatibility

Urban Runner was developed to run under DOS and Windows 3.1, making it incompatible with modern Windows computers. It is fully playable using the game engine recreation software ScummVM, as part of its support for the Gob engine [4] (which is used for games developed by Coktel Vision).

Development

According to the French newspaper Les Échos , Urban Runner was created by a team of 50 people. By December 1995, it had been in development for one-and-a-half years and its budget had risen to 15 F million. Three months were spent on the game's live-action film shoots. Les Échos reported that Urban Runner's budget had climbed high enough that it would need to sell 500,000 units to break even. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SCUMM</span> Game engine developed by LucasArts

Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) is a video game engine developed at Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, to ease development on their graphic adventure game Maniac Mansion (1987). It was subsequently used as the engine for later LucasArts adventure games and Humongous Entertainment games.

<i>The Neverhood</i> 1996 video game

The Neverhood is a 1996 point-and-click adventure video game developed by The Neverhood, Inc. and published by DreamWorks Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The game follows the adventure of a claymation character named Klaymen as he discovers his origins and his purpose in a world made entirely out of clay. When the game was originally released, it was unique in that all of its animation was done entirely in claymation, including all of the sets. The gameplay consists mostly of guiding the main character Klaymen around and solving puzzles to advance. Video sequences help advance the plot. In addition to being unique, The Neverhood aimed at being quirky and humorous, as is evident by the characters, the music, and the plot sequence. It received a sequel in 1998, Skullmonkeys, which was a platform game, abandoning the adventure format of the original.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ScummVM</span> Set of game engine recreations

Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies like Revolution Software and Adventure Soft. It was originally written by Ludvig Strigeus. ScummVM is free software that is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LucasArts adventure games</span> Adventure games produced by LucasArts

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humor, with the exceptions of Loom and The Dig. Their game design philosophy was that the player should never die or reach a complete dead-end, although there were exceptions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder mystery game</span> Party game genre

Murder mystery games are a genre of party games. One of the players secretly plays a murderer, whilst other players must determine who among them is the criminal. Murder mystery games often involve the actual 'murders' of guests throughout the game, or open with a 'death' and have the rest of the time devoted to investigation.

<i>Blade Runner</i> (1997 video game) 1997 video game

Blade Runner is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive for Microsoft Windows, released in November 1997. The game is not a direct adaptation of the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner but is instead a "sidequel", telling an original story, which runs parallel to the film's plot, occasionally intersecting with it.

<i>Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?</i> 1996 video game

Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!? is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game based on Terry Pratchett's series of fantasy novels set on the mythical Discworld, and sequel to the 1995 video game of the same name. The story sees players assume the role of Rincewind the "wizzard" as he becomes burdened with the task of finding Death and coercing him out of an impromptu retirement and back into his regular duties. The game's plot borrows from a number of Discworld books, including key elements from Reaper Man and Moving Pictures.

<i>Gobliiins</i> Puzzle adventure video game series

Gobliiins is a puzzle adventure video game series, consisting of five entries, released by Coktel Vision for the Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, and Macintosh platforms. The first three titles were released in the early 1990s, the fourth in 2009. The visual look of the series and its characters were created by French artist Pierre Gilhodes, whose style was used in another game from Coktel Vision: Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth.

Simon the Sorcerer is a series of point-and-click adventure games created by British developer Adventure Soft. The series follows the adventures of an unwilling hero of the same name and has a strong fantasy setting similar to Sierra's King's Quest and Westwood's The Legend of Kyrandia series. The game varies in style, however, as it is more poised to be a parody of the fantasy genre than a member of the genre itself, with many renowned folklore characters appearing differently from what they are generally presumed to be.

<i>Lure of the Temptress</i> 1992 video game

Lure of the Temptress is a point-and-click adventure game published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in June 1992 for Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Amiga. It was the first game developed by Revolution Software and uses their proprietary Virtual Theatre engine. The player assumes the role of Diermot, a young peasant who has to overthrow an evil sorceress. The game was well-received and re-released as freeware on April 1, 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual Theatre</span> Game engine by Revolution Software

The Virtual Theatre is a computer game engine designed by Revolution Software to produce adventure games for computer platforms. The engine allowed their team to script events, and move animated sprites against a drawn background with moving elements using a point-and-click style interface. Upon its first release, it rivaled competing engines like LucasArts' SCUMM and Sierra's Creative Interpreter, due to its then high level of artificial intelligence. The engine was first proposed in 1989, while the first game to use it, Lure of the Temptress, was released in 1992, followed by Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996) and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997).

<i>Sanitarium</i> (video game) 1998 video game

Sanitarium is a psychological horror point-and-click adventure video game that was originally released for Microsoft Windows. It was developed by DreamForge Intertainment and published by ASC Games in 1998. It was a commercial success, with sales around 300,000 units. In 2015, it was ported to iOS and Android devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coktel Vision</span> French video game developer and publisher

Coktel Vision was a French video game developer and publisher based in Paris. It was best known for its educational and adventure games.

<i>Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer</i> 1995 video game

Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer is a point-and-click graphic adventure game developed by the Clipper Software.

An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of genres. Most adventure games are designed for a single player, since the emphasis on story and character makes multiplayer design difficult. Colossal Cave Adventure is identified by Rick Adams as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Syberia, and Myst.

<i>Clue Classic</i> 2008 video game

Clue Classic is a single-player, interactive video game based on Hasbro's Cluedo franchise. It was developed by Games Cafe and published by Reflexive Entertainment on June 3, 2008.

<i>The Prophecy</i> (video game) 1992 video game

The Prophecy is a point-and-click adventure game in a fantasy setting, developed by Coktel Vision and MDO, released in Europe in 1992 for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST. It was published by Sierra On-Line in North America in 1993. A German retail version was released.

<i>Sołtys</i> (video game) 1995 video game

Sołtys is a Polish point and click adventure game by LK Avalon which was released for MS-DOS on May 23, 1995.

Adibou is an educational video gaming series first developed by Coktel Vision in the 1990s. The franchise expanded into comic books, music and television series. Titles in the series follow Adiboo, a young alien who teaches children about a variety of topics including nature, maths, and language. Most stories are set in the world of Celesta.

<i>Nippon Safes Inc.</i> 1992 video game

Nippon Safes Inc. is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Italian developer Dynabyte. It was released in 1992 for MS-DOS and Amiga computers. The game is the predecessor to The Big Red Adventure and features cartoonish, comics-style graphics and a unique icon-based interface. In 2021 the game was declared freeware by the original authors of the game.

References

  1. "Online Gaming Review". 1997-02-27. Archived from the original on 1997-02-27. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
  2. Moby Games (2006). "Urban Runner". Mobygames.com. Retrieved 2006-04-30.
  3. Sierra (1996). "Urban Runner - Manual - PC" (PDF). Google Docs. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  4. ScummVM. "Urban Runner - ScummVM :: Wiki". Mobygames.com. Retrieved 2013-02-27.
  5. P.M. (December 20, 1995). "Course au réalisme chez les éditeurs". Les Échos . Archived from the original on July 17, 2018. Retrieved July 17, 2018.