Picture, if you will, a time when CDs were first pioneered as a storage medium. A time when games like Super Mario Bros 3 were the most impressive looking and the most deeply immersive games you had ever seen. Then, imagine one day your dad showed you THIS:
<img src=http://www.lauppert.ws/screen1/spaceship_warlock.png>
That is a screen shot from Spaceship Warlock. It was called an Interactive Movie back in the day and it was amazing.
Ok, a little background first. This was a Mac exclusive game developed sometime around 1991 by Reactor software. Mike ?Donna Matrix? Saenz was responsible for the company and Joe ?Radiskull and Devil Doll? Sparks and was brought on as a, well there was a lawsuit over whether he was an employee for the company or some kind of independent contractor, determining who holds the rights to the game. The lawsuit for a long time overshadowed the game, which is a shame because the game itself was not only a technical achievement beyond the normal scope of things, and a load of fun. It was ported to PC sometime around 1995 and was compared to Myst and therefore forgotten, which is again a shame as many people would never be able to experience this game.
The first thing you notice is how good the game looks and sounds. It?s in 3D, the characters look like people or fish things or three eyed mutants and one of the first things you hear is a voice sample. Now I want to point out here, I mean a REAL voice sample. Not like the Intellivision Voice module, an actual human voice, like a cartoon would have. Having come from Zelda and even Monkey Island where all conversations were text based, this blew me away. The controls are pretty simple, you click on where you wanna go or on the object you want to interact with and there?s a good chance your character will do what you want him to. The other great thing, albeit at times frustrating was the conversation engine. You actually typed what you wanted to say into a dialogue box, and if it coincided with a dialogue option the character could respond to, they would launch into a speech. This is quite impressive and innovative, even though it?s an amazingly simple idea.
So the characters you meet include the amazingly hot Stella Starbird, Space Princess in leather and love interest, Metalfoot, a loyal servant droid, and the game?s antagonists, the Kroll. The story revolves around you taking a cruise, getting hijacked by Nick Fury Lookalike Captain Hammer and joining the crew of space pirates. With Terra, assumedly Earth, having been hidden by the Kroll in deep space the game?s Macguffin and what the pirates are hunting for. The story is immersive enough to keep you playing and really does give a cinematic feel to the whole thing.
Somewhere along the course of the game, we go from being insultingly easy to obnoxiously hard. The game makes you play through ?lite? versions of upcoming puzzles before actually competing with the real thing. For example one early puzzle requires you to knock out a mugger. You click on him twice and he falls down. Later on you face off against a moving, dodging, fighting three eyed monster who can hit you back. You go through a maze early on in the game with a map and a relatively intuitive path where nothing can really hurt you, and later you go through another maze with no map, no sense of direction and enemies abound who will kill you. This was, as far as I could ascertain, either an amazing piece of typical pulp movie writing where everything the hero does is brought back at some point to save his arse, or lazy. Regardless of the thinking behind it, it sticks out like a blue carrot.
One of the great things about this game is it?s easy to get lost. Now in games where you need to be somewhere in a hurry this normally causes problems. Luckily there is no time limit on any of the tasks in the game and for a lot of the time you can wander around at your own pace and explore the ship. There are several fun minigames, like blowing up a complaining robot, as well as several hidden FMV?s that have nothing to do with the story itself, but are none the less entertaining. Even the death screens, of which there are many, often make you laugh until you realised how far back you last saved your game. All the extra content is actually a very good idea, if only because the game itself is very, VERY short. A skilled player could finish it in under an hour (without exploring that it).
This game was pioneering, exciting and fun. If you have a good DOS emulator or an old Mac, find this game and play it. If you don?t, find one, download it and THEN play this game. It?s worth it if only to see what interactive movies were like. Its short, but a lot of fun. Heartily recommend for any sci fi fans and any point and click nuts.
<img src=http://www.lauppert.ws/screen1/spaceship_warlock.png>
That is a screen shot from Spaceship Warlock. It was called an Interactive Movie back in the day and it was amazing.
Ok, a little background first. This was a Mac exclusive game developed sometime around 1991 by Reactor software. Mike ?Donna Matrix? Saenz was responsible for the company and Joe ?Radiskull and Devil Doll? Sparks and was brought on as a, well there was a lawsuit over whether he was an employee for the company or some kind of independent contractor, determining who holds the rights to the game. The lawsuit for a long time overshadowed the game, which is a shame because the game itself was not only a technical achievement beyond the normal scope of things, and a load of fun. It was ported to PC sometime around 1995 and was compared to Myst and therefore forgotten, which is again a shame as many people would never be able to experience this game.
The first thing you notice is how good the game looks and sounds. It?s in 3D, the characters look like people or fish things or three eyed mutants and one of the first things you hear is a voice sample. Now I want to point out here, I mean a REAL voice sample. Not like the Intellivision Voice module, an actual human voice, like a cartoon would have. Having come from Zelda and even Monkey Island where all conversations were text based, this blew me away. The controls are pretty simple, you click on where you wanna go or on the object you want to interact with and there?s a good chance your character will do what you want him to. The other great thing, albeit at times frustrating was the conversation engine. You actually typed what you wanted to say into a dialogue box, and if it coincided with a dialogue option the character could respond to, they would launch into a speech. This is quite impressive and innovative, even though it?s an amazingly simple idea.
So the characters you meet include the amazingly hot Stella Starbird, Space Princess in leather and love interest, Metalfoot, a loyal servant droid, and the game?s antagonists, the Kroll. The story revolves around you taking a cruise, getting hijacked by Nick Fury Lookalike Captain Hammer and joining the crew of space pirates. With Terra, assumedly Earth, having been hidden by the Kroll in deep space the game?s Macguffin and what the pirates are hunting for. The story is immersive enough to keep you playing and really does give a cinematic feel to the whole thing.
Somewhere along the course of the game, we go from being insultingly easy to obnoxiously hard. The game makes you play through ?lite? versions of upcoming puzzles before actually competing with the real thing. For example one early puzzle requires you to knock out a mugger. You click on him twice and he falls down. Later on you face off against a moving, dodging, fighting three eyed monster who can hit you back. You go through a maze early on in the game with a map and a relatively intuitive path where nothing can really hurt you, and later you go through another maze with no map, no sense of direction and enemies abound who will kill you. This was, as far as I could ascertain, either an amazing piece of typical pulp movie writing where everything the hero does is brought back at some point to save his arse, or lazy. Regardless of the thinking behind it, it sticks out like a blue carrot.
One of the great things about this game is it?s easy to get lost. Now in games where you need to be somewhere in a hurry this normally causes problems. Luckily there is no time limit on any of the tasks in the game and for a lot of the time you can wander around at your own pace and explore the ship. There are several fun minigames, like blowing up a complaining robot, as well as several hidden FMV?s that have nothing to do with the story itself, but are none the less entertaining. Even the death screens, of which there are many, often make you laugh until you realised how far back you last saved your game. All the extra content is actually a very good idea, if only because the game itself is very, VERY short. A skilled player could finish it in under an hour (without exploring that it).
This game was pioneering, exciting and fun. If you have a good DOS emulator or an old Mac, find this game and play it. If you don?t, find one, download it and THEN play this game. It?s worth it if only to see what interactive movies were like. Its short, but a lot of fun. Heartily recommend for any sci fi fans and any point and click nuts.