Name the Game - Part 7

[Buck Birdseed]

Clue #2: Rather than try to design a 3D (or pseudo-3D) game engine that was specific for the genre, the PC game in question borrowed (with minor modifications) a tried-and-tested 3D perspective from another type of game. I thought it worked really well, but the idea has not been used since as far as I know.

[Adagio]

Alpha Centauri

...if that can be called 3D?

[Buck Birdseed]

Clue #3: I suppse the last clue is a bit wrong in some ways. What I mean is: the general perspective itself is really old, having been used since the genre began in the eighties. 3D versions of the general perspective existed for several years before this game came out, but they were all a bit sterile and dull... What this game did was take a specific perspective, a way of moving and a feel, and apply it to the genre in question. It was great – it had life like the best 2D games, and the immersion of the specific perspective in a good combination.

[ZargonX]

*ouch!* That last clue hurt my brain

[duke o' york]

Does anyone even have an idea of what kind of game it is, and what platform?

International Superstar Soccer

(despite the fact that this is not a Buck type of game, to the best of my knowledge)

[CapTVK]

I'm thinking of Gauntlet over here. But I've yet to come up with a more recent name. Alien Breed?

[ZargonX]

Ultima Underworld?

[SnowFire]

I think you've got it Zargon, although it still doesn't quite fit- the Gold Box games (and a few others) had RPGs in that old cruddy 3D dungeon-crawling perspective, but I guess perhaps Buck is considering UU a different genre. But then it WOULD have been repeated, in games like System Shock, if we're thinking of it more as an adventure. Ack.

I'd be tempted to say Grim Fandango, but that WAS done again, in Escape from Monkey Island, so that can't be it.

[Guynemer]

Betrayal at Krondor?

[Buck Birdseed]

Not my type of game? Remember that the first Name That Game I guessed was SWOS! I definately like ISS but then there have definately been third-person-perspective, pseudo-isometric, restricted-camera, 2D-horizontal-plane-unit-movement, gravity-modelling 3D sports games before and since.

That should tell you something about the kind of perspective I'm after.

Should I give up on the perspective issue? Nah. It seems to leave it so open. Let's see.

Clue #4: The genre this game is in had, for much of the nineties at least, two distinct schools of game design, vaguely related to their associated perspectives. For some reason the two perspectives inspired greatly different game types, partly because of the companies that used them but also because one was very movement friendly and encouraged playfulness from the get go while the other tended to supply distinct, static vistas.

This game's engine, in a stroke of genius, takes another genres movement (which is, at least in theory, done from the same general perspective as the more static of the two schools) and combines it with the playful nature of the other school. The result is a game that places itself very clearly in the playful tradition both by association and by breaking down the standstill or floating dullness previously associated with the perspective.

[Guynemer]

yes, well, that makes it all so clear now.

[SnowFire]

We need to figure out what the heck genre Buck is talking about. It's a PC game, so those genres...

Strategy? Nah. Strategy games aren't playful and free.

Space shooter? I guess he could mean kind of a 2D Defender style vs. a in-the-cockpit vs. a third person perspective, but by the 90's, the old side scrolling shooters were pretty well dead, and were always stronger in the Arcades than the PC anyway.

Platformer? Maybe, but I haven't the faintest clue what the two perspectives would be.

Graphic Adventure? Already tried this, I think. Maybe somebody more familiar with 90's graphic adventures could help out, I only know the LucasArts ones. Was there any particularly creative 3D one here?

[ZargonX]

Yeah, I have a feeling once we nail the genre, we'll get the game about 2 seconds later...

[Buck Birdseed]

Clue #5: The genre the game borrows its viewpoint from is the gravity-bound 2D-movement-on-the-horizontal-plane first-person 3D perspective of old, sprite-based FPS games like Doom. In fact, if the engine wasn't proprietary it could just as well be the Duke Nukem 3D engine or something. Of course, the "action" is way different, so the control system is rather changed. But the movement, that is intact.

[Arnelos]

I have a sneaking suspicion that graphical adventure may be in the right direction, but my knowledge of early 90's graphical adventures is pretty slim.