Rescue on Fractalus!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Screenshot Rescue on Fractalus! on the Atari 5200

Rescue On Fractalus! is a 1985 computer game created by Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts Entertainment). It was originally released for the Atari 8-bit systems, such as the Atari 800 and the Atari 5200. It was also ported to other popular platforms of the day, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum (by Dalali Software Ltd), Amstrad, Tandy Color Computer 3 and Commodore 64. The game was one of the first two products from the fledgling Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group led by Peter Langston.

1 Synopsis
- 1.1 Flying
- 1.2 Rescue
2 Trivia
3 Credits from the game manual
4 Unreleased versions
5 References
6 See also
- 6.1 External links

[edit] Synopsis

[edit] Flying

The game utilized fractal technology to create the craggy mountains of an alien planet, where the visilibility was drastically reduced by a gaseous atmosphere. The player controlled a fictional Valkyrie space fighter ^[1] (converted for SAR duty) from a first-person view, attempting to land and pick up downed Ethercorps pilots. Some of these mountains held anti-aircraft guns, which had to be avoided or destroyed. Due to the varied terrain, the direction finder had to be used to locate the pilots, whose visual beacons were often masked by mountain ridges.

At higher levels, the enemy Jaggis began flying kamikaze saucers at you. Your mission area also moved into day/night boundaries. Night missions were particularly difficult, requiring diligent use of the altimeter to avoid crashing.

The thick, gaseous atmosphere was sufficiently acidic that downed pilots' craft were being slowly disintegrated. An exposed pilot's survival time outside his craft was less than a minute, due to his flight suit and helmet literally dissolving. This made it imperative that the player rescue pilots as quickly and efficiently as possible.

[edit] Rescue

After landing within sufficient "walking" proximity to the pilot, the player would shut down the jet's engine, also turning off the ship's shields. (Turning on the engines and the shields prematurely would incinerate the exposed pilot.) The downed pilot would then disembark his crashed ship, run down to the Valkyrie (out of sight of the cockpit), and tap on the crew entry door; the player could then open up and let the pilot in (rescue complete). Failing to open the door would let a human pilot die, as his knocking on the hatch would become at first frantic, then slower and more feeble as they perished in the corrosive environment.

As an amusing twist on this relatively straightforward premise, some of the "pilots in distress" were actually hostile aliens in disguise. (Eagle-eyed players would notice that the aliens' helmets were usually green, not the customary orange, or purple for ace pilots.) After landing near a downed pilot, the player would watch him run off-screen, and then wait for several tense seconds—if it was human, the familiar, frantic "tap-tap" noise would be heard from the ship's hatch; otherwise, the alien Jaggi would suddenly jump back into view, sans helmet, roaring and trying to smash into the cockpit. Unless the player restored the ship's shields, the windscreen would crack open and kill the pilot. Likewise, inadvertantly letting a Jaggi pilot into the player's ship resulted in disastrous results.

Some old-time gamers claim that this is the first time a computer game included a true, "shock appeal" moment.

[edit] Trivia

The development version of this game was called Behind Jaggi Lines!. This has a double meaning. The aliens in the game are called "Jaggi", so when playing the game you are flying "Behind Jaggi Lines". The word "Jaggi" was derived from "jagged" during development due to the fact that the graphics depicting the cockpit of the Valkyrie spacecraft were not anti-aliased and are therefore very "jagged". So the player is "Behind Jagged Lines". It's believed that this game is the origin of the term jaggies for aliased artifacts in raster images.

The game, as many of other Lucasfilm Games' early releases (c.f. Ballblazer), was widely available to the computer underground on pirate bulletin boards.

Disk and cartridge based versions, on the Atari 800, also had an extra intro screen depicting the pilot's mothership.

[edit] Credits from the game manual

Rescue on Fractalus! was created by the Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group. David Fox directed the project and created the concept, transition scenes, animation, and documentation. Loren Carpenter of the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project did the 3-D fractal landscape image generation and co-created the concept. Charlie Kellner was responsible for animation, music, sound, and flight dynamics; Gary Winnick provided animation; David Levine provided support; and Peter Langston, the Games Group Leader, contributed to the concept and designed night flying, music, and sound. Special thanks to George Lucas.

[edit] Unreleased versions

In 2004, an unreleased prototype of Rescue on Fractalus! for the Atari 7800 was found in the possession of its original programmers. While most of the core elements of the game were intact, the project was cancelled before the gameplay could be completed. The 7800 version would have taken advantage of the system's better graphical performance to produce a much smoother simulation of the planet Fractalus.