Future Wars
Encyclopedia
Future Wars, subtitled in Europe as Time Travellers and in North America as Adventures in Time and known in France as Time Travelers: The Menace is an adventure game
from Delphine Software International
, released in 1989
. The game is mainly the work of Paul Cuisset
(story and programming) and Eric Chahi
(graphics).
The game was supposed to be the first of a series of adventure games revolving around time traveling but later episodes were never made.
The player character
is not given a name throughout the game. The game cursor
identifies him only as 'hero'. He is standing on an electric elevator platform attached to the outside of the building when 'Ed the boss' opens a window to reprimand him for slacking by banging his fist against the window ledge and shouting. The player then can enter the building and, while playing a prank to Ed, he discovers a secret passage leading to a machine room. While there he acquires some documents in an alien language
which he keeps in the inventory.
The device takes the player to the middle ages
(1304), where the hero has the chance to rescue a damsel in distress
from suspicious monks. He learns then that she is Lo'Ann, a time traveler who came with her father Lear to jeopardize an alien plot to plant a long-delay time bomb, and he helped them to succeed in their mission against the Crughons. However by learning things he shouldn't, he must be taken to the Supreme Council of the future so that his fate is decided.
The player is then taken to 44th century to meet the council during an attack by the Crughons. After a minor mishap and subsequently having to make his way through the ravaged city of Paris II, the hero eventually gets aboard a shuttle that would take him to the council's city, only to be kidnapped by the aliens. He is rescued by Earth forces but he is accused of collaboration with them as he is carrying the alien documents with him; he is only saved from execution by Lo'Ann who informs the Council.
The Council then explains to the player the background:
He and Lo'Ann then travel there to foil the alien attempt. After an arcade sequence and the wounding of Lo'Ann, the hero boards their spaceship and travels to their headquarters to make the bomb to detonate prematurely. The game ends when, after succeeding in detonating the bomb long before the humans even appear on the surface of the earth (and providing quite a convenient explanation for the extinction of dinosaurs), the hero returns to the 44th century to fight further battles against the cruel alien race.
Future Wars was in fact the forerunner of its day and possessed a standard of graphics that was unprecedented for its time.
was forced to restore the game from some arbitrary earlier moment to check for any missing objects. Some objects in the game spanned only a few pixels, so to find them, the player would often have to resort to pixel hunting. The fact that the game used a "realistic" approach to examining on-screen objects, so descriptions varied depending on how far from an item player was at the time, didn't help either. All that meant that the game could be quite challenging despite its seemingly simple, linear story.
Adding to the difficulty, the game also featured a few time-based puzzles as well as arcade sequences, which could pose difficulties for less arcade-savvy players.
version of the game:
Design: Paul Cuisset
Programming: Paul Cuisset
Graphics: Eric Chahi
Music: Jean Baudlot
Sound effects:Antoine O'Heix
Delphine Studio Midi: Marc Minier
Technical help: Philippe Chastel, Jesus Martinez
Digitized sound sampling: Philipe Chastel, Paul Cuisset, Antoine O'Heix, Jesus Martinez
Cinematique interpreter: Paul Cuisset
Many thank to: Philippe Delamarre, Emmanuel Lecoz, Michael Sportouch, Peter Stone, Matthew Tims, Patricia Vermander
The IBM PC
version was credited to Daniel Morais.
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
from Delphine Software International
Delphine Software International
Delphine Software was a French video game developer company. They were famous for their games Another World and Flashback, which bore a similarity to Prince of Persia, both in gameplay and in utilizing rotoscoped animation...
, released in 1989
1989 in video gaming
-Notable releases:* October 3, Brøderbund releases the Prince of Persia game, the first in a series of games, noted for its advancements in animation....
. The game is mainly the work of Paul Cuisset
Paul Cuisset
Paul Cuisset is a French programmer and designer of several popular video games.-Career:Paul Cuisset was the lead designer of Delphine Software International and the creator of the computer game smash hit...
(story and programming) and Eric Chahi
Eric Chahi
Éric Chahi is a French computer game designer best known as the creator of Another World .- Career :Éric Chahi started programming on Oric Atmos and Amstrad during 1983 for the company Loriciels...
(graphics).
The game was supposed to be the first of a series of adventure games revolving around time traveling but later episodes were never made.
Story
The player starts the game as a window cleaner dressed in white overalls who is in the middle of cleaning the outside of a skyscraper. According to later references, the game starts in 1989 (also when Future Wars was first retailed).The player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
is not given a name throughout the game. The game cursor
Cursor (computers)
In computing, a cursor is an indicator used to show the position on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The flashing text cursor may be referred to as a caret in some cases...
identifies him only as 'hero'. He is standing on an electric elevator platform attached to the outside of the building when 'Ed the boss' opens a window to reprimand him for slacking by banging his fist against the window ledge and shouting. The player then can enter the building and, while playing a prank to Ed, he discovers a secret passage leading to a machine room. While there he acquires some documents in an alien language
Alien language
Alien language is a generic term used to describe a possible language originating from a hypothetical alien species. The study of such a hypothetical language has been termed xenolinguistics, although alternative terminology such as exolinguistics has found its way into use through the medium of...
which he keeps in the inventory.
The device takes the player to the middle ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
(1304), where the hero has the chance to rescue a damsel in distress
Damsel in distress
The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...
from suspicious monks. He learns then that she is Lo'Ann, a time traveler who came with her father Lear to jeopardize an alien plot to plant a long-delay time bomb, and he helped them to succeed in their mission against the Crughons. However by learning things he shouldn't, he must be taken to the Supreme Council of the future so that his fate is decided.
The player is then taken to 44th century to meet the council during an attack by the Crughons. After a minor mishap and subsequently having to make his way through the ravaged city of Paris II, the hero eventually gets aboard a shuttle that would take him to the council's city, only to be kidnapped by the aliens. He is rescued by Earth forces but he is accused of collaboration with them as he is carrying the alien documents with him; he is only saved from execution by Lo'Ann who informs the Council.
The Council then explains to the player the background:
- The humans had abandoned EarthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
and were living in colonies when the war with the Crughons erupted a century ago. The war pushed them to rehabilitate abandoned Earth. They built a 'time-space energy shield' system called SDI 'in memory of the pastStrategic Defense InitiativeThe Strategic Defense Initiative was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic...
' which prevents the Crughons both from attacking Earth and also teleport themselves through time-travel. However the aliens managed to visit Earth in different periods of the past and plant three time bombs in the location of the future 3 generators of SDI. Once activated the alien bombs can't be defused and the only option is to prevent the aliens to plant them. For now, Lo'Ann managed to defuse one of them with the hero's help in the middle ages, however the one from the hero's era detonated, allowing the aliens to attack. Thanks to the documents the hero was carrying, they determined that the third bomb was planted in the CretaceousCretaceousThe Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...
period.
He and Lo'Ann then travel there to foil the alien attempt. After an arcade sequence and the wounding of Lo'Ann, the hero boards their spaceship and travels to their headquarters to make the bomb to detonate prematurely. The game ends when, after succeeding in detonating the bomb long before the humans even appear on the surface of the earth (and providing quite a convenient explanation for the extinction of dinosaurs), the hero returns to the 44th century to fight further battles against the cruel alien race.
Gameplay
Future Wars was played by left-clicking for character movement, and right-clicking for character actions. The actions available in the right-click popup menu were: Operate, Examine, Take, Use and Inventory. "Use" had a subcategory which enabled the player to drag and select the items in their inventory.Future Wars was in fact the forerunner of its day and possessed a standard of graphics that was unprecedented for its time.
Gameplay challenges
The gameplay of Future Wars was unforgiving - the game suffered from an extremely linear story coupled with the fact that quite often, items found at certain stages of the game would be used much later. As the game did not exactly give hints about the missing items, a player progressing through the game without the help of a walkthroughStrategy guide
Strategy guides are instruction books that contain hints or complete solutions to specific video games. The line between strategy guides and walkthroughs is somewhat blurred, with the former often containing or being written around the latter. Strategy guides are often published in print, both in...
was forced to restore the game from some arbitrary earlier moment to check for any missing objects. Some objects in the game spanned only a few pixels, so to find them, the player would often have to resort to pixel hunting. The fact that the game used a "realistic" approach to examining on-screen objects, so descriptions varied depending on how far from an item player was at the time, didn't help either. All that meant that the game could be quite challenging despite its seemingly simple, linear story.
Adding to the difficulty, the game also featured a few time-based puzzles as well as arcade sequences, which could pose difficulties for less arcade-savvy players.
Credits
The following are the credits as displayed during the end-game sequence of the AmigaAmiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
version of the game:
Design: Paul Cuisset
Paul Cuisset
Paul Cuisset is a French programmer and designer of several popular video games.-Career:Paul Cuisset was the lead designer of Delphine Software International and the creator of the computer game smash hit...
Programming: Paul Cuisset
Graphics: Eric Chahi
Eric Chahi
Éric Chahi is a French computer game designer best known as the creator of Another World .- Career :Éric Chahi started programming on Oric Atmos and Amstrad during 1983 for the company Loriciels...
Music: Jean Baudlot
Jean Baudlot
Jean Baudlot is a French music composer , most notable for composing music for videogames in the 80's/90's and collaborations with Richard Clayderman, Nicolas de Angelis, Michèle Torr and Joe Dassin...
Sound effects:Antoine O'Heix
Delphine Studio Midi: Marc Minier
Technical help: Philippe Chastel, Jesus Martinez
Digitized sound sampling: Philipe Chastel, Paul Cuisset, Antoine O'Heix, Jesus Martinez
Cinematique interpreter: Paul Cuisset
Many thank to: Philippe Delamarre, Emmanuel Lecoz, Michael Sportouch, Peter Stone, Matthew Tims, Patricia Vermander
The IBM PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
version was credited to Daniel Morais.