
Another World - doppp
https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/another-world/
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garaetjjte
This is also interesting game from technical side: vector graphics, runtime is
virtual machine interpreting custom bytecode.

There is also runtime for modern platforms using SDL, reverse engineered from
DOS binary:
[http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/](http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/)

~~~
digi_owl
The VM trick is old hat. Even Infocom used it to allow their games to be
playable across a range of micros. Oh and they developed their games on a PDP.

~~~
jacobush
Still, that it was done by one single person, such an immense game, before the
Internet. I could pull it off now, (hi google), then, not in a million years.

Also Infocom games were text, much simpler things.

~~~
raldi
Speaking as someone who's spent a lot of time reading the Zork source code
_and_ the Z-machine spec that allowed it to be ported to an huge variety of
ancient platforms
([http://gunkies.org/wiki/Zork](http://gunkies.org/wiki/Zork)), I have to say,
your dismissive attitude is wildly inaccurate.

Both the game and its VM platform were incredibly intricate works of genius.

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jgtrosh
I suggest reading Chahi's own telling of making the game :
[http://anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/another_world.htm](http://anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/another_world.htm)

I came across it last week and it's very subjective and personal and I quite
enjoyed the descriptions of the VM and ports.

~~~
corysama
That article series is great!

You might also appreciate this video interview with Chahi:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PLLDpzwwUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PLLDpzwwUI)

He also did a postmortem for the game at GDC:
[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014630/Classic-Game-
Postmortem...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014630/Classic-Game-Postmortem-
OUT-OF)

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marcusestes
This brings back such good memories of playing this for this first time on my
Amiga 2000.

The article offers a wonderful breakdown of the fairly astonishing amount of
invention that went into development. Especially given that it was primarily
the work of a solo developer.

I also enjoyed the observation that the Amiga's hardware-level support for a
laserdisc peripheral (which was never released) was repurposed for the
rotoscoping work used to develop the incredibly smooth character animations
that still look AAA, even today.

I love this blog. Can't wait to read the book.

~~~
jacobush
Oh my, that game _is_ art. I believed that was the future of games. Instead we
got decades of murky textures stretched lazily over too few polygons to look
good, too many to look abstract and evoke imagination.

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j1elo
Played the remastered version of Another World a couple months ago, after ages
of staying in my list of "pending classics". Good game, controls weren't much
of a problem to me (unveilable how much people complain about this, I felt
them okayish), very cool aesthetics. Took me like two hours to finish. A HUGE
shame that Steam doesn't include the original soundtrack in the game but they
don't warn you in the game's description.

Also, THE most disappointing ending, ever. Yeah I know there was a sequel, not
made by the original author and only released on Sega CD. That doesn't change
the feeling it left on me... I want my three-act structure, had a Setup, had a
Confrontation, now I want my Resolution! :)

~~~
abritinthebay
It had a resolution! It just wasn’t the cathartic, neat, hero-walks-into-the-
sunset resolution that so much American storytelling ends with.

It’s a more thoughtful, open ended, resolution. One that leaves you asking
questions rather than nodding in conclusion.

Lester has escaped. He’s not alone anymore. He’s (potentially) sacrificed
himself for the freedom of another who helped him.

Does it wrap everything up? No. Does it have to though?

~~~
j1elo
To be honest, it was a mismatch of expectations we have based on prior
knowledge of a medium, and what the game had actually to offer. Just like you
know that after being 45 min into a movie you're reasonably not even close to
its ending, it didn't even cross my mind that what I was seeing was the game
finale.

I sat down there, looking at the screen like a fool, not understanding that
the game had ended. I won't deny it, I wanted to bring Lester back home,
through many more adventures! :)

~~~
abritinthebay
Prior knowledge of the medium based on certain cultural expectations yes.

But it’s hardly the first or only game to do so. Hell Monkey Island 2 played
with expectations that way too and that was released a year before.

It’s just that it was t until the early 90s that we really started to see
games as a legit artfom _generally_.

~~~
j1elo
MI2 is also in my list. I recently purchased the special editions... yeah, I
_might_ be a bit late to the party, I know!

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partycoder
The "lion" in the first level scared the hell out of me as a kid. More than
the flying masks from Super Mario Bros 2.

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BadassFractal
There was something really magical about that game the first time I tried it.
It gave you no direction, no instructions, the world was hostile and ready to
blast you away at the smallest mistake. This is going to sound cliche' in
2018, but it was somewhat Dark Soulsesque in its nature.

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ekianjo
> For a long time, saying a game was French was a shorthand way for an Anglo
> to say that it was, well, kind of weird, off-kilter in a way that made it
> hard to judge whether the game or the player was at fault.

Pff. This is only true for about 0.1% of French games, most of the other ones
were typical generic games you'd find everywhere else and not particularly
original at all. It's like judging Japanese movies by taking Kurosawa's movies
as representative.

~~~
pavlov
The point is that the boring run-of-the-mill stuff doesn’t get exported.

Western film audiences got to form a highly positive opinion of Japanese
movies from the works of Ozu, Kurosawa, Oshima.

Similarly American gamers in the Amiga era got a handful of the most original
French games and formed their opinion of “Frenchness in gaming” based on
those.

~~~
makapuf
Would you say that by example Ray man was weird/unusual ? It sure has exported
itself. Also raving rabbits.

~~~
pavlov
Rayman definitely fits with the “quirky French” narrative. The other game I
don’t know.

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makapuf
Funny that I didn't see it (I'm french). What do you find quirky in it ?
(Talking about the first 2d one by example)

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crtasm
First had this for DOS, was blown away that even just the intro could fit and
run off a floppy disk. Also the first game I played that got my 486SX's PC
speaker to create grainy but decent sounding music and SFX!

~~~
guyromm
while the thing did fit on a 5" 1.2MB floppy and ran fine on my 286, i do
recall bringing this to a friend on multiple 360KB 5" floppies, and being
amazed to discover it ran, albeit with serious framedrop, on his 4.77 Mhz PC
XT computer after unarchiving the game to his 5MB HDD.

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d--b
Ha, good times! Missing from the article were the amazing “manoir de
mortevielle” and “maupiti island”. First games with speech synthesis. All the
character sounded like Stephen Hawking but they were great!

