Spaceship Warlock

(Reactor Inc., 1990, Macintosh)

This was a game that didn't receive half the recognition it deserved; while it was one of the first CGI, interactive movies offered on CD-ROM --a compliment often given to Myst-- it also had a fair share of setbacks. For one, its initial version was released on Macintosh exclusively, with its PC version not released until much later, when PC gamers had already played many similar games. Second, its CGI graphics were rendered at a time when it took several weeks to produce any one scene, so such scenes in the game were very few (ie, the game was terribly short!). It also was a CD-only game, at a time when few people had such CD-ROMs for their systems (yet).

Even so, it had many pluses. Its storyline, at least, was quite unique: an advanced alien race took over Earth, then stole the entire planet(!). A band of renegade space pirates, aboard the Spaceship Warlock, is our only hope of finding our stolen planet, before its too late! The premise was good, as was one of the first offerings of a fully-voiced "interactive movie," with lip-synched characters, amusing sound effects, and cool event music. However, with the following year releasing so many classic games --many of which even made it onto Techtite's list of Top 50 Multimedia Classics-- this game was soon left out in the cold. That's a shame, because in some ways, it really was a concept far ahead of its time.

Rating : Small Crater.

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