illusiontv

Originally published at Better Living Through Science Fiction. Please leave any comments there.

All that talk of Tesla coils before got me thinking about the first place I heard Tesla’s name, playing the PC game, “Blood.”  “Blood” was developed by Monolith Productions in 1998 and is part of that great golden age of violent PC first-person shooters following in the footsteps of “Doom.” 

The game’s main character is Caleb, a darkly shadowed figure with a tench coat, wide-brimmed hat, and glowing read eyes.  Caleb is a resurrected gunfighter who belonged to a cult which had been dedicated to the god, Tchernobog.  He was destroyed by the ancient god for some unspecified slight, but following resurrection Calebbegins a quest for revenge.  Most of the settings in the game’s first episode look like something out of a Western, but the sequel would reveal the year of the first game’s setting to be 1928.  As a result, weapons range from the old reliables of pistols and shotguns to Tommy guns, voodoo dolls, and Tesla cannons.  “Blood” was one of the first games to employ the second fire mechanism and a guns akimbo feature which pops up a lot in modern first person shooters.

Maybe the most memorable element of “Blood” is its frequent references to horror and sci-fi culture from the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired gods to quotes from “Army of Darkness” to zombie canisters from “Return of the Living Dead.”  The game is full of great nerd-gasmic Easter eggs and humor on top of all the violence and gore.  It ranks right up there with “Duke Nukem 3D” for being frequently hilarious and fun.

.

Originally published at Better Living Through Science Fiction. Please leave any comments there.

After reading JEO’s post about our good friend AM I thought I’d start writing a regular column on DOS games. During the early 90’s there was a sci-fi DOS revolution, and as evidence of that I give you… I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream from Cyberdreams.

Based on the story of the same name by Harlan Ellison, the game is a point and click adventure with six levels of complicated puzzle-driven play. The graphics were advanced for the time and Ellison himself serves as voice actor for the insane super-computer “AM”.

The plot follows closely with the source material in that three super-computers (representing China, Russia and the United States) decide they no longer wish to wage war on each other and join together, in the process becoming a new entity named “AM” as in “I think there for I am”. This new AI wages war on humanity killing all but five survivors, having the sinister intention of torturing them for all eternity. AM has been driven toward insanity by having a gifted intellect without an outward means of exploring the physical world. Within AM’s cavernous underground domain it has nearly god-like power over matter, but there is no mechanism by which AM can leave its own “reality”. Blaming humans for building it with such an obvious flaw the mad thinking machine devises humiliating torments for its five captives.

The game allows you to select each of the five survivors as a playable character for their own specific mission. Each mission is a “dream-like” level where players have to decipher metaphors relating to tragedies of their personal lives such as rape and genocide. After all the puzzles have been solved AM demands one player be digitized in to its mainframe so that it can understand why the quests it devised for you ended with unexpected results.

Harlan Ellison wanted the game to be unbeatable so that it more closely paralleled his story, but he was over-ruled and thus there are a few winning strategies.

The game itself is deep and thoughtful. Nothing is toned down for the typical gamer, which is a hallmark of the time in which I Have No Mouth was produced. You can still purchase the game at some specialty retailers and if have a chance to I suggest you give it a play.

Harlan Ellison’s complete text of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is available for online reading here.

Further Reading:

Adventure Archive

Socialize: