Captain Blood (1988 video game)
A spacefaring designer hunts his own clones across alien worlds.
Captain Blood is a French video game developed by ERE Informatique and released by Infogrames in 1988. It was first released on the Atari ST and later ported to multiple platforms. The game is notable for its icon-based alien communication system and its title tune derived from Jean-Michel Jarre's "Ethnicolor".
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Exxos (ERE Informatique)
- Publisher
- Infogrames
- Designer
- Philippe Ulrich; Didier Bouchon
- Programmer
- Sylvain Tintillier; François Lionet
- Artist
- Didier Bouchon; Michel Rho
- Composer
- Jean-Michel Jarre
- Released
- 1988
- Genre
- Adventure
Facts from the source article.
Plot
The protagonist, Bob Morlock, is a 1980s video game designer who uses the nickname Captain Blood after the Errol Flynn film. While testing his own space-themed game, he becomes trapped inside its spaceship. Forced into hyperspace, an incident clones him 30 times, each clone taking a portion of his vital fluid. Over 800 years, Blood destroys 25 clones, but the final five remain elusive.
Gameplay
The player must locate and disintegrate five clones of Captain Blood, called Duplicates or Numbers depending on the version. To find them, the player communicates with aliens using the UPCOM interface, which contains about 150 icons representing concepts. Each alien race has its own language and reactions, requiring the player to negotiate appropriately. As the game progresses, the character's health deteriorates, shown by increasing mouse cursor shaking; disintegrating a clone temporarily relieves this. The player starts on the bridge of a biological ship, the Ark, near one of four planets. To contact an alien, the player launches an OORXXa biological probe over a fractal landscape to reach the alien at a valley's end, then uses UPCOM to learn coordinates of other planets. The Ark can hyperspace, scan planets for defenses, destroy planets, and teleport consenting aliens to the Fridgitorium for disintegration or transport.
Development
Didier Bouchon and Philippe Ulrich jointly designed the game, with Bouchon handling graphics and programming for the Atari ST version. Bouchon learned Atari ST assembly language after Ulrich provided an assembler, and created fractal-generated realtime graphics that inspired a sci-fi game. After ERE's absorption by Infogrames in summer 1987, Ulrich and Bouchon isolated themselves in the Landes to finish the game for Christmas. Later ports were straight adaptations of the original ST version.
Reception
Computer Gaming World reviewed the game positively for its unusual concept and graphics. Orson Scott Card praised the EGA graphics and story but criticized the interface and gameplay in Compute!. Info magazine gave it 5 out of 5 stars, calling it a marvelously alien experience with first-rate graphics and sound. The game sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide.
More in Amiga Game Library
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced