Chimera (video game)
An isometric spaceship maze with survival and warhead assembly.
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Chimera is an action-adventure video game written by Shahid Ahmad and published by Firebird in 1985. It is notable as a clone of Knight Lore and for its isometric maze gameplay set aboard a spaceship. The game is also remembered for a disputed bonus game crash on the Atari 800.
Development
In 1984, Shahid Ahmad felt disillusioned after converting Jet Set Willy for the Commodore 64 in three weeks, a rushed job with bugs and unpaid work. Inspired by seeing Knight Lore in December of that year, he decided to make a clone, learning Z80 coding, writing a sprite editor, and constructing the spaceship setting.
Firebird initially rejected the first version. Ahmad requested two more weeks to improve it, adding food and water collection, objects and items, radiators that drain water, the Jack in a Box, and speech samples he recorded. The revised version was approved by Firebird.
Legacy
Ahmad has stated that Chimera was the first Knight Lore clone. He acknowledged the game could have been better, wishing he had added teleporters, jumping, easier controls, a proper map, and more story. Nonetheless, Chimera led Ahmad to continue in the video game industry; he called the day Firebird commissioned it the happiest of his game-making life.
Twenty-five years after release, Ahmad announced a 25th Anniversary Edition titled Chimera 2010, which was never completed. On 3 September 2017, he announced a VR spinoff, Chimera Zero, sharing only the name, robots, and sci-fi setting with the original; the development studio Ultimatum Games shut down in February 2020. In June 2022, Ahmad announced a sequel, Chimera 2, and released an alpha build under a pay what you want model.
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Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Chimera (video game) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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