Game 164: Universe - Introduction (1994)

Written by MenhirMike

British game developer Core Design is one of the more beloved Amiga developers, thanks to classics like Rick Dangerous, Chuck Rock, Banshee, or Bubba 'n' Stix. Of course, the one game that overshadows all of their other games combined is Tomb Raider, which also helped Sony’s PlayStation dominate the market even more than it already did (despite first releasing on Sega's ill-fated Saturn console).

But we're here to look at their adventure game output, and they are certainly not beloved for that. In fact, there are only two games to list: 1992's Curse of Enchantia (which was reviewed here by Alfred n’ the Fettuc and scored a whole 22 points) and today's topic, 1994's Universe. I almost thought that they had a saving grace because they also made Hook - but that's actually an action game on Genesis and not the adventure game, which was made by Ocean Software.

Curse of Enchantia isn't exactly a great foundation to build upon, but we're here to judge games for their own merit. I never played CoE anyway. I did however play Universe back in 1995 on my own Amiga 2000 when I was in my early teens, and have fond memories of it. I haven't touched the game in 30 years though, and remember basically nothing about it other than the opening.

When I saw Universe come up in the 1994 Year Ahead posting I was excited and interested in finding out if the game deserves being fondly remembered, or if I'm just destroying another piece of childhood nostalgia. I am thankful that I was allowed to be the reviewer for this game as my first review for the blog!

Universe was originally intended to be Curse of Enchantia II and started development as such. However, none of the designers of the original CoE worked on Universe, and according to Wikipedia, Universe "grew up" during development and incorporates elements of a film script written by Rolf Mohr when he was at Games Workshop. Mohr did graphics for CoE, which were the best part of the game. Later on, he did art for several Telltale games, concept design on 2017's Middle-earth: Shadow of War, and various other games. Universe is his only writing credit.

The game was released for the Amiga 500, with ports to the Amiga CD32 and MS-DOS at the same time. There is no question which version I am going to play, it's the one that I played back then - the original Amiga 500 one, with a short posting about the ports at the end.

A quick glance at Mobygames shows that reviews had a massive range from 21% to 90%, so I think it's safe to say that we're in for an interesting ride.

Speaking of graphics, Universe manages to squeeze 256 colors out of the Amiga 500. Which is remarkable because the system can only do 32 colors at a time (plus another 32 shades of those colors). The Amiga's Copper co-processor could change up to 16 colors/32 shades per scanline and thus achieve more colors per screen. Gary Antcliffe is credited with the programming of this method, and Rolf Mohr is credited with the name:

Our artist kept saying that it kept 'spacing' our pictures, hence it was christened SPAC mode. Rolf Mohr (Background GFX artist) did come up with an acronym for it: Super Pre-Adjusted Colour. (The One magazine, January 1994 issue)

With that preamble out of the way let's look at the game, starting with the box contents. I am playing the European version, which was localized in English, French, German, and Italian. Both the game and the manuals include all 4 languages.

Taken from the Wikipedia article, understood to be fair use.

I'll start with the second one, which is "A Joyriders Guide to Paralela", a "Guide and Encyclopedia to Paralela". It's only 5 pages of short encyclopedic entries. I do assume the information there will become important for some puzzles in the game, perhaps as a form of copy protection. 

The other manual is "Your Passport to Paralela", which is the game manual and includes some backstory in 12 pages.

I like that it even says "The Bit That Mostly Everyone Knows But We’ve Got To Put In..." when explaining how to play and even possibly enjoy (their words, not mine) UNIVERSE. It's also guaranteed to be virus free by Core Design Ltd, so that's a relief. That kind of dry, slightly sarcastic humor bodes well even before I boot up the game.

There is an explanation of the interface, which explains the basics of a point and click game, the need for a mouse, and the Icon Bar. I'll also get into the interface in the next blog post, but the manual gives me some hope.

The story segments of the manual include “The Story of Boris” (our protagonist), “The Story of Healer Yura”, “The Memoirs of Professor George Verne”, and “A brief history of Paralela”. Some of it feels a bit spoilery, but since it’s not marked as a spoiler or in a separate hint book, I assume it’s important. Back then, reading the manual was usually important to make sense of the game.

A brief history of Paralela talks about a young plutocrat named Neiamises, who raised a vast army to start a civil war in the Virgan empire which he won, declaring himself Emperor King. His empire expanded, and eventually reached the borders of the Mekalien empire where there was conflict for a few years until some kind of truce was reached. When Neiamises was old and decaying he had a giant golden armored robot made, and his brain transferred to it, from which he is leading a war against Mekalien. The joyriders guide mentions the Supreme Cognitor, a supercomputer that provides infinite amounts of data to Neiamises (who now believes himself to be a God).

The story of Healer Yura tells of an incident where he met Boris (calling him “the Saviour mentioned in the ancient texts”) on the Wheelworld. Boris apparently got Yura’s severed hand back from a group of jet-packers using a Personal Transport Vehicle, which is a kind of flying car that’s also mentioned in the joyriders guide. Yura calls Humans "idiots, who still think IBM-compatible P.C.'s are a pretty neat idea". I'm not sure if I should be offended or in full agreement.

The Memoirs of Professor George Verne are a bunch of techno-babble, talking about “cosmic strings” and how to send 3-D objects backward in time (calling it “anti-time”, like an hourglass where the sand is pouring outward from the middle to both sides), at near infinite speed. He called it a “Trans-Dimensional Inducer” and credits Boris with proving that it works as a transporter to a parallel dimension. The last part sounds like it would give Doc Brown an aneurysm: George Verne believes that the only way Boris returned was because George himself went after him and brought him back, so now George has to ignore this insane paradox and go after Boris even though Boris had already returned.

This must be really important, since someone bought it as a hardcover.

The Story of Boris is also the intro to the game: Our protagonist is Boris, a teenager who is working on a top computer animation on his 35-Bit Excellence Engine, when his mom tells him to "get off that &!!#@!! computer" and deliver some mail to his Uncle George's house. His uncle has a house full of strange gadgets that fill every crevice and shelf, and every room. Boris finds a room with a weird pod-shaped device, complete with millions of flashing lights. Being a teenager, of course Boris had to get in and press random buttons, and of course that machine would teleport him to a strange place. We end up in space and float down to an asteroid of sorts - and it is here where we will start the game in earnest in the next post.

Someone must have turned on the space heater, since we’re not immediately frozen to death.

First impressions are mostly good; the setup sounds like something I’d expect from a 1980s Sci-Fi movie aimed at young adults, there’s an intriguing world, a protagonist that gets thrown into the middle of a conflict, and time-travel/parallel dimension shenanigans. The name Verne is certainly a reference to Jules Verne. I am not sure if the manual is spoiling anything or if this is meant to make me excited about eventually meeting Healer Yura - but I am definitely looking to see how this space opera unfolds!

The trope of "protagonist getting sucked into a foreign place; hijinks ensue" isn't exactly original. Alice went through a rabbit hole all the way back in 1865, and over in Japan they have a name for this entire genre of fiction: Isekai. We don't have to go back 160 years or to the other end of the world, since Core Design did it already in Curse of Enchantia. While the setup gets no points for originality, it is still an effective setup (especially when played by a young teenage boy that totally wanted his own 35-Bit Excellence Engine).

As always, get in your guesses for the final rating before the next post, where we are going to explore the interface and the asteroid that we’ve just landed on.