| 38th | Top MT-32-compatible computer games |
| Beneath a Steel Sky | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Revolution Software |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive |
| Designer(s) | Charles
Cecil Daniel Marchant Dave Cummins Dave Gibbons Tony Warriner |
| Engine | ScummVM/Virtual Theatre |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32, iPhone |
| Release date(s) | March, 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ELSPA:
15+ ESRB: T |
| Media | Amiga: 15 3½-inch Floppies PC: 6 3½-inch Floppies, 1 CD-ROM, or download |
| System requirements | PC: 386, DOS 3.3+, 2 RAM Talkie: CD-ROM & Sound card Amiga: 1 RAM |
| Input methods | Mouse |
Beneath a Steel Sky is a British 1994 science-fiction point-and-click adventure game in the cyberpunk genre. It features comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for DOS and Amiga. Its working title was Underworld.
Contents |
The game takes place at an unknown point in a dystopian future in Australia, where the Earth has been significantly damaged by pollution or nuclear fallout. The game's backstory is introduced via a comic book, drawn by well-known comic artist Dave Gibbons, that tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "the Gap" (the name applied to the Australian Outback at the time of the game). Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local group of Indigenous Australians, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment; they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of an empty can of Foster's Lager, an Australian beer, found near him at the crash site. Foster even learns engineering and technology and builds a talking, sentient robot called Joey.
After Foster has reached adulthood, he is kidnapped and his tribe annihilated by storm-troopers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Interestingly, Union City mentions prominent suburbs and train stations found within Australia's largest city, Sydney, leading some to speculate that Union City was once Sydney. This was confirmed in a 2005 interview with the Australian gaming magazine, PC PowerPlay.
Foster manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him back to Union City crashes just after entering the dome, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next, while security continues to search for him.
Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This allows Joey to change bodies as the situation requires, provided his circuit board is not damaged. Joey, however, is not always happy about Foster's choice of body for him.
In the future world of Beneath a Steel Sky, the six states and two territories of Australia have been consumed by their respective capital cities and are described as "city states".
Union City is the second largest of the six remaining city states after the acquisition of Asio-City. Notably ASIO is Australia's national intelligence agency.
After the 'Euro-American War' all participants agreed upon a set of ideals described as the 'neo democratic principles' which removes all labour representation and social benefits. Ironically, those that subscribe to these principles are called 'Unions' contrasting the real world definition of what a Union pushes for. Those that oppose the Unions' ideals are called 'Corporations'.
All of the City States are described as either being Corporations or Unions.
The back-story involves a conflict between Union City and the Hobart Corporation fighting over 'market' dominance by the use of sabotage which is used as a common theme throughout the story. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state Tasmania.
The game's story was scripted by Dave Cummins with graphics and artwork done by Dave Gibbons, Paul Humphreys, Steve Ince, Stephen Oades, Les Pace and Adam Tween. Design was done by Charles Cecil, Dave Cummins, Dave Gibbons and Dan Marchant, while the Virtual Theatre (VT) design was done by Tony Warriner. Programming was carried out by James Long, David Sykes and Tony Warriner.[1]
Despite its status as one of the classics of adventure gaming, Beneath a Steel Sky suffered a troublesome production. The small team at Revolution found the size of the game a daunting task, resulting in long, stressful hours of programming, leading to tension within the company.
Because of the scope of the game -- being four times the size of its predecessor, Lure of the Temptress -- the programmers couldn't implement their Virtual Theatre system of independently roaming NPCs as effectively. Characters instead follow very simplified routines, as opposed to Lure where their freedom of movement was much greater. The design of the game was also simplified and greatly altered from its original design, according to Warriner.
The working title for the game was Underworld[1] and was the second to use Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine, the first being Lure of the Temptress.[2 ] The game's backgrounds and introduction sequence were designed by Dave Gibbons.[1] The introduction sequence was also included as a separate promotional comic book in some releases of the game.[2 ]
The game's initial release in the UK was met with critical acclaim, reaching the number one place in the GALLUP charts and receiving 95% from CU Amiga, 94% from Amiga Format and 93% from The One. The release in the USA was met with almost equal success with 4/5 from Computer Gaming World and 91% ('Editors choice Award') and ('Best Dialogue') from PC Gamer in 1995. In May 1995 Beneath a Steel Sky was awarded the prestigious Golden Joystick Award for 'The Best Adventure'.
Since its initial release the game has received glowing reviews from various websites. Adventure Classic Gaming gave the game a 4/5 rating and stated that the game was ahead of its time and "despite its gloomy and serious storyline, Beneath a Steel Sky is a game filled with humor and warm characters."[2 ] The review at Quandary gave the game a 3.5 out of 5 overall rating, stating that "there are many newer games with infinitely superior graphics and sound that are inferior experiences to this."[3]
In August 2003, the game was released as freeware and support for it was added to ScummVM, allowing it to be played on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows CE and other compatible operating systems and platforms.[4] The data files for both the disk and CD version are available from the ScummVM website. The files on the ScummVM website do not include the original program executables since they are not needed by ScummVM.[5] The Fedora RPM software repository has a free down-loader which grabs the freeware game files and installs them alongside ScummVM.
| “ | At the beginning the programmers were happy and did rejoice at their task, for the Amiga before them did shineth and was full of promise. But then they did look closer and did see'th the awful truth; its floppies were tiny and sloweth (rareth was its hard drive). And so small was its memory that did at first appear large; queereth also was its configuration(s). Then they did findeth another Amiga, and this was slightly different from the first. Then a third, and this was different again. All different, but not really better, for all were pseudo backward compatible. But, eventually, it did come to pass that Steel Sky was implemented on a 1meg os-legal CBM Amiga. And the programmers looked and saw that it was indeed a miracle. But they were not joyous and instead did weep for nobody knew just what had been done. | ” |
"Beneath a Steel Sky 2 is a project Revolution has been considering for a while, and has started to move forward on, but we are unable to comment beyond this," company boss Charles Cecil said in 2004. On March 4, 2004, Revolution purchased the domain name steel-sky2.com, although this has now seemingly been sold.
However, in September 2005 Tony Warriner stated in Revolution’s forum that the game wasn’t cancelled, and that he would not lose hope that there would be a Steel Sky 2 at some point in the future. More recently, Charles Cecil spoke in an interview dated August 10, 2006 on Eurogamer of his admiration for the work done by Scumm VM and the resulting interest in a sequel. He also stated that if he were to make the game he "would dearly love to work with Dave Gibbons again.[5] In a February 20, 2009 interview with IGN UK about the Wii and DS versions of Broken Sword: The Director's Cut, Charles Cecil and Dave Gibbons re-iterated their interest in a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky. [6]
In July 2009, Revolution announced that a remastered edition of Beneath a Steel Sky would be released on the iPhone and iPod touch later that year. The remastered edition features new animated movies by Dave Gibbons, a context-sensitive help system and improved audio quality. [7 ] The game was released September 23rd, 2009. The animated movies in the iPhone remastered version make use of the original stills and use a style like sliding paper to animate them. There is also an inclusion of a new cut scene on the end of the game (after the credits) which may be a hint as to the plot line of the sequel mentioned above stating "In a world where all are free, the price of liberty is enslavement", parodying the famous quote "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".
|
||||||||
| Beneath a Steel Sky | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Revolution Software |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive |
| Designer(s) | Charles Cecil Daniel Marchant Dave Cummins Dave Gibbons Tony Warriner |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32, iOS |
| Release date(s) | March, 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) |
|
| Media | Amiga: 15 3½-inch Floppies
PC: 6 3½-inch Floppies, 1 CD-ROM, or Download |
| System requirements
PC: 386, DOS 3.3+, 2 RAMTalkie: CD-ROM & Sound cardAmiga: 1 RAM | |
Beneath a Steel Sky is a British 1994 science-fiction point-and-click adventure game in the cyberpunk genre. It features comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for DOS and Amiga. Its working title was Underworld.
Contents |
The game takes place at an unknown point in a dystopian future in Australia, where the Earth has been significantly damaged by pollution or nuclear fallout. The backstory is introduced via a comic book (shown on-screen in the introduction sequence of the CD release), drawn by well-known comic artist Dave Gibbons, that tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "the Gap" (the name applied to the Australian Outback at the time of the game). Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local group of Indigenous Australians, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment; they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of an empty can of Foster's Lager, an Australian beer, found near him at the crash site. Foster even learns engineering and technology and builds a talking, sentient robot called Joey.
Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This allows him to change bodies as the situation requires, provided his circuit board is not damaged. His commentaries on the current "shell" he is in are a running gag throughout the game.
As the game starts, Foster is kidnapped and his tribe annihilated by security soldiers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Interestingly, Union City mentions prominent suburbs and train stations found within Australia's largest city, Sydney, leading some to speculate that Union City was once Sydney. This was confirmed in a 2005 interview with the Australian gaming magazine, PC PowerPlay.
The abductors refuse to give Foster any explanation, however shortly upon arriving, the helicopter malfunctions and crashes in the city's upper level. Foster luckily survives the crash and flees. He makes his way through a recycling plant with the help of Joey (who is now a robotic vacuum cleaner, and none too happy about it) but is eventually caught up by a security officer who had also survived the accident. The officer, Reich, addresses Foster as "Overmann". Just as Reich is about to kill Foster, a nearby security camera shoots a laser, disarming him. Reich tells the camera, whom he reveals is controlled by LINC, that Foster must be stopped. In answer the camera shoots him again, this time killing him. Foster takes the officer's access card and continues his escape.
As he makes his way further down the city looking for a way out, Foster eventually arrives in the abandoned subway tunnels. There he finds out that LINC has become an exponentially growing, half machine half organic entity. However, in order to function LINC needs a human host to share its brain. The current host is none other than Foster's father, who is old and seems severely worn out from his symbiosis with the organic computer. It is revealed that LINC sent for Foster because with its current host soon dead, it would need a replacement, and only a blood relative would do.
s.]]
In the future world of Beneath a Steel Sky, the six states and two territories of Australia have been consumed by their respective capital cities and are described as "city states".
Union City is the second largest of the six remaining city states after the acquisition of Asio-City. Notably ASIO is Australia's national intelligence agency.
After the 'Euro-American War' all participants agreed upon a set of ideals described as the 'neo democratic principles' which removes all labour representation and social benefits. Ironically, those that subscribe to these principles are called 'Unions' contrasting the real world definition of what a Union pushes for. Those that oppose the Unions' ideals (and are thus, presumably, more amenable to Unionisation as it is known today) are called 'Corporations'.
All of the City States are described as either being Corporations or Unions.
The back-story involves a conflict between Union City and the Hobart Corporation fighting over 'market' dominance by the use of sabotage which is used as a common theme throughout the story. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state Tasmania. During the game, characters in Union City remark that Hobart Corporation is winning the "economic war" by flooding the market with "cheap, gimmicky garbage," though it is never clarified whether this is mere propaganda.
The game's story was scripted by Dave Cummins with graphics and artwork done by Dave Gibbons, Paul Humphreys, Steve Ince, Stephen Oades, Les Pace and Adam Tween. Design was done by Charles Cecil, Dave Cummins, Dave Gibbons and Dan Marchant, while the Virtual Theatre (VT) design was done by Tony Warriner. Programming was carried out by James Long, David Sykes and Tony Warriner.[1]
Despite its status as one of the classics of adventure gaming, Beneath a Steel Sky suffered a troublesome production. The small team at Revolution found the size of the game a daunting task, resulting in long, stressful hours of programming, leading to tension within the company.
Because of the scope of the game -- being four times the size of its predecessor, Lure of the Temptress -- the programmers couldn't implement their Virtual Theatre system of independently roaming NPCs as effectively. Characters instead follow very simplified routines, as opposed to Lure where their freedom of movement was much greater. The design of the game was also simplified and greatly altered from its original design, according to Warriner.
The working title for the game was Underworld[1] and was the second to use Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine, the first being Lure of the Temptress.[2] The game's backgrounds and introduction sequence were designed by Dave Gibbons.[1] The introduction sequence was also included as a separate promotional comic book in some releases of the game.[2]
The game's initial release in the UK was met with critical acclaim, reaching the number one place in the GALLUP charts and receiving 95% from CU Amiga, 94% from Amiga Format and 93% from The One. The release in the USA was met with almost equal success with 4/5 from Computer Gaming World and 91% ('Editors choice Award') and ('Best Dialogue') from PC Gamer in 1995. In May 1995 Beneath a Steel Sky was awarded the prestigious Golden Joystick Award for 'The Best Adventure'.
Since its initial release the game has received glowing reviews from various websites. Adventure Classic Gaming gave the game a 4/5 rating and stated that the game was ahead of its time and "despite its gloomy and serious storyline, Beneath a Steel Sky is a game filled with humor and warm characters."[2] The review at Quandary gave the game a 3.5 out of 5 overall rating, stating that "there are many newer games with infinitely superior graphics and sound that are inferior experiences to this."[3]
The game was the first (and to date, only) game not aimed at children to be translated to Portuguese and was re-released in Portugal in translated form several months after the English-language version. The comic supplied with the game was not translated and was the version that could be found with the UK-release.
In August 2003, the game was released as freeware and support for it was added to ScummVM, allowing it to be played on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows CE and other compatible operating systems and platforms.[4] The data files for both the disk and CD version are available from the ScummVM website. The files on the ScummVM website do not include the original program executables since they are not needed by ScummVM.[5] The Fedora RPM software repository has a free down-loader which grabs the freeware game files and installs them alongside ScummVM.
| Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (May 2009) |
| “ | At the beginning the programmers were happy and did rejoice at their task, for the Amiga before them did shineth and was full of promise. But then they did look closer and did see'th the awful truth; its floppies were tiny and sloweth (rareth was its hard drive). And so small was its memory that did at first appear large; queereth also was its configuration(s). Then they did findeth another Amiga, and this was slightly different from the first. Then a third, and this was different again. All different, but not really better, for all were pseudo backward compatible. But, eventually, it did come to pass that Steel Sky was implemented on a 1meg os-legal CBM Amiga. And the programmers looked and saw that it was indeed a miracle. But they were not joyous and instead did weep for nobody knew just what had been done. | ” |
| “ | At the beginning the reverse engineers were happy, and did rejoice at their task, for the engine before them did shineth and was full of promise. But then they did look closer and see'th the aweful truth; it's code was assembly and messy (rareth was its comments). And so large were it's includes that did at first seem small; queereth also was its compact(s). Then they did findeth another version, and this was slightly different from the first. Then a third, and this was different again. All different, but not really better, for all were not really compatible. But, eventually, it did come to pass that Steel Sky was implemented on a modern platform. And the programmers looked and saw that it was indeed a miracle. But they were not joyous and instead did weep for nobody knew just what had been done. Except people who read the source. Hello.
With apologies to the CD32 SteelSky file. | ” |
"Beneath a Steel Sky 2 is a project Revolution has been considering for a while, and has started to move forward on, but we are unable to comment beyond this," company boss Charles Cecil said in 2004. On March 4, 2004, Revolution purchased the domain name steel-sky2.com, although this has now seemingly been sold.
However, in September 2005 Tony Warriner stated in Revolution’s forum that the game wasn’t cancelled, and that he would not lose hope that there would be a Steel Sky 2 at some point in the future. More recently, Charles Cecil spoke in an interview dated August 10, 2006, on Eurogamer of his admiration for the work done by Scumm VM and the resulting interest in a sequel. He also stated that if he were to make the game he "would dearly love to work with Dave Gibbons again.[5] In a February 20, 2009, interview with IGN UK about the Wii and DS versions of Broken Sword: The Director's Cut, Charles Cecil and Dave Gibbons re-iterated their interest in a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky.[6]
In July 2009, Revolution announced that a remastered edition of Beneath a Steel Sky would be released on the iPhone and iPod touch later that year. The remastered edition features new animated movies by Dave Gibbons, a context-sensitive help system and improved audio quality. [7] The game was released September 23, 2009. The animated movies in the iPhone remastered version make use of the original stills and use a style like sliding paper to animate them. There is also an inclusion of a new cut scene on the end of the game (after the credits) which may be a hint as to the plot line of the sequel mentioned above stating "In a world where all are free, the price of liberty is enslavement", parodying the famous quote "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".
| Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Beneath a Steel Sky |
|
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Beneath a Steel Sky |
| ||||||||
Beneath a Steel Sky is a science fiction, more specifically cyberpunk, point and click adventure game with comedy elements, created by Revolution Software published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, and initially released in 1994 for DOS and Amiga. Below is a list of quotes from the game.
Contents |
Beneath a Steel Sky | Table of
Contents | Walkthrough
| Beneath a Steel Sky | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Revolution Software |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive |
| Designer(s) | Charles Cecil, Daniel Marchant, Dave Cummins, Dave Gibbons, Tony Warriner |
| Engine | Virtual Theatre |
| Release date(s) |
|
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| System(s) | MS-DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32, Windows, iPhone |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) |
ESRB:
 TeenUSK:
 Ages 12+ |
| System requirements (help) |
 
|
Beneath a Steel Sky is a British 1994 science fiction point and click adventure game in the cyberpunk genre. It featured comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for DOS and Amiga. Underworld was its working title.
The game was made available as freeware in 2003 from ScummVM and runs under compatible systems, including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
The game takes place at an unknown point in a dystopian future in Australia, where the Earth has been significantly damaged by pollution or nuclear fallout. The game's backstory is introduced via a comic book, drawn by well-known comic artist Dave Gibbons, that tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "the Gap" (the name applied to the Australian Outback at the time of the game). Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local group of Indigenous Australians, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment; they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of an empty can of Foster's Lager, an Australian beer, found near him at the crash site. Foster even learns engineering and technology and builds a talking, sentient robot called Joey.
After Foster has reached adulthood, he is kidnapped and his tribe annihilated by storm-troopers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Interestingly, Union City mentions prominent suburbs and train stations found within Australia's largest city, Sydney, leading some to speculate that Union City was once Sydney. This was confirmed in a 2005 interview with the Australian gaming magazine, PC PowerPlay.
Foster manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him back to Union City crashes just after entering the dome, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next, while security continues to search for him.
Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This allows Joey to change bodies as the situation requires, provided his circuit board is not damaged. Joey, however, is not always happy about Foster's choice of body for him.
 Windows PC cover art. |
 AmigaCD cover art. |
Beneath a Steel Sky/Table of Contents
| Beneath a Steel Sky | |
| Developer(s) | Revolution Software |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive |
| Release date | March, 1994 |
| Genre | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Age rating(s) | ESRB: T USK: 12+ |
| Platform(s) | PC (DOS), Amiga, Amiga CD32 |
| Credits | Soundtrack | Codes | Walkthrough | |
In August 2003, the game was released as freeware.
 |
This article is a stub. You can help by adding to it.
Stubs are articles that writers have begun work on, but are not yet complete enough to be considered finished articles. |
| Beneath a Steel Sky | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Revolution Software |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive |
| Designer(s) | Charles Cecil Daniel Marchant Dave Cummins Dave Gibbons Tony Warriner |
| Engine | ScummVM/Virtual Theatre |
| Platform(s) | DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32 |
| Release date(s) | March, 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T (Teen) USK: 12+ ELSPA: 15+ |
| Media | 3½-inch Floppy, CD-ROM |
| System requirements | PC: 386, DOS 3.3+, 2 RAMTalkie: CD-ROM & Sound card |
| Input methods | Mouse |
Beneath a Steel Sky is a British point and click adventure computer game made by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive for DOS, the Amiga, and the Amiga CD32.
   | Game-Nostalgia, Beneath a Steel Sky - game-nostalgia, Beneath a Steel Sky |
| | Live by the Sword - Live by the Sword... Interview - Page 2 // None /// Eurogamer - Games Reviews, News and More |
| | Review at Adventure Classic Gaming - Beneath a Steel Sky - Review - Adventure Classic Gaming - ACG - Adventure Games, Interactive Fiction Games - Reviews, Interviews, Features, Previews, Cheats, Galleries, Forums |
| | Revolution Software - Revolution Games - Revolution Software Homepage |
| | View intro online - Beneath A Steel Sky - Lemon Amiga |
| | game Manual - Beneath a Steel Sky, Manual [en] :: DJ OldGames |
| | ''Beneath a Steel Sky'' walkthrough video - Recorded Amiga Games |
| | Easter Egg concerning Steel Sky in Broken Sword II - www.game-nostalgia.com, Beneath a Steel Sky |
| | Beneath a Steel Sky - Beneath a Steel Sky FAQs, Walkthroughs, and Guides for PC - GameFAQs |
| | Beneath a Steel Sky - Beneath a Steel Sky for DOS - MobyGames |
| | Windows setup - Beneath a Steel Sky |
| | Beneath a Steel Sky - Beneath a Steel Sky (1994) (VG) |
|
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