Stockholm syndrome, or how I got high from a mediocre game

Anyone who saw the 90s remembers that it was a “fun” time when we were very limited in the choice and ability to purchase a new disc or cartridge. There was no Internet, and with it torrents, we received all information about games either from the cover of the product (remember the design of games for Dendy, sometimes it was very informative), either from point-of-sale sellers or from magazines. In addition, the economy was destroyed after the collapse of the USSR, and most people simply could not afford to regularly buy new games. Still young game journalism, it seems to me, was not driven by skill and experience, but by great enthusiasm and sparkling eyes (take, for example, how the Great Dragon magazine was created), although sometimes it looked childishly naive. Despite this, she caught and sank into the heart, because she had a soul. It was precisely such printed publications that could at least slightly open the door to the world of virtual entertainment for us and advise us on which project is worth paying attention to. The younger generation will say it was a wild time, but there's definitely something about it…

With this introduction, I want to explain (and remind someone) that back then we were not at all spoiled, so we very often played what we had, because we didn’t have much to choose from. Now on the Internet you can find many nostalgic stories about how they played, to put it mildly, controversial projects for which a modern gamer can only be imprisoned at gunpoint. And then nothing, they played and even had fun!
As I already mentioned, the choice was meager back then – along with the Panasonic 3DO console that I got from family friends, I only had four games. I have already talked about one of them in one of my previous articles. Today I want to share my memories of another project for this console, which, although quite mediocre, drew me in and even gave me pleasure from what was happening on the screen! We will talk about the port with MS-DOS for 3DO Interactive Multiplayer – Virtuoso. Yes, the game was not platform exclusive, unlike Need For Speed or Gex, and was released a year before the release on 3DO. But since I first met on this console, my story will be about it.

Agree, if you didn’t know that it was released on the 3DO console, after seeing a screenshot explaining that this is a console game from 1995, you would have a hard time believing it. Especially if this happened in 1995… Most gamers who were able to appreciate it in those days looked at the pot-bellied TV screen with their jaws hanging open and then returned with obvious reluctance to the once beloved Dendy.

But what was this project? But here the controversial issues begin, since there is no intelligible plot in the game, and everything that happens on the screen looks like some kind of drug trip. In it we play as a long-haired rocker who goes to the Martian wastelands, to various laboratories, haunted houses, beaches and underwater stations and destroys robots and all kinds of animals. I can assume that this is all some kind of computer simulation in which the main character participates, but this is at the level of guesswork. In any case, it all looks very crazy, but either due to age, or due to lack of gaming experience, in those years it did not catch my eye.

And so our hero, with two guns at the ready, travels through such strange locations and fights no less strange enemies. The developers seem to have some kind of phobias towards the fauna of our planet or simply really dislike the animal world, otherwise how else to explain such a banal choice of enemies? Throughout the game, snakes, bats, crows and seagulls, crabs, giant bees/ants/spiders will try to kill you, and only sometimes the authors’ imagination will make itself at least a little felt, and animated snowmen or a large number of different robots of various colors will be used. , sizes and types.

Yes, I understand that back then forcing the player to fight wild animals was the norm for the industry (take, for example, Tomb Raider, which came out a couple of years after Virtuoso), but to have SO MANY of them… Besides, in the adventures of Lara Croft, almost all of these animals were in their natural habitat, they can be found in reality in those locations where the gameplay takes place. But in Virtuoso you run, for example, on Mars without any spacesuit and meet not unusual extraterrestrial monsters and not aliens at all, as one might initially think, but giant spiders, bats and other similar living creatures!

Several types of pistols will help you resist these terrible creatures, more advanced versions of which you can find by carefully studying the locations. By the way, for studying them the game will reward you not only with new guns, but also with upgrades for them, various useful (and not so useful) finds such as first aid kits, extra life, destroying enemies on the screen, as well as… bonus points (which are needed only for to show off to your friends. I'm sure any of you would want to do this!)

I won’t say that the game is difficult (especially on an emulator with a gamepad connected), but the difficulty, according to my observations, increases due to an increase in the number of enemies, the appearance of turrets and more dangerous creatures. But I wouldn’t call it completely simple either; these are clearly not casual shooting games. The levels themselves are either relatively large and spacious maps on which enemies spawn endlessly (in reasonable quantities, which is not very annoying), or narrow tunnels (usually in some kind of caves) with a small number of branches and spacious rooms. But there are also quite confusing levels (like this), in which you can get lost even with a map, but without it it’s absolutely terrible! Speaking of which, before you use the map, you have to find it, and until then you will have to remember the location of the rooms yourself and rely on the radar. True, there are levels where even it is not there initially, so, like the map, you still have to find the radar! The good news is that it is usually located somewhere near the starting area.

The goal of any stage is not to destroy all enemies, as it might seem at first glance, but to find the key and exit from the location, which at times is a rather non-trivial task and forces you to wander around a lot in search of a way out.

The positive side of the game is its audio component. Let me remind you that it’s 1995, PlayStation 1 will be released only by the end of the year, and most CIS players are content with Dendy and Sega, but those who are richer can afford SNES. But the sound of these consoles could not be compared with 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which offered CD quality. Therefore, it should not be surprising that when playing Virtuoso, you not only hear the rich sounds of shots, surroundings and enemies (which brings a certain pleasure from the process), but also full-fledged songs for each level! As a rule, it sounds like pretty good rock, and at some stages I would characterize the compositions as post-rock. It was really cool, and music is probably the first thing that pops into my head when I think about the game. You walk through various, rather strange levels, being a cool long-haired metalhead (or rocker), and shoot your enemies to the tune of cheerful music! Bliss!

For the consoles of those years, the graphics were at a very high level, even if now they look rather mediocre, but then most gamers could hardly have any questions. As I already said, I got the console from a family friend, and I think you can easily imagine the level of my admiration from what I saw when I first launched the game, just yesterday I was playing Contra on Dendy!

Passing the first two levels of Mars

Well, let's be honest, the game doesn't have enough stars in the sky: it has a very strange level design and enemies, created as if under the influence of hallucinogens, and a completely absent plot. But there were basically few 3rd person action games in those years, and let’s be honest, most of you would have enjoyed playing something like this back in 1995!

Interesting fact: The magazine “Next Generation”, once popular in the West, responded very negatively to the game, calling it a clone of Doom, but without the first-person view and fun)))

About 5 years ago I turned on this game to feel nostalgic, and I remember now that I turned it off quite quickly. But now, in order to write a review, I spent enough hours in it and… no, I didn’t fall in love. I won’t convince you that this is a cool game that everyone should play))) But as a monument to the era, as an unusual game with archaic but entertaining gameplay, cool, rich sound and music – you can definitely check it out!

And to make it easier for you, on the “Oldfag Gamer” channel I I posted both an image of the game and a ready-to-run emulator with my instructions.

You might be interested in:

“Will Twisted Metal 2 Stand the Test of Time?⁠⁠”;

“Nostalgia Games: Serious Sam”;

“Dino Crisis: is it worthy of attention today?”;

“Nostalgia Games: Titan Quest”;