Captain Blood

The well-known game in not very wide circles by Philip Ulrisch and Didier Bushon, published in five languages ​​and nine platforms (and if you count all - often very different from each other - varieties within each of them, the number of publications known to science reaches as much as a dozen) . At the same time, we have before us the brightest example of the French experimental game-building of the era of the 1980s, easily recognizable by its extravagant plot, beyond the bounds of complexity and an explosive mixture of genres. If you try to somehow classify these latter, then “Captain Blood” can be described as a unique adventure game in a sci-fi setting, equipped with an impressive dose of arcade and puzzle, as well as some elements of a role-playing game and a space simulator.

Although not from the game itself, but from the covers of some European publications, you can see that “Captain Blood” was the first product from Exxos, a semi-official group of authors that formed in the bowels of the already sold and almost breathing incense ERE Informatique and which in a couple of years will be the backbone of Cryo Interactive. The idea and script belonged to the head of this community, Philip Ulrish, while the jack of all trades, Didier Bouchon, was responsible for the implementation of both the program part and almost all of the graphics, characterized by the use of revolutionary fractal technologies. The third of the eminent developers should be called the composer Jean-Michel Jarre - if it were just on the IBM PC (as well as on various versions of Thomson) that his monumental composition, sounding on the screen saver, would not be replaced by a more technically modest melody due to authorship Charles Calle (subsequently famous for the musical design of "Gobliiins").

In the original European edition of the prehistory of the game, a whole novel was devoted to seven chapters, reduced in the American version to a couple of pages. In the latter case, not even the real name of the protagonist is mentioned: a certain programmer, sitting without money and trying to make a little money, creates an unprecedented game on the theme of wandering through space and exploring alien worlds, but during testing something goes wrong - and the author turns out to be inside this game itself: aboard the ship's furrowed expanse called Ark and as the only person from its crew, Captain Blood (the character of R. Sabatini has nothing to do with it). Moreover: due to a malfunction during the last hyper jump to the Hydra galaxy, the hero’s genetic structure was fragmented - and embodied in five of his clones, which scattered across different star systems, taking with them part of Blood’s life force. Its acute flaw is symbolized by a cursor in the form of a mechanical arm (replacing the original limb by the efforts of the caring artificial intelligence controlling the “Ark”) and an inexorable minute and second counter in the center at the top of the screen: we need to find and disintegrate all five of our doubles one by one. 2½ hours of more or less real time are given to search for the first of them; each successful booty adds exactly the same amount of life to us, and as it expires, the hero’s hands begin to shake (literally, so controlling the cursor becomes very difficult), and then a fatal outcome occurs.

The interface may seem a bit confusing at first glance, but the impression is misleading, evolving thanks to an unusual visual style: in fact, this is the simplest of the components of “Captain Blood”. On top of the ship’s screen, in addition to the time counter, the galactic coordinates of our current position are displayed; the main control buttons are located below: the most extreme ones are more decorative and stylized under the eyes, while those closer to the center such a picture symbolizes inactivity. Available commands are indicated by icon-icons: the diskette on the left allows you to save progress in a single cell (you can boot up only in the first five minutes after starting a new game by clicking on the same icon); the ball to the right means the transition to the screen of the planet, above the surface of which we are currently located; Well, you can make a more global journey on the map of the galaxy. At all these locations, the white triangle on the right allows you to return back (or to the captain’s bridge of the "Ark").