Blade Runner (1985 video game)
Blade Runner | |
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Single-player |
Blade Runner is a 1985 shoot 'em up game loosely inspired by the 1982 film Blade Runner. The game was published in 1985 by CRL Group PLC for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC. Reviews of the game were mostly negative.
Plot
The plot of the game is similar to the associated movie. Replidroids (sic for replicants), designed for use in space, have been banned from Earth following a revolt on a colony. The role of eliminating any replidroids found on earth is given to a unit of bounty hunters.[1]
Gameplay
The game features the player character hunting down replicants for bounty money.[2] On loading the game, the player has to listen to around two minutes of music from the movie soundtrack without any ability to skip the sequence.[1] Author Will Brooker notes that due to the computers' sonic limitations, the "grandiose swoops and fanfares" of the soundtrack were reduced to "a tinny one-channel burble".[3]
The game first presents the player with a map showing the locations of the fugitive replicants and the player's flying car, which must be steered over a droid on the map. At this point the game switches to a side scrolling game in which the player must avoid crowds and cars whilst in pursuit of the replicant.[4] As the levels increase, so does the level of the replicants. The first level replicants are slow and stupid, but the sixth level ones are faster than a human.[5]
Development and release
The game is "inspired by the Vangelis soundtrack" of the 1982 Blade Runner movie. The publisher was unable to obtain rights to the actual movie, so the game was instead said to be based on the soundtrack.[2] The inlay stated that it was a "video game interpretation of the film score".[6]
Reception
Publication | Score |
---|---|
Crash | 58%[7] |
Sinclair User | 3 out of 5[4] |
Your Sinclair | 7 out of 10[6] |
Zzap!64 | 39%[5] |
Barry Atkins of the University of Wales's School of Film, Photography and Digital Media describes the game as lazily executed and unsatisfying, "yok[ing] unoriginal gameplay mechanics to glancing visual references to the originating film". In his view, the game was merely an effort to cash in on the film's intellectual property, reducing "all the subtleties, complexities and ambiguities of the film ... to a game that players in the 1980s would have immediately recognised as a fairly mundane example of the 'shoot 'em up' genre, where slogans such as 'Move Off World' painted across a primary coloured and flat game space gesture only vaguely to the film as the player adopts the role of a bounty hunter in a raincoat who bears a crude likeness to Deckard".[9]
References
- ^ EMAP: 54. March 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ Newsfield Publications Ltd: 14. March 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ISBN 978-1-85984-259-1.
- ^ EMAP: 55. March 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ Newsfield Publications: 64. February 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ a b c "Screen Shots: Blade Runner". Your Sinclair (3). Dennis Publishing: 28. May 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ Newsfield Publications Ltd: 128. April 1986. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
- ^ "Commodore User Magazine Issue 29". February 1986.
- ISBN 978-1-904764-30-4.
External links
- Blade Runner at MobyGames
- Blade Runner at SpectrumComputing.co.uk