This meant all the art in the game had to be redone. At some point, Apogee asked me switch to switch from the older EGA engine to a newer VGA scrolling engine they’d developed. It was the same one that was used for Monster Madness. So, we might’ve decided we wanted to get free of Alabama Smith and create an entirely new brand for an action game.Īlabama Smith and the Bloodfire Pendant also started life as an EGA game, using an EGA scrolling engine. Meanwhile, if “Alabama Smith” was a brand, then its brand was puzzle games. If I were to speculate, I’d say that around the time I was working on that, Apogee was shifting entirely away from puzzle games and focusing more on NES-style action games. I don’t have a good recollection of that, either. I asked Keith Schuler why the connection to Paganitzu was dropped, and he responded with this. It had a unique game play mechanism, in that you played as both a brother and sister, and the characters could be swapped out during game play at the player’s discretion – each one had different abilities, so it can definitely affect game play strategy. That connection was dropped, although I can’t recall why now – and the game became its own standalone world. In fact, Realms of Chaos started life as a sequel to Paganitzu, when it was titled “Alabama Smith & The Bloodfire Pendant”. If you remember, Keith Schuler did the game Paganitzu with us a few years prior. Realms of Chaos is a sidescroller game written by Keith Schuler. My Terminal Velocity physical media in 2020, including the rare Mac version. This update was done by the original developer, and published by Ziggurat Games.Ĭurrent Status: Original no longer for sale As of the writing of this update, additional versions will be coming for Xbox & Playstation. It has been replaced with a new 2023 edition, titled “Terminal Velocity Boosted Edition”. The original game is now called “Terminal Velocity Legacy”, and is no longer available. Terminal Velocity was updated to modern tech with widescreen, further draw limits, etc… It was released on Nintendo Switch as well as PC. UPDATE Mar 2023: The game was re-released again (on ), only this time with a new tech update, and not a DOSBox shell around the original 1995 game. (These appear to have been withdrawn as well based on the events of the next paragraph) We still have an old 2006 interview with Mark Randel online at the Legacy 3D Realms site, too. The iOS version appears to be unavailable in 2020, although the other two still are. There were all Windows games published through Microsoft – none of which are still available.įinally, in 2015, original Terminal Velocity programmer Mark Randel released the game on both iOS and Android, along with a third for the Amazon Fire devices, too. Additionally, Fur圓 had its own add-on pack called “F!Zone”. Hellbender had Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame in it as the ship’s computer. The second sequel was called Hellbender, which expanded on the game play and changed it up a bit. The first was Fur圓, which was basically Terminal Velocity in Windows with different levels. The game spawned two sequels, neither of which Apogee/3D Realms had anything to do with. Additionally, the game used mod music, which we released separately after a time. These cinematics weren’t in the floppy disc version of the game. Terminal Velocity was also the first game we released that had separate animations (cutscenes?) produced for a compact disc version of the game – also a first for us. Was a fun game that while popular, never became the mega hit we were expecting. One level hid a secret message way far away from the action as an easter egg (was a picture of the TRI crew). You could in theory fly around entire planets, but the actual intended game play area was only on parts of the planets. You flew a ship around a planet looking to destroy various targets and other planes. That is an interesting term to me, as Mark Randel worked on several Flight Simulator games for Microsoft. It can be described as a “Combat Flight Simulator”. It was written by the company Terminal Reality, who was founded by Mark Randel & Brett Combs. This was the first ever game released under the 3D Realms branding, which at this time hadn’t yet taken over the identity of the company. This segment covers 1995-1997.ġ995 was a historic year, was the first game released under the 3D Realms branding, and also the only time we released a public beta of a game. When originally published, it was a single post, but over time WordPress ended up not liking a post that was 33,000 words long. This is Part 4 of 8 of my History of 3D Realms / Apogee series.
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