The game for this week is (oh, yes):

Another World

Developer: Delphine Software
Publisher: Interplay, U.S. Gold
Year: 1991
Systems: Amiga, PC, Mac, SNES, Genesis, 3DO... and many others
Links: Longplay video - Eric Chahi interview (french)

When people argue whether games are a form of art or not, many think of this game and say 'yes'. Another World (aka: Out of this World in the US) does not only prove a single programmer can create a fantastic game all by himself, but also sets the standards for all platformers until today.
Created by the talent of young french programmer Eric Chahi and accompanied by an epic soundtrack, Another World first saw the light on the best platform possible, the Amiga 500, and was later ported on every system able to to handle it, and it changed everything: the small, poorly animated spites and limited colors of earlier games were now overshadowed by the impressive vector graphics Chahi managed to design and cinematic cutscenes so beautiful that led many to believe they were three-dimentional.

The story was purely accessory, being a simple struggle for survival by the main protagonist, teleported by a failed experiment on a foreign, hostile world. Such are the emotions the game generates, though, that the lack of a real story is hardly noticed. The opening level is one of the most adrenalinic and breathtaking sequences in gaming history: imagine finding yourself warped under the surface of a deep lake, having to quickly swim to the surface to escape some giant tentacles, then carefully dispatch a pack of poisonous worms that fall from a cave ceiling, then a panther-like creature jumps in front of you and starts chasing you all the way back from where you came, as it's about to catch you and rip you apart it stumbles, allowing you to jump down a cliff, swing on a vine and run all the way back where some black caped hunters gun down the beast... and as you thank them them gun you down as well and capture you.
All this in the first five minutes of play.



The game adopts an instant kill mechanic similar to another great Chahi game, Heart of Darkness, where everything kills you upon contact, making some portions frustrating, but repairing thanks to the infinite lives and functional password system that let you face even the hardest situations in a more relaxed way. The game features many jumping and combat sequences along with some cleverly devised environmental puzzles that require fast reflexes and a good intuition.
All the adventure can be breezed through in less than an hour, like many games of that time, but you'd hardly notice this on the first playthrough, being the game as good as it turns out to be.

Another world inspired many games and several sequels, some of which unofficial, although, except the beautiful Flashback, none of those managed to capture the essence of the original. It is now very hard to find a copy of the game and even harder is to get it to work on todays computers, so, to counter this, Chahi recently released a remake with updated graphics and sound, available for download (for a small fee) on his website. This is a piece of history and a game that heavilly contributed to the evolution of games as we know them and represents the gaming equivalent of a precious painting. For this reason it should be played by everyone.