Alternate Reality: The City for the Atari 8-bit family

Came also out for:
Amiga
Apple II
Atari ST
Commodore 64
DOS
Macintosh
Game description:
In Alternate Reality: The City, you are one of many people who have been abducted from earth by aliens and transported to an alternate dimension where you are dumped in a strange, yet familiar city. Your quest is to explore the city, and find the clues that will lead you to your captors and help you get back home.
In addition to standard first-person RPG features of that era, like skills, stats, experience points and a repertoire of shops and places to visit, the game offers moral evaluation of your character, and depending on your actions you become good or evil, and that affects how the environment reacts to you. Encounters are not necessarily just resolved with the turn-based combat system, but you can also try to trick, charm or bribe opponents. The storyline is non-linear, for example allowing you to take a job in order to enhance a particular skill or just to pass away time.
What I think:
Incredibly hard, but a fine game.
And it's better than the Apple II version.

[@Zermelo]

Wow, I have no idea how that tune got stuck in my head after not playing this game in over 20 years. But for some reason bit did and hence I found it here. Great memories!

[@Briaaanz]

Yeah, I had never heard of this game until a few years ago. I was hooked on "Tail of Beta Lyrae" by the same developer and had even better music

[@ATW2k]

I had 'the dungeon' version of this game back in the day on my 800XL, truly great for it's time

[@CarsandCats]

So, when I was living in California, my best friend Paul calls me up and said he had been talking to Philip Price (the designer and coder of Alternate Reality) online and said we could go to his apartment in Santa Maria and visit him. So, we did! Man, what a cool trip that was. He had so much computing equipment and my friend Paul was in awe. Don't know why the name of this game popped into my head today, but did a KZbin search and found your video so left a comment. We sure loved our Atari 8-bits. I ran a BBS on one too.

[@frankbuchholz4157]

Das Spiel war seiner Zeit vorraus. Ich hatte es damals auf dem Atari 800 XL gespielt und dachte mir, was für Programmiergötter. Was das Spiel an Musik und Grafik aus dem alten Atari rausgeholt hat war der Wahnsinn. Es war sogar das erste Spiel mit "3D Grafik", bevor id-Software mit Wolfenstein oder Doom diese Technik perfektionierte. Außerdem war es einer der "letzten" Spiele für den Atari und wie bekanntlich holen die letzten Spiele für welchen Computer auch immer das Maximale aus dessen heraus. Kurze Zeit später brach mit dem Amiga und dem Atari ST eine neue Ära an.

[@s4tchm0j0n3s]

Until this day, I've honestly never seen anything of this game beyond the intro. It's been a running joke for years that whenever my Dad put the game on, I as a baby would start crying.

[@Rostov22]

Ah, to go back 25 years and play this again. Thanks for the memories

[@bjeah]

This could've been a hit by Electric Light Orchestra. Wonder how it sounded in the mind of the composer.

[@zabagar]

One of my all time favorite games. Amazing. Pushed the limits of the Atari 800 I played it on. Awesome memories!

[@CaseyWise]

Was such a challenging game, ahh sounds of early generation X bring back from fond memories. Thanks for posting.

[@ironiclogic1]

Man, I loved this game back in the day! I played it on Atari and despite the glitches and not getting anywhere really, it captured my imagination... and those tunes are still in my head!

[@Christopher-N]

I had the DOS port shovelwared onto my Vendex Headstart LX-CD computer's CD-ROM Disc 2. Despite the port's shortcomings, I absolutely loved this game, even taping 6 sheets of graph paper together to map the city. Since we couldn't save from CD-ROM, I copied the game to 3.5" floppy. The pause key was helpful in setting my character's stats.

[@Christopher-N]

To be more specific, the Vendex Headstart LX-CD IBM compatible computer (a brand owned by Philips), had a VGA display, an 8088 processor, and would automatically select between 4.77 and 10 MHz speed. In addition to the caddy loading CD-ROM drive and 3.5" floppy drive, it came installed with MS-DOS 3.3h, a library of software, I think about 4 or 5 CD-ROM discs and a CBS music disc, running a proprietary menu system that could display in a beginner or advanced mode (the advanced mode was more intuitive, with the various drop down menus). The PC speaker could get a bit noisy at times. For audio CDs, there was a headphone jack on the back of the machine with a volume control knob (not a very convenient location). We got a color dot matrix printer which worked great until the print head finally burned out (these printers are not good for making banners). My uncle who helped us pick it out, later added a Logitech hand scanner, but after playing with it a bit, I found the hand scanner to be a worthless accessory. When we decided to upgrade to a 486 computer, we donated the Headstart LX-CD computer and everything with it to the school; at the time it made sense, as space was limited and the HDD was accumulating errors, but in retrospect I really wish I had kept it because I can't find it again... especially that Headstart menu environment. I'm very nostalgic for that computer.

[@SokemRokemRobot]

The coolest theme song for a game ever on an Atari 800XL.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

If you like this, you must also remember the theme music of Necromancer ... amazing.

[@Miler97487]

I had this game on the Atari 8-bit in 1986. What I didn't realize at the time was the IBM PC was still using the dreadful CGA graphics, although Silent Service was apparently the first game to use EGA, it was only displaying 8 colors and still looked pretty dreadful. Alternate Reality in 1985 on the Atari 8-bit displayed almost as many colors as a PC with VGA (but with obviously inferior resolution). The PC version of this game from 1987 used EGA but it came out during a time that EGA was now fairly common and it was graphically superior to the Atari 8-bit even if only 16 colors were displayed.

[@jsv121]

I remember playing this on the computer off a hard disk I bought at a dollar store as a kid. I don't recall it being in color though. Same game though. Recognize the song. Brings back memories. : )

[@Highretrogamelord]

I agree! :D

[@MegaWetwilly]

Loved this game

[@keithmoh1]

I think I did the character creation step like 20 times in order to get a character with high double digit stats across the board!

[@ridiculous_gaming]

I stil love pokey sounds.

[@christschinwon]

This was the game that got away. I remember really wanting it but never bought it, don't know why!

[@PinkAroused]

...never managed to enter a Guild despite my 13th level! I learnt afterards that this was no possible in "the city" and that I had to wait for "the dungeon" or "the palace"

[@Miler97487]

Unfortunately those expansion disks Datasoft promised like The Wilderness and the Palace never materialized. The Dungeon did make a release but it also worked as a standalone. Datasoft went under in 1988, had they not there probably would have been no incentive to finish those expansion disks as most major software companies gave up support for the 8-bit.

[@Christopher-N]

This game was how I learned the 24 hour clock (military time).

[@LTDANMAN44]

THIS GAME IS BEING REMADE!!! SEARCH FOR crpg dev patreon AND SUPPORT HIS EFFORTS! you can also search for alternate reality x it's the same person :) enjoy!

[@KaitainCPS]

Was this a precursor of the Bard's Tale series? (I remember the AR games coming out but never played any of them.)

[@LTDANMAN44]

you missed out bro. the dungeon was a classic

[@jrherita]

Yes - although not the same developer. AR: The City came out in 84, 1 year before the first Bard's tale. Definitely a little old to visit now for the first time but AR: The City was amazing for the time it came out. On the original launch computer - the Atari 8bit, they were able to use the 128/256 color pallette to great effect. They got really good use out of the sound chip as well. Weather sounds - rain, wind, thunder were all convincing.. (For 1984 :)). This was a great game, and I played too many hours. Since I was very young once I discovered the 'parry' exploit to build your strength, I spent a whole evening just 'parrying' against creatures. (256 parries = +1 strength).

[@LTDANMAN44]

I enjoyed the mapping both games gave u a partial map that u had to fill in by hand. Todays games hold your hand and tell u where to go. I hate that do much. I want to explore and find out things on my own

[@jmp01a24]

Same guy who made Bard's Tale released Maze Master in '83, only graphics are not that detailed of the maze, still it was a start (I guess the Ultima series was one of the first dungeon titles along with Wizardry?) or an expansion on the RPG computer games.