Cyberia - ADG Episode 312

[@alexanderfreeman]

I'm related to the guy who designed this game. I think he's my mom's second cousin or something like that. My family was invited to some New Year's Party at his beachside home in 1994, and I played some of this game. I remember preferring Super Mario World, which I'd been playing earlier. I also remember the game sometimes being unfair. I'd wonder, "How was I supposed to know that?" I remember that kissing scene the most. What's most memorable to me, though, is how I angered their pet dog because I accidentally kicked in the throat and also how my family almost got hit by a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road on our way back. Thanks to my dad's skillful driving, he avoided the drunk driver and a nearby pole. Afterwards, my sister asked, "Are we still alive?" We were all completely silent the rest of the way back.

[@billhicks8]

Hopefully we can credit the 12 fps Cyberia action to your dad's excellent reactions. Sorry to hear it was such a fraught visit. At least your family are hopefully still alive and healthy today. Not the ride you want for a celebration of a silly rail shooter game.

[@alexanderfreeman]

@@billhicks8 Thanks. My dad didn't play the game at all. He simply talked with the other adults. We're all still alive, but my parents have high-maintenance bodies nowadays, being over 70.

[@Michael-im5mq]

Wow that is some story. Really created a lot of mental visuals despite being only a paragraph long. Glad everyone came home safe

[@thewiirocks]

Oh man, I loved Cyberia so much back in the day! Everything you said is absolutely correct, but it was the 90s and we didn’t care. The visuals were great incredibly cool, my siblings and I loved the “Blades” (which got my mother not understanding and saying that they used to call them “shades”), and the story seemed so “cyberpunk”. I used a Joystick back in the day rather than the mouse. That seemed like the right answer as you could carefully move the targeting based on the physical location of the joystick. Which made the game a bit more skill based over using the mouse. Not sure how feasible that option is for playing the game in DOSBox. I know I’ve tried the mouse and had a LOT of trouble. Fun fact: the demo on the PC Gamer CD was so mind blowing to me that I filled up my 230mb hard drive trying to create a similar landscape in POVRay. So many Targa (TGA) files, just to convert to a FLIC (.fli) movie file.

[@Michael-im5mq]

POVray. Oh man you unlocked so many memories!

[@thewiirocks]

@@Michael-im5mq Remember how difficult it was to get from the shareware catalogs as it required like 5 floppies or some-such? I remember they would always publish a photo of this dystopian archway with gray skies in the background and shapes (sphere, box, torus) in the arch. At least, that's what I remember. It's been 30 years... 😅

[@wulfman15]

I remember playing a demo of this game a loooong time ago. And it almost immediately takes you into a shooter section, and the MOUSE control were inverted! With a joystick/gamepad or flight stick, absolutely, but a MOUSE?! I could never complete the demo.

[@Pixelmusement]

Oh right, you just reminded me of something I need to add an additional information point for in the video description... I'm gonna go do that now... :o

[@pinguino3554]

I loved Cyberia when I was a kid. I think it was the first CD game I have, before it everything was floppy disks for me. The contaminated area was the most difficult part, but I think at that time I didn't realize I can use the enter key to kill all enemies on screen. I remember it have a sequel for win95 that I played the demo.

[@ImHereFindMe]

I loved this game as a kid. It had a very cool atmosphere, and sound design was good too. But it suffered a lot from weird controls and painful quick time events.

[@BaronSFel001]

This was the premiere game for Xatrix who had a history full of rough patches until things culminated for them in their Gray Matter Interactive iteration with Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the expansion pack for the original Call of Duty. Cyberia started their relationship with Interplay and shows they were never afraid to experiment. Something about this game appealed enough to get ported to the 3 major CD-based 32-bit consoles plus have a PC-exclusive sequel (that I've never played but have watched and it looks even more cumbersome).

[@OisEucalypt]

Ahhh, I had this on the Saturn. Load times when I failed a sequence made it rather infuriating. I do believe I eventually finished it, but have not gotten around to the sequel.

[@Pixelmusement]

Oh right, I forgot load times were a thing with some of these games... yeah, that would definitely make the game more of a chore. :P

[@OisEucalypt]

@@Pixelmusement It's also some of the reasons you hinted at. Low res on a small TV I had at the time, and D-Pad controls making it easy to tap into a death sequence. Despite that, I do like this genre and era. Quite experimental, even if it does not always quite work.

[@ThommyofThenn]

Glad I saw the notification for this before I went to bed. Neat mix of angles in gameplay.

[@Alien_Bob]

Big flash from the past for me here. I distinctly remember playing this on my dad's work computer, but I was never able to get past the opening section. Didnt even know it had rail shooter elements!

[@Gidon147]

DUDE, i just downloaded Pixelships again to play after 10 years and now i find out you are alive and well! Pixelships has been a big part of my childhood, I played TONS of it on my best friend's laptop back in school days. Looking forward to catching up with tis channel!

[@Pixelmusement]

PixelShips Retro is freeware now, just in case you wanna try that one instead. Virus scanners can be a bit mean to it though because updating it to be freeware meant making a new EXE file which means all the file trust built up over the years no longer applies. :P

[@Gidon147]

@@Pixelmusement Yes i was absolutely stunned to find out that retro is freeware too, as I had always dreamt of playing that one. Thank you so much!! Gotta say I like both for different reasons, i played retro for an hour but then went back to OG pixelships for an all-nighter, and man, it's still a one-of a kind game. I just enjoy the ship upgrade and collection system so much, it's really like pokemon but with spaceships, and the gameplay loop is so damn on-point in 1.87. It sparked my imagination like no other and I spent my life dreaming about pixelships 2 which was basically Pixelships with sound and all of Star Gladiator 2 combined. I'm still dreaming btw, wink wink

[@Pixelmusement]

@@Gidon147 I finally have solid plans in place for a PixelShips 2 and plenty of the design work done. However, it would be a 2 1/2D game (3D rendered 2D gameplay) with visual story segments (story is fully written) akin to a visual novel and as such is WAY beyond my ability to make solo. I do still hope to be able to make it someday but I have a couple other projects I"m focusing on first in my spare time in the hopes that those can one day help fund making my bigger project ideas like PixelShips 2. :B

[@Gidon147]

​@@Pixelmusement That is absolutely amazing to hear. That means i can keep anticipating a sequel for one of my favorite childhood games, almost 15 years after the fact. you don't even know how much you're making my day right now. I have started binging on the shovelware dig already, thank you for being and staying here!

[@JomasterTheSecond]

The rail shooter segments give me huge Burn:Cycle vibes. I'd suggest that for a video but that's a 3.1 game, damn.

[@SmeddyTooBestChannel]

my dad absolutely loves this game. he made me play it a few years ago on a whim and it was probably one of the most hilariously miserable experiences i've ever had

[@HighwayMule]

Xatrix must have decided programming their own engine wasn't worth the effort, given how they used Build and Quake 2 engines for the subsequent games.

[@Pixelmusement]

Even nowadays it's often not worth the effort. Back in the DOS days you typically developed one engine then tried to make as many games with it as you could to help minimize the development time required. :P

[@mouthmw]

Their subsequent games were a lot different and used the engines that were popular for fps games at the time. Cyberia's engine is barely an engine and not really worth utilizing for other games.

[@alexanderglassgames4170]

One of my childhood games. I loved the atmosphere and the graphics, they were really immersive. I remember thinking those quick-moving shots in the intro sequence looked soo realistic. Never got too far.

[@NaoPb]

Good review. And I like the humor. I would agree that it feels more like a tech demo. Pretty impressive looking (except for the humans) but problematic gameplay.

[@lilwyvern4]

Considering the intense amounts of jank in Redneck Rampage, it really is no surprise that their earlier offerings were also scuffed.

[@1337Shockwav3]

6:37 love that little visual joke you snug in.

[@wexenhex]

i have HUGE nostalgia for this game, it was one of the few full length games we owned for DOS that wasnt just shareware, and it looked awesome at the time, as a kid. i used to play it with my stepdad a lot, but we never beat it. i got as far as some weird planet. LOVE the rail shooter parts.

[@demogorgonzola]

I think the next game to be featured is the Network Q RAC Rally (1993) or the ...Championship (1996) :)

[@TheGerkuman]

I hope it's Network Q because I have nostalgia for that one.

[@mystilearmor]

This game was incredible for it's time.

[@lvkeyne]

OMG! My first CD game!

[@LordCommander]

I think I know which racing game you're referring to, and if it is that one, then yes... any hint would make it waaaaay too obvious.

[@megamanfan3]

I think it's THAT game.

[@alexanderglassgames4170]

@@megamanfan3 Yeah, definitely THAT game, no doubt!

[@LordCommander]

@@megamanfan3 The thing is, there's one specifically old as hell racing game that was made for PC that fits the bill and it was quite famous for its realism,attention to detail, as well as, for its insanely fast rendering engine (for its time).

[@CrS0CrashPL]

Speaking of other platforms, Cyberia was also released for the Japanese FM Towns computer, but it's kinda finicky to play. Being a later release, it requires a machine with at least a 486, because older (and much more common) 386 FMTs are just too slow to handle it properly, even the souped up ones with fast mode.

[@celioazevedoofficial]

I love this game.

[@NathanLJustice]

I remember seeing the advertisements for it and wanting to play it.

[@marcusaureliusf]

OMG Back in the 90s I played it and I had no clue I could press Enter to kill everything on that shooter sequence (learned that on GameFAQs years later) or disable the inverted controls... I was never a big fan but played it to the end because a couple of friends liked it enough and we could take turns trying not to die. Also, the game stopped auto saving near the ending, I never knew if that was a bug or a feature.

[@Pixelmusement]

No no, it didn't stop auto-saving, you just hit that segment I complained about. Once you get to the milestone in front of the door in the red-light area you have to sneak past the guard, access a computer to open a vent, kill the guard, backtrack to the red room, go down to where the open vent is, grab the keycard, go all the way back to beyond where the guard was, open a giant door, survive a two-man rapid-fire assault, then FINALLY enter the room you need the keycard for and you hit the next milestone. It is the ONLY segment in the entire game where you need to do a metric ton of things before it gives you your next save. :P

[@marcusaureliusf]

@@Pixelmusement Yeah, it had that segment without checkpoints but after closing the game and coming back the next day, it would send me even further back. All checkpoints after the Einstein password would be gone. This is how I remember it, it's been a while though...

[@Pixelmusement]

@@marcusaureliusf That's definitely not normal behaviour so you must have hit some kind of bug or something. :P

[@UltimatePerfection]

Please consider covering Franko: The Crazy Revenge for the show.

[@alexanderglassgames4170]

Woah that would be cool, came across it by accident on YT some time ago, pretty crazy game.

[@EdmondDantes224]

Racing game based on a real event? Does it feature an intro by Ted Garrett too? (That probably gives away what game I'm thinking).

[@volo870]

Boy, I used to love this game. Some of the keylock combinations are still stuck in my head. The password is "Einstein".

[@Pixelmusement]

That puzzle actually bothered me a little because yes, Albert Einstein was a very prominent person with a very distinctive look, but A: Not EVERYONE is going to know what he looks like and the puzzle is based on being able to recognize a photo of him, and B: Said photo is VERY low res and low quality to the point where I barely recognized it was him! D:

[@Neawoulf]

I remember playing that at the time. I was a bit hyped about the graphics, but I remember it being extremely uncomfortable to play. It felt like a bad clone of Rebel Assault to me. Although I have to admit, in hindsight, Rebel Assault was a pretty poor game as well. People only played it because there hadn't been a Star Wars movie in a long time, and the game looked like a (low-res and compressed to death) movie. But it was terrible to play and the story was a weirdly put together mix of Star Wars episode 4 and 5.

[@Pixelmusement]

I've covered both Rebel Assault games on the show prior so you might be curious to see my takes on those too! ;)

[@Maggerama]

Now, this is a respectable opinion, not one of those "everything I played when I could barely construct a sentence is a masterpiece" shit. Agree on both cases.

[@user-hu3xi3je2x]

neat game! the movement system was called ‘tank controls’ & was popular in games like resident evil, tomb raider, etc. clunky-feeling now but in the 90s they were the norm!

[@Pixelmusement]

Not exactly. In this game, all you do is select nodes, press a key, and the walking happens automatically. It's tank-like controls, but definitely not the same! :P

[@Maggerama]

I was always in "this is tripe" camp. Although, not maliciously so. It's cute.

[@drumboy02]

pretty sure this game was bundled software when we bought our Packard Bell. probably why there is so many loose copies floating around now

[@marcsm2008]

I've beat this game more than 50 times. It was actually the game that came with my sound card and I have a huge nostalgia for it. I DO know it is a problematic game, but the nostalgia is so big that the problems never bother me.

[@Pixelmusement]

Honestly, I've played far worse games and quite frankly, it still LOOKS pretty darn good for early pre-rendered 3D, living beings excepted! ;)

[@mopeybloke]

Cyberia on PSX has mouse support.

[@wesleybcrowen]

It was the only way Game Informer crew could actually beat this game and they had to go back from PS3 to PS1 for that mouse

[@Ribulose15diphosphat]

Ahh, the Explosion-Sprites from Descent. In fact this came first, so Descent uses the Explosion-Sprites from Cyberia.

[@Pixelmusement]

They could've both come from the same library pack, similar to how most of Doom's sounds were from sound libraries. :B

[@UltimatePerfection]

So the next game is one of the NASCAR games for DOS. The question is, is it NASCAR Racing, or NASCAR Racing 2?

[@lutfimakarim8258]

I remember playing this on the 3do. 😂

[@thewhyzer]

"If you fail an action sequence in particular, you can immediately do it over without having to reload one of these milestones." Wait what now? How?? I'm suffering through the game right now and this would be a literal gamechanger!

[@Pixelmusement]

SPECIFICALLY the action sequences, which are the parts where you use the mouse to aim and shoot at stuff. The gunfights which happen on foot don't count and also neither does the action sequence where you're controlling the drone near the end of the game for some reason. :P

[@thewhyzer]

@@Pixelmusement Ah, too bad, I was hoping you were referring to the gun fights... Well, at least I'm at the drone sequence now, had to look up a few solutions to get this far starting with that elevator grenade (hadn't realized you could shoot the guy fast enough to make him drop it) which I guess means I'm near the end. It really is annoying having to go through the done startup sequence each time... Thanks to your video I know about the electric burst of last resort though! The email on the PC did talk about it, but I never would've thought to use the Enter key to trigger it as Spacebar had been the action key up to this point...

[@RoseWaltz]

i never finished the game - i honestly thought i had a bad copy because of the combat scenes i remember liking it, though - i loved the look of it and the idea that no one was a good guy

[@wardrich]

😂 what's with that bonus sequence at the very end? Did you edit that, was it a glitch, or is that actually how it's supposed to be?

[@Pixelmusement]

The down arrow works in most cases to reverse what you're doing and I didn't think it was going to work on that elevator, and I found it amusing, so I just went nuts with it for about ten times longer than said bonus sequence. ;D

[@wardrich]

@@Pixelmusement 😂 definitely worth it

[@crowsbridge]

kind of reminds me of Bioforge

[@billhicks8]

that's...kind of a diss to Bioforge, ha

[@negirno]

FMV games were a weird fad back in the early-to-mid nineties. An early, unsuccessful attempt to use pre-rendered graphics and/or digitized video to make games more "cinematic". It's ironic that these kind games actually made a comeback in the form of quick time event-based games on the Xbox (360)/PS3, but with slightly more freedom and fully 3D. I wondered how a remame would look like but I don't think it would be any special, especially on the story front.

[@Pixelmusement]

Granted, not all FMV games were garbage. One of the best examples was MegaRace! ;)

[@SchizoMelody]

I love the graphics! I think it looks awesome

[@Chriva]

The name of this game sounds like a cheap pron star lol

[@MarquisDeSang]

This is one of my favorite game on PC back then. So immersive then. lol

[@Your_Degenerate]

Be the goodest bad guy you can be. goodest

[@endymallorn]

I always get this game and Syberia confused. It’s a little bit odd.

[@TheMoogleMaster]

Sounds like the game had took many cooks in the kitchen.

[@tasospodcast8832]

#313 = Nascar Racing :D

[@beedwisegamgee]

That ending lololol

[@wesleybcrowen]

My first video game. It spoiled me rotten with it's visuals to the point I thought every game that isn't Doom or Duke3D is lame. Remarkably has a lot of game design issues similar to Redneck Rampage with it's stupidly dickish gotchas.

[@KewlioMZX]

UH OH BLAST GRENADE

[@Pixelmusement]

After 20 failures at that moment I finally realized the whole "holding keys" thing and that made that part about a million times easier. :P

[@JoebDragon]

this game came free with some pc's

[@Pixelmusement]

EVERY FMV DOS game came free with a PC at some point in its existence. ;D

[@빵빵빵-m1o]

simultania!

[@Bonkikavo]

Mille miglia.

[@Pixelmusement]

You probably DO cover about that much distance in the game if you count all the time spent flying the TF-22. :B

[@EnbyKaiju]

You earn 100 points for the Trans Pride Trans-Fighter include, A+ ☺

[@Pixelmusement]

The funny thing is that it wasn't even in my script at first, but then a lightbulb went on in my head mid-voicework that it would be fun to paint the TF-22 in those colours for just a hot second, so I went back in my script, made a tiny little edit about pastel colours, re-voiced that paragraph, and there you go! :B

[@EnbyKaiju]

@@Pixelmusement It was a great include. I say this having shelves full of trans pride painted Battletech & Robotech so you know I'm not biased in the least. Pastel colours for everything!

[@AlyxxTheRat]

I want it just because it has a trans fighter lol

[@Verlier_]

313 episode is Carmageddon

[@Pixelmusement]

I covered that one a LONG time ago! kzbin.info/www/bejne/hn6sgWaiiNmHj6s

[@karry299]

It's Xatrix. Is it any wonder that it's crap ? They had to work for 10 years to finally grow up to United Offensive which was actually very good. Redneck Rampage, on the other hand, is one of the worst commercial FPS games ever made.

[@Pixelmusement]

Having played a couple Xatrix games now, they clearly had the artistic and illustrative talents to come up with really imaginative visuals and such. It almost seems to me that's the main reason to buy a Xatrix-made game is for the aesthetics, not the gameplay. :P

[@ThommyofThenn]

redneck rampage is aggressively ugly looking. Which is part of what draws me to it

[@wesleybcrowen]

It's a bit strange you mention United Offensive and NOT Return to Castle Wolfenstein because they definitely redeemed themselves with that one. Even if stealth sections can be horsedung.

[@billhicks8]

@Interlace Kingpin slaps. I like a developer if they can embrace niche obscurity and still come up that well

[@ansharzero]

OMG Cyberia! This game came with my Windows 95 PC on CD, and I wasn't "allowed" to play it because it had a mature rating or something. I played it anyways, and WOW what a weird game! I immediately killed myself by sticking my arm in some kind of acid barrel lol. I was like wtf??? Ended up beating it, but it was quite the trip.