Mercenary: Escape From Targ - Speed Run

[@ZeroKelvinMoralist]

This game fascinated me so extreme back in the days, when i look at it now, and how i perceived it back in the days, worlds apart.

[@pauladams6909]

I remember spending hours and hours exploring this game. I seem to remember coming across a Atari banner and a Commodore banner. If you were playing on a Atari and you shot the Atari banner the message would say TRAITOR lol. Those were the days.

[@wleon4068]

I spent literally days and months playing this absolutely classic free-roaming space adventure back in the past. The feeling of 'isolation' was superb.

[@floydianpink2524]

I must have played this over 100hrs back in the day and I never escaped! I remember exploring everywhere and finding fantastic lore everywhere. The good old days huh? 👍👍 thanks for the memories!

[@mart773]

A couple of "Cheats" were:- 1 Do not buy the craft, just pinch it, when the Paylar Ship attacks, stop and "L" to leave craft wait until Paylar Craft fires (screen goes) and get back in the ship again... 2) The Cheese in the 09-06 Hanger ( I think) can be picked up and is also a Air-Craft 3) There is a direct connection between Hangers 09-06 and 09-05. 4) Fire a bullet whilst travelling backwards and as the bullet passes you by press P and pick it up - You have a universal Key to all rooms...

[@Yggdrasil42]

I was so confused with this game. No manual or clue had me running around trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Still kept coming back to it, but never finished it. Good to finally see how it's done.

[@davedogge2280]

RIP Paul Woakes July 2017

[@NotATube]

That's a shame- I didn't know that he'd passed away; thank you for letting us know. He seems to have been an enigmatic or at least private individual as I've never come across anything by him personally online (not even in archival print form; I've just come across a comment at Lemon64 that suggests one of the mags tried to get an interview, but didn't, and that, yes- he did apparently keep himself to himself). Regardless, I really enjoyed Mercenary and I liked Mercenary III even more- about as close as you were likely to get to virtual reality on the Amiga 500. (I *really* wanted Damocles when it came out, but didn't have an Amiga or ST at the time- or the money- and I've never played it, which I regret now). Encounter was well done for its time as well, even if it was less of my thing personally.

[@davedogge2280]

@@NotATube would be great to get to know who he was from ex-Novagen colleagues etc. I know he was joint company director for a Lighting company in Birmingham, you can see that on the UK Companies House website. I think there were some Novagen ex-employees in that company.

[@stevea.b.9282]

sad to hear this, his games gave me months of joyful escape. Mercenary blew my tiny twelve year old mind ! May he rest in a pure land of bliss.

[@davedogge2280]

@@stevea.b.9282 The thing is that he was actually one of the most influential UK game developers ever. With Mercenary, he made a 3d, open world sandbox RPG essentially, the first space themed / sci-fi one I ever knew about and an extremely good one to boot. And not just that, he managed to make it run fast on a Commodore 64 with vector graphics etc, a task back then that was not easy. I think there is a 'Novagen' website around and also there was a Eurogamer article about him and Mercenary a couple of years ago but not much else. I found a photo of him with Jeff Minter and Archer Maclean (International Karate) and that's all... I wonder if these two have any memories of him. No contemporary games journalist has ever bothered to do a proper tribute piece on Paul Woakes which just shows what a bunch of lazy self serving gits many of them actually are and by that I mean tracking down the people who met him and knew him and finding out what he was like etc.

[@Foebane72]

Yes, the direct connection between 09-05 and 09-06 - ever tried walking through that tunnel? Takes ages!

[@Sekir80]

Haha, I did that for some unknown reason. The only thing I remember from this game.

[@ajmarshal1]

The cheese was the Caspar Hanley Eagle 8 SE. A marvellous feat of engineering. Yeah, I loved Mercenary.

[@jonyballistic]

Thanks for this bud. The Kraft cheese you could fly...priceless.

[@AFancyHippo]

So, this game WAS pretty much impossible. Thanks for speed run.

[@Foebane72]

I played this obsessively back in the day, mapped all the rooms, etc, PAINSTAKINGLY!! If I knew I could master this in such a short time I would've done so! But then Damocles came along and blew this game away! ;)

[@Foebane72]

The Atari A8 was the original version, I'll have you know. The original, and best of the 8-bits! ;)

[@BigPunDude]

You walk into a bar... the bartender goes, "why the long face"

[@BelatedGamer]

Really wish we could get another game like this, something open world with a real classic sci-fi atmosphere. Most of the games we get like that don't have vehicles, or are post-apocalyptic. I think the original Mass Effect comes close with its very 70s space opera style, but it didn't have enough exploration to be similar to this.

[@Davidhjrick]

I bloody loved this game. I genuinely felt like I was flying. Had no idea what was going on though.

[@AudieHolland]

I never finished this game. But when you are about to crash into the spaceport on Targ, after it switches to manual control, I tried to pull up. The spacecraft responded slightly but of course I still ran into the ground. But, instead of the "ouch!" message, I got "nice landing!" Also, I once fell out of the spacestation that orbits the planet. It was a long fall...

[@NotATube]

IIRC in the novella that came with the compendium edition of Mercenary, there's a sarcastic reference to the fact that Benson gives you back manual control far too late to do anything with it, then says "You crashed". (I'm pretty sure it did say that sometimes, in the Atari version at least).

[@jonyballistic]

I remember that fall, took forever😂😂

[@AudieHolland]

@@jonyballistic Btw, I *did* complete the game by cheating with a walkthru. This game features about the only timebomb that actually delivered what it promises. Also: 'The author does not allow you to leave untill you resurrect his advertisement [Encounter].'

[@0raj0]

I LOVED this game back then! It was absolutely best of what I had on my Plus/4. Spent days exploring the various locations and solving puzzles... This ultra-fast gameplay doesn't give justice to this game... you don't feel the atmosphere at all... And there were multiple endings possible - yours is only one of them... I'm still amazed how did they put all this into 60K of RAM...

[@retroscener]

Very nice longplay. Added it to my favourites :)

[@GmanMilli]

Usually one avoids crashing as that results in your items being strewn about the map. About the crash at 6:22: how come the kitchen sink wasn't thrown somewhere? Same at 7:44 with the kitchen sink and cobweb?

[@ulysses777x]

Hyper Sonic That only happens if you use the quit function (CTRL+Q) to get back in the Dominion Dart, which usually was only done if you lost your plane from being shot down rather than crashing, as you don't lose your ship from crashing. And you can avoid scattering your items if you drop them all first before using CTRL+Q.

[@vizionthing]

One of the few game I hacked, needed to remap the keypad keys so I could play it on an A600 !!!

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

Nice! I had an A600 too, I wish I knew what I did with it

[@pryletoncyo]

None of the machines had 3D hardware capability, so CPU speed was the deciding factor in the smoothness of the vector graphics. 3D hardware only became available in consoles and on PCs in the mid-90s.

[@Foebane72]

Yes, the A8 had a faster processor, it really showed off in games like Rescue on Fractalus with its fractal mountains. As for the ST, yes, it was faster processor than say, Amiga at 7.14MHz (I think) but the Amiga custom chips more than made up the difference ;)

[@SerBallister]

For this game it would have used the Amiga's Blitter chip to draw the lines

[@KaitainCPS]

How did this all fit inside 64k? It just AMAZES me.

[@BnpCanKissMyBlackAss]

This is actually the C16 plus 4 version, so it was less than 16K ;-)

[@KaitainCPS]

Blimey. Was the game world scaled down from that of the C64/Atari versions?

[@BnpCanKissMyBlackAss]

Must have been

[@ulysses777x]

Mark Allen Not quite, although the C16 and the Plus/4 are the same base hardware, the C16 has 16K, the Plus/4 has 64K. This runs on the Plus/4, it won't run on the C16 without a RAM expansion.

[@GmanMilli]

Well there isn't a whole lot of detail being stored. Data for a room is simply width,length,height,color,and 4 wall identifiers. Data for walls is simply door identifiers and distance from wall end. Data for a door is simply type, room identifier when entering. Data for objects indoors is simply room identifier, and xy coordinate in the room. Data for objects outdoors is simply sector identifier and xy coordinate in the sector. Sectors each only have 1 structure in the middle, and there aren't that many different types of structures. Colony Craft is the only structure not on the ground.

[@pryletoncyo]

Okay. I suppose I assumed Commodore 64, since it was the most popular machine. But of course, Elite was originally written for the BBC computer too, which was twice as fast as the C64 version because of the 2MHz 6502 processor. Didn't the 8-bit Atari have somewhat faster 6502 too? Something like 1.75MHz? Much better for vector graphics. Atari ST was fastest of the early 16-bits at 8MHz, it beat an early 286 PC-AT in speed.

[@NotATube]

Yes, the Atari 8-bit was 1.79 MHz, almost as fast as the BBC Micro. In fairness, for most games the C64's custom graphics hardware features meant the slow CPU wasn't an issue, and it was still better than the BBC in general as a gaming machine.

[@pryletoncyo]

Oh, and lets go into the murky territory of Amiga vs. Atari ST-line. :D Joy. Amiga had dedicated co-processors for sound and graphics, so side-scrollers looked prettier, and of course Amiga had more colours originally, 4096 vs 512. Of course in pure CPU speed the PAL Amiga had a 7.14MHz vs 8MHz 68000 on the Atari ST (PAL and NTSC). The Amiga CPU and co-processors were synced with the 50Hz PAL video system.

[@pryletoncyo]

The framerate on the Atari ST and Amiga version were still better. Plus/4 suffered from bad sound, not nearly as nice as the SID. Of course, you could get a SID board, but not many games supported it. The vector graphics are great and fast, though, much better than the original C64 version. The Plus/4 fell in between, especially because of the "lite machine", C16. Most games utilized only 16kb of memory, so were pretty rudimentary. Mercenary was one of the first sandbox games though.

[@NotATube]

It's not exactly surprising that the ST and Amiga versions were faster, given the far more powerful CPUs...! Even then, Mercenary (which was, of course, originally designed around 8-bit systems and impressive by those standards) was nowhere near what the 16-bits were capable of. We saw that with the solid graphics of Damocles and Mercenary III, the latter of which I still have happy memories of. Edit; Also, though I like the "door" sound effects on the C64 better, I don't think the others are all that much better, just slightly different. It's not like *any* of the versions of Mercenary I've seen have outstanding sound anyway. (The Plus/4 here sounds closer to the Atari 8 effects, although the engines seem somewhat inferior). The sky and ground on the C64 version just aren't as natural-looking either; a consequence, I assume, of the more limited palette. They're better here on the Plus/4, though oddly still not as good as those of the Atari 8, despite both the latter two having similarly-large palettes. I'm guessing that the vector graphics *would* be faster on the Plus/4, as that's a CPU-intensive task, and one of the few cases in games where the C64's custom hardware doesn't really offset the slow CPU.

[@AmstradExin]

I still wonder why everyone played it on any other machine than this....this is probably the most playable version....

[@MarkWhich]

Sad knowly you can actually complete in 10mns when it took many years and months to finally finish it.

[@PicklesMcGiggles]

Ahhh whats the matter. Not enough pretty pictures to keep you interested?

[@Whatever4690]

@wandererlain I see you still got me blocked,i never understood why you did that but thx. Someone just made a comment to which i cannot reply. Maybe you would have more views if you stopped treating loyal subbers like crap.

[@robertkennion9020]

pepsi

[@RuneLar]

CHEESE

[@peterpeterxxo]

not enough of anything..if anything the graphics or 'pretty pictures' were then only plus point.

[@MrDavide914]

what does it mean? you can finish it without any combat... absurd... why do you need to pick up those things? not very well designed, or so it seems to me

[@MegaGumbo]

It is very well designed given the limitations of the average gaming hardware in 1985 (8 bit processors, no 3D acceleration, only a few kilobyte of RAM etc.). It's a 3D adventure / exploration game and the items you need to pick up are relevant for solving the puzzle (escaping from the planet). While a bit cryptic indeed, every item serves a purpose e.g. the photon emitter can be uesd as a torch in rooms with no light or the poweramp may bosst your vehcile performance etc. - visit mercenarysite.free.fr to learn more about this game (which is considered the grandmother of all open world games).

[@larshartviksen7142]

This is a cheaty solution. You are not supposed to be flying a cheese, etc. I didn't even know that the spider web lets you ride an elevator anywhere. I solved the game in the non-cheaty way and it's a really nice adventure where you meet with Palyars or Mechanoids, work for the highest paying, gradually upgrade your ship to be able to go faster and higher to visit the space stations, gain money, solve puzzles, find all the entrances on the map and then discover clues to find the hidden ones far outside the grid, and finally leave Targ.

[@NotATube]

That's missing the point; this isn't someone solving the game from scratch in ten minutes(!!!) It's a speed-run, presumably based on someone *already* having completed it, and optimising that solution into a minimal number of steps. It might be theoretically possible to complete it this way, but you'd need to have already solved it from scratch first time round to have got there in the first place. Something you're absolutely *not* going to do in ten minutes without any fighting! It's like how, once you've solved an old-school text adventure, you can reduce the "solution" to a series of commands that omit *any* information-finding steps, examination, etc. But you'd never have *solved* it that way in the first place.

[@Murgoh]

@@larshartviksen7142 Yes, I never found the cheese either, I found the Poweramp which allowed the Dominion Dart to reach the space station. I also never knew there was an interstellar ship somewhere waiting to be picked up behind a door marked with a skull and cross bones which usually meant a room where you wouldn't want to go, for example the prison where, once entered, you could not get out so had to quit the game. Also I think there was a door with a skull and cross bones at the space station which lead outside so if you went through it you fell (for a LONG time) back to the ground while your ship obviously remained on the space station. Being stranded without a means of transportation really sucked because the distances were long so walking somewhere useful took ages. If I recall correctly at some point you get a message offering a craft for rent for a certain amount of credits which you can earn by completing tasks for the warring factions (thus the game's name "Mercenary") for money. The tasks involved finding a certain item and transporting it to a certain location, I think none of them actually involved combat or destroying something? One of the tasks was abducting the mechanoid leader and taking him to the space station, after that you could not do business with the mechanoids (all they would say to you was "put back our leader") so the mechanoid tasks had to be completed before doing that.

[@larshartviksen7142]

@@Murgoh Yeah I remember - good times. I really loved this game, made myself a map and replayed the first Mercenary a few times. @NotATube I was answering @MrDavide914