Taking COVER
H
aving materialised
at the bottom of
a water filled hole on
an alien planet, our
hero Lester stops to survey the overwhelming
landscape, whilst his
new companion “Buddy” looks on pensively.
Portraying a physicist
whose particle accelerator is hit by lightning
during a vital experiment, transporting him
across the universe, the
evocative cover art of
Another World (Out of
This World in the United States – to avoid
confusion with the daytime soap opera) is a
classic design for an
epic game.
It becomes more
impressive by being
designed almost completely by one man,
Eric Chahi, for French
adventure game studio
Delphine Software.
The ironic thing
about it though, is that
once you’ve played
the game, you’ll find
that Lester never comes
close to posing in such
a manner in-game. He
doesn’t get the chance.
Having clambered out
of the water, the player instantly notices that
a strange beast in the
distance has scoped
him out.
Running to the left,
Lester first has to dodge
a bunch of flesh eating
slugs – by kicking them
out of the way – before
he is chased back in
the other direction by
the beast.
Swinging on a vine,
he runs back in the other direction again, only
to be captured by some
malevolent hunters and
put in a cage.
The rest of the game
is spent trying to es-
Another World has not just a great
reputation for gameplay, but a unique
graphical style. Chris Olewicz takes us
over its iconic box art.
cape from a city/compound, and it’s a hell of
a ride. Though he picks
up a gun, Lester never
has a spare moment
between the moment
he arrives to the end of
the game. Only briefly
do you get a sense of
how vast your environment is, and that’s only
if you choose to stick
your head out of a window.
This is partly because
the game is a platformer. Not to be harsh, because Another World
does have its set piece
moments, but it’s not
the best platformer out
there. The main attraction, after all this time,
is still the unique vector
graphics and minimalist style.
The game was hugely successful when
released, as well as
influential. Many vid-
eo game designers
have voted Eric Chahi’s creation as one of
the games that inspired
them the most, particularly from Japan.
Hideo Kojima of
Metal Gear Solid fame
said it was one of the
games that influenced
him the most, as has
Fumito Ueda, one of
the developers of Ico.
Chahi’s name has continued to be revered,
even though he didn’t
release another title
until 1998’s Heart of
Darkness, a similarly
plotted game in which
a young boy travels to
another world to save
his dog.
Though it’s been 25
years since its release,
Another World is just
as playable on an
Xbox One console as
it was on the Amiga,
the Atari, the 3DO,
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and the dozen other
platforms it has appeared on throughout
the 1990s. Though a
sequel – Heart of the
Alien – was released
for the Sega CD, many
fans do not consider it
canon, due to minimal
involvement from Chahi. Updated in 2011
to HD for a 20th anniversary edition, and
available on a number
of downloading platforms including Good
Old Games, there is no
reason you shouldn’t
pick up this enduring
classic.
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