Another World

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The hero of Another World is a young professor named Lester. After an experiment went bad, Lester wakes up and finds himself captured on an alien-like 3D world inhabited by monsters and other alien and humanoid species. Lester must survive and, to do that, he must fight having as an only weapon his bare hands or a gun he finds on the way. During the game, a mysterious person offers some help and Lester must surely take it. In this game, each enemy uses his/her own strategy and needs specific movements to be confronted. In addition, there are several puzzles that need to be solved in order to go further with the story. The bad news is that once you die you must start the whole level from the beginning, a fact that's too frustrating I guess for the average player which means that an extremely short play length and the trial and error gameplay will not be tolerated by all. The game is linear, with some unfairly difficult jumps and shoot-outs. But other than its difficulty, Another World is a must seen, hands down!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Technically the Apple IIGS version is an exact copy of the 16bit Amiga, ST and Macintosh versions. Note that the SNES version was ported to Apple IIGS and this was apparently the only time that a SNES game was ported directly into a computer system despite sharing the same W65C816S processor! Also the Apple IIGS version can be installed on the hard disk and supports four different viewing modes (Full Screen, Matted, Letter-box and Television). The Full Screen mode is suitable for an accelerated GS model (say running at 12 MHz) while the Television-mode is for the 2.8 MHz original GS! The game starts with a very nice intro scene in 3D. Inside, the graphics are vector with pseudo-3D and a palette of colors based on blue. Note that there are several fully animated cut scenes when an objective is being completed. The characters' animation is very smooth and based on 3D vector graphics (an old common recipe of the early 80s with the release of Karateka, remember?). Also, the sound is good featuring sampled sound effects and catchy short music scores. As said, Amiga, ST and Apple IIGS versions are technically identical.