The good old days will not return... or won't they?
Sometimes good news hit me out of the blue when I am not expecting them in the slightest: it seems that almost whole collection of titles by one of my favourite game companies of early nineties, Silmarils, is making a comeback. Ta-da!
Sometimes good news hit me out of the blue when I am not expecting them in the slightest: it seems that almost whole collection of titles by one of my favourite game companies of early nineties, Silmarils, is making a comeback. Ta-da!
Wikipedia note on Silmarils is laughably skimpy, more can be read on MobyGames or in this interesting article (unfortunately in French), which I allow myself to partially translate below:
Everything began on 16 October 1987. The Rocques brothers, Louis-Marie and Andre, had already developed a number of games for publishers such as Ere Informatique, Loriciels and Chip. Louis-Marie had even received the best adventure game award, "le tilt d'or", for l'Aigle d'Or (remember this game? I wrote about it here - and I did not realise up until now that it also came from one of my favourite game makers). During his military service he met Philippe Plas, who had just received his master degree in management. Despite their average age of 23, three young men have decided to start up their own publishing company, Silmarils, in Lognes, close to Paris.
The first game was programmed entirely by Louis-Marie, because he was the one with the most experience. Philippe took the post of commercial director. Several months later, in 1988, the game Manhattan Dealers was published. The game was well received and got distributed abroad, which certainly helped the studio.
The decision was made to create next titles in a larger team. As a result, two graphical artists joined the company, firstly Jean-Christophe Charter from Paris, after that Pascal Einsweiler and finally another programmer, Michel Pernot, both of the latter from Nancy. Another development studio was opened in their hometown.
Even though the next game, Mad Show, flopped, the following title, Targhan, managed to make up for that. Universally acclaimed as hit by all the game press, the game established the Silmarils brand. Having been previously distributed by Loriciels in France, Silmarils changed their legal status, which has allowed them to distribute their own games by themselves. Same year Palace Software became their international publisher and as if to seal the deal, Silmarils handled translation and distribution of Dragon's Breath in France.
1992 marked the completion of Ishar, quite probably the first French cRPG to rival English and American ones. Contrary to its contemporary counterparts (I just love alliterations), usually taking place in dungeons and catacombs, the game allowed players to explore open lands. A sequel followed in 1993 and another one in 1995 (they can be bought at GOG, but why would you if there is a whole collection available?). Other than Ishar II, 1993 saw also the release of Transarctica, a classic strategy title, happening in the postapocalyptic winter world (the box cover art, featuring gigantic locomotive, was made by a famous sci-fi artist Rodney Matthews - a little fun fact for all the geeks out there) and 1994 - Robinson's Requiem, another memorable game, despite insane difficulty. From there on a combination of commercial failures of some titles, unsuccessful attempts to branch out to other platforms and bad management decisions drove Silmarils into closing the company in 2003. In 2004 the Rocques brothers opened another game studio, Eversim, together with Pascal Einsweiler, but other than rather not very well received Commander in Chief, the studio was not heard about, a sad end to the otherwise great story of Silmarils.
One thing that I personally found Silmarils' trademark of sort were incredible animated environments in their games. The images of alien planets in Metal Mutant and Starblade were suggestive and otherwordly enough to prod player's imagination. The attention to detail was extraordinary - there were subtle little touches everywhere, such as small spaceships flying in and out of futuristic cities seen in the background or a lizard in the foreground catching a fly. They added a lot variety and credibility to visions of these alien worlds.
As a result, these games were drawing me in completely. I spent hours playing Metal Mutant, first on my AT with monochrome Hercules display on which I had to emulate CGA mode in order to get it to work, then on 386 with VGA with all the pretty colours and recently on my DualCore desktop with 9600GT via DosBox, in the attack of nostalgy. And it seems I am not the only one that did.
Ishar series was quite innovative for its times, too. While we had had Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder games before, these titles confined player to underground passages. Ishar, on the other hand, gave players at least the illusion of free roaming, even if the movement would still take place from square to square. And there was more: team members took liking (or the contrary) to each other , which could lead to the scenario where kicking someone out of the team resulted in other hero leaving as well, shops would close for the night and night clubs - for the day. It was these little things that made the experience so much more memorable.
As for the other titles that I have spent lots of quality time with, two of them were very popular in my neighbourhood at the time: Targhan and Colorado. The mention of neighbourhood is not as stupid as it might sound, because with no internet available around that time, the main way of obtaining new games was copying them from friends, during copy-parties or buying from professional copiers with a catalog of titles. Back to games, I managed to finish both of them, which was quite a feat back then (although I admit having resorted to walkthrough in case of the latter one). On this blog I have already mentioned Targhan two times, once in passing when writing about Limbo and secondly while replaying it on my PSP - you can see the screenshot of it in action). Both games shared the engine, detailed graphics of Pascal Einsweiler and great nostalgic atmosphere of traveling through the imaginary world. If I were to list the games that have drawn me into the electronic entertainment, these two would be opening that list.
I also have come in contact with Starblade, although regrettably, only once: my father left me with his coworker who was designing stuff on Atari ST and the gentleman in question set up Starblade for me. With no instructions whatsoever I figured out how to get the starship running and travel to other worlds - something he didn't know was possible. Unfortunately, I only had the opportunity to play Starblade again years later via some doubtfully legal abandonware site.
The good news is that all these games can be played legally now - the Silmarils Collection, announced in February and ported by DotEmu, is currently available via this website (payment can be made via PayPal and Visa). Now excuse me while I alternatively squee like a little girl and drool like a pervert observing the aforementioned little girl - I just can't wait to go back in time and relive some of these adventures once again. Such is the magic of Silmarils.
[ DotEmu via Photon Storm ]
