Alternate Reality: The City by Philip Price for Atari 800

[Xebec's Demise]

Here's a treasure trove of Alternate Reality newsletters, game documentation, and Datasoft catalogs that are scanned!

 

http://mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getcompany=datasoft

[Xebec's Demise]

More scans:

 

http://www.c64sets.com/boxed_sets.html

http://andydecarli.com/Video%20Games/Collection/Commodore%2064/Scans/Full%20Size/

[WestofHouse]

Here's a treasure trove of Alternate Reality newsletters, game documentation, and Datasoft catalogs that are scanned!

 

http://mocagh.org/lo...ompany=datasoft

 

There goes my productivity today.

[Xebec's Demise]

I consider myself ridiculously fortunate to have City complete, in box, and Dungeon shrink wrapped.

Wow! Those two shrink wrapped Dungeons actually sold for a little less than $400 each! I knew they would not sell for $500-$600, but never would have expected anywhere near $400 either.

 

Sold for $367.32 + $12 Shipping - ALTERNATE REALITY THE DUNGEON sealed für Atari 400, 800, XL und XE von Datasoft

Sold for under $400 ($350?) + $10 Shipping - ALTERNATE REALITY (The Dungeon) - ATARI - NEW IN BOX - CULT ! (This is the one originally listed for $530 above)

[Jim Norris]

 

Wow! Those two shrink wrapped Dungeons actually sold for a little less than $400 each! I knew they would not sell for $500-$600, but never would have expected anywhere near $400 either.

 

Sold for $367.32 + $12 Shipping - ALTERNATE REALITY THE DUNGEON sealed für Atari 400, 800, XL und XE von Datasoft

Sold for under $400 ($350?) + $10 Shipping - ALTERNATE REALITY (The Dungeon) - ATARI - NEW IN BOX - CULT ! (This is the one originally listed for $530 above)

 

If Phillip Price had a box of those lying around his house, he could autograph them and they'd probably sell for a lot more. Maybe in the thousands?

[Xebec's Demise]

No doubt. I confirmed with the seller that the second one did sell for $350 (lucky guess).

[Xebec's Demise]

I stumbled across two Alternate Reality articles I have not seen before. I see I have broken images to fix too.

 

 

Revisiting: Alternate Reality: The City (1985) - The CRPG Addict

If you had to give any 1980s RPG series the designation of "cult status," it would have to be to Philip Price's grandiosely-planned, unfinished Alternate Reality. Originally intended to cover six games, the series never got further than two. But their technological achievements coupled with a uniquely weird setting make The City and The Dungeon (1987) live longer in memory than the typical titles of the era.

 

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2016/02/revisiting-alternate-reality-city-1985.html

 

 

 

Origins of the Open World: Alternate Reality - US Gamer

The coming year looks set to be "the year of open-world" -- but the concept is quite a bit older than you might think.

Open-world games may be hot stuff right now -- particularly with the coming new generation of consoles -- but what you might not know is that the idea of offering the player a huge amount of freedom within a non-linear world is a concept that's been around since the early days of gaming..

 

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/origins-of-the-open-world-alternate-reality

Edited October 12, 2016 by Xebec's Demise

[Mechanicjay]

Hrm, does anyone have a line to the ATR's for this game. The dumps I get from atarimania crash my emulator. The ATR's from the site linked on the first page (from like a million years ago) no longer works.

Edited October 12, 2016 by Mechanicjay

[Xebec's Demise]

Did you try the AR Wraper?

[Gunstar]

Since this old thread has been revived, instead of looking for the answer in the 20 pages (or it may have been in another AR thread), a number of years ago some one was working on getting the AR games converted to cartridge. Was this ever completed and released?

[Wrathchild]

Briefly, no, the issue I came up against was the overlay code brought in when you enter/leave something, e.g. an inn, themselves include the coding for the run-time security and so as that isn't patched them this gets out-of-kilt and you can't continue properly.

It is therefore possible to build and employ those patches in the cart version but not light work. Additionally, I can't recall if I skipped the character builder and just took a default and so that area would also have to be addressed.

 

The Dungeon could be easier to do as although encoded, the runtime encoding of the character data back to disk wasn't used.

 

I think people may have had success on devices such as SIO2SD etc using manual or key based disk swaps. so perhaps a guide for that could be written?

[Xebec's Demise]

Just came across a version of Alternate Reality: The City online that can be played in your browser, unfortunately it's the DOS PC version, but still cool that you can play AR in a browser now! ?

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/alternate-reality-the-city-eh/play-eh
 

[Xebec's Demise]

Can replies no longer be edited? I don't see an option to edit my reply above.

 

I played Alternate Reality online for the first time at the link above! ? That's just so cool to say, playing AR online! In a way, AR Online has come to pass! ⚔️

 

I saved my character, Liah, which I was surprised the online emulator was actually capable of. You can save your character online to resume another time, but there's only eight character slots and the characters do not disappear when loaded. I'm unsure if that's just how the DOS PC version normally is, allowing endless loads from a single save? Whereas the original Atari version would remove your character when loaded, so if you wanted a backup, you actually had to make a backup of your character disk. But I wouldn't be surprised if the DOS version made that aspect easier.  I was also quickly reminded how inferior and less challenging the DOS version is compared to Atari. After adjusting the run speed down to normal with Ctrl-F11 many sound effects were nonexistent and the music was still horrible. I don't recall if AR is normally this bad on PC, so I wonder if it's just the emulator, it's very low quality compared to what I'm used to on Atari. Like the first thing I noticed is there were no environmental sounds, like the sound of the wind blowing down the streets nor the Smithy's hammer chinking away at his anvil. The encounter music is also very crude compared to Atari, but maybe it's just the emulator? The game is much easier though too, it's very easy to leave encounters and they apparently don't steal your food packets, water flasks and coins very often like they do on the original Atari version. So, while it's very cool to play Alternate Reality online with no disk swaps and save your character online, I'm disappointed in the quality of the DOS PC version of Alternate Reality, or possibly the emulator. I'll have to try a download now to see if the PC version is just that bad.

 

If you want to try it here's the keys; Ctrl-F11 and Ctrl-F12 adjust the run speed down and up, use the arrow keys to move, < and > to cycle inventory, U to use items, W to swap primary and secondary weapons, S to save, D to drop an item and Spacebar to exit closed establishments.

 

So, now I'm searching for an online Atari 800 emulator! ? Does anybody know of one that would run the Atari version of AR online? I found this one: JavaScript Atari 800 XL Emulator, but there's no Alternate Reality listed. I do have M.U.L.E. running in my browser right now, which is very cool! Maybe the issue is that the DOS version of AR didn't require disk swaps while the Atari version does? My searching continues...

 

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Xebec's Demise

[Xebec's Demise]

So, the DOS PC version of Alternate Reality also has jobs at banks, inns and taverns, making it very easy to get money and survive. Below is an image of me washing dishes for 63 coppers. You can do this as many times as you want at all establishments and the only risk is a rare small injury, like a few hit points. While it seems like a cool novelty to get jobs, it really further ruins the gameplay of The City by just making surviving so much easier. Just thinking of spending time washing dishes in Alternate Reality The City seems fairly fairly ironic, especially after the far more challenging Atari 800 version where you're lucky if you can kill a rat without getting rabbies, find a few coppers, get to a tavern before you are robbed and buy a food packet before starving to death. There's quite a difference overall! In the DOS version you're able to escape encounters easily and are apparently never stolen from when trying to escape, so you keep all your money, food and water flasks when running away from encounters. I noticed other smaller things too, like when rolling a character the stats go up to 24 instead of 21 and you start off with 1 gold in addition to any copper you roll. So, the DOS version truly is not a very accurate conversion of the original and not much of a challenge either. It has the same theme, but it's not the same game. It was fun to revisit, but I've gotten bored of it fairly quickly as it's just too easy, it's more like a simulation of Alternate Reality than an actual alternate reality, like the original Atari 800 version. I can see new developers wanting to add more features, but in doing so they ruined the challenge of the game.

 

 

This is kind of cool though, the Alternate Reality online DOS Box emulator does seem to save your characters by cookie or browser, so you only see your characters, along with the three sample ones. For example, if you use a different browser or a private tab then the character saves will be new. Opening the browser in private mode or using another browser results in a new character disk:

 

 

It is really cool that you can play AR online, but disappointed with the PC version of AR online, I began searching for more online Atari 800 emulators and found another at https://8bitworkshop.com named Atari 800XL (MAME) online emulator. It includes Disassembly, Memory Browser, Memory Map and Asset Editor features, so you can code right online too, but I can't seem to get Alternate Reality to load. When I try to load Alternate Reality - The City _ side 1-1.atx it shows a message, "AltirraOS This is a substitute for the standard OS ROM. See the help file for how to use real Atari ROM images for higher compatibility." Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

 

https://8bitworkshop.com/v3.8.0/?platform=atari8-800xl.mame&file=Alternate Reality - The City _ side 1-1.atx

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by Xebec's Demise

[hicksman]

The PC version was my version as a kid. Knowing what I knew at ~6 years old it was IMPOSSIBLE. Being one of the 16 bit versions it is a departure from the original, and being cut down also makes it a poor example of the potential of the series. I think I mentioned it earlier in the thread but the manual mentions sound but there actually isn't any. Its been ages since I've thought about it but I seem to remember an anecdote about a single guy porting the game to PC and as a result never got to implement a lot of what made the game unique. That was largely the case for ports on PC in the mid 80s. I remember having a few ports of NES games my friends were playing and them being an awful rendition of the original.

 

Thanks for keeping this thread alive.

 

By the way, does anyone know what happened to this guy? https://www.landbeyond.net/ Updates have stopped and his domain cert expired. Never a good sign, especially since it looks like his progress discouraged Acrin @ crpgdev.com to stop his port. Now we have neither.

 

[Xebec's Demise]

Alternate Reality has made it to Twitch, there's a category for The City and The Dungeon.

 

I stumbled upon the following recording of an Alternate Reality: The City livestream today.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144308103

[Dunderio]

On 7/18/2005 at 4:27 AM, Xebec&#x27;s Demise said:

Recently Jim Norris was kind enough to send me the AR viewer and source code for it. You need to use xfd files with it.

 

Here is the AR Viewer 7 Source code C++:

 

http://home.comcast.net/~joyceo0/arview7.zip

 

Here is AR Viewer 6 exe:

 

http://home.comcast.net/~joyceo0/arcityviewer.exe

Links are broken

[Wrathchild]

2 hours ago, Dunderio said:

Links are broken

Check this page: http://www.rainbarrel.com/

[Xebec's Demise]

After watching the above Alternate Reality stream, I noticed that BillBull actually did an 8 part series of streams on Alternate Reality: The City which can be found here:
https://www.twitch.tv/search?term=alternate reality%3A the city&type=videos

 

I liked watching the reactions of a new player to the game who actually understands and appreciates how ground-breaking and incredible Alternate Reality: The City was for the year 1985.

 

 

"So, the intro to this game is absolutely mind-blowing, I'm just going to be quiet and watch cause I love, I've watched this like 10 times, it's super cool."

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144308103?t=00h32m42s

 

"Dude, I love how, like, the lights and stuff are choreographed to the music and the sound effects just fit in perfectly with the song. It's so cool."
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144308103?t=00h35m12s

 

"They just constantly, like, reprise the same theme and constantly riff on the motif throughout the game, it's so cool!"
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144308103?t=00h39m43s

 

"Dude, this is so cool. Dude, this audio landscape is just fantastic, I just want to listen to the music. What! The blacksmith is just hammering away and singing. Holy crap! I just want to live here. I think I've met my new friend, I think I just want to hang out, the singing blacksmith...[starts singing along] This is the coolest shit ever. 1985, it's mind blowing!"
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144308103?t=00h47m14s

 

"You're dead. [music starts] Another song! You're dead. I don't know what happens when you die, besides the awesome song. Do I immediately get to reroll a character? Does it teleport me someplace? [more music starts] What! What is happening? Where are you? This is a surreal trip. I think I'm dead."

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1144308103?t=00h56m04s

 

 

All his reactions remind me how much the music and sound can really set the feeling and atmosphere for a game and can be a significant part of helping immerse players within it. Alternate Reality certainly made use of excellent music and sound better than most games of the time. Unfortunately, it also reminds me of a very ignorant and unfair review I recently re-read of Alternate Reality: The City from Chester Bolingbroke aka CRPG Addict: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2016/02/revisiting-alternate-reality-city-1985.html 

 

"3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. You want me to give points for the graphics, but I find them ugly and crude no matter how innovative the color-changes and raindrops are. You want me to give points for the music, but I don't care about music, and the other sound effects are primitive. The keyboard input works okay."

 

That's a 3 out of 10 score he gave Alternate Reality for graphics, sound and interface! His review could not be more absurd, when Alternate Reality actually had some of the best graphics, music, sound effects and one of the most advanced designs and interfaces of it's time. It makes his review appear not just inaccurate, but intentionally dishonest.

 

It's also very telling that CRPG Addict would declare he doesn't care about music and sound in games, something which can have a very dramatic effect on the atmosphere and feeling of a game. His absurd Alternate Reality review aside, even from that one declaration alone, Chester Bolingbroke and his reviews lose credibility with me. I'm surprised that for someone that reviews a lot of old games, he obviously has no clue how advanced the design, sound, music and graphics were in Alternate Reality: The City way back in 1985. The most charitable opinion I can give on him on this is that he must be unfairly comparing Alternate Reality to more modern games. His declaration that he doesn't care about such an important element of games, and really all media for that matter, demonstrates he's intentionally not comparing or ignoring important game elements and his reviews are therefore inherently faulty. But he's also very contradictory, if he doesn't care about music then why does he even have it as a rating category?

 

If we compare one of the most popular games of all time, which actually came out after Alternate Reality: The City, Ultima IV, the sound, graphics and design are fairly rudimentary in comparison. It's also remarkable that CRPG Addict appears to be overall ignorant or dishonest about games and game technologies in general, resulting in unfair comparisons in his reviews and ratings. Unfortunately, that's not unusual for game reviewers, especially when they're doing it as a job and for pay and the company they work for is receiving advertising dollars. I don't know if CRPG Addict is making money from his reviews, but he's just as ignorant or dishonest as many paid game reviewers.

 

         Ultima IV, 1985                                Alternate Reality: The City, 1985

 

 

I'm not sure if I've even seen any mainstream reviews for Alternate Reality the year it came out, it's like it got ignored the year of release and then poorly reviewed years later against newer games. For example, CRPG Addict tries to give his faulty review some credibility by proclaiming that he scored it about as well as Scorpia, someone paid to review cookie-cutter RPGs, which Alternate Reality certainly is not, in a November 1986 Computer Gaming World article, over a year after Alternate Reality was actually released. What a shame.

 

The Ultima IV and Alternate Reality comparison is also an interesting one in how different the developers are. While Philip Price seems to be a very humble, private person, Richard Garriott or Lord British is the opposite, always seeking recognition and media publicity for his accomplishments. Could that be main the difference in how the two games were promoted, reviewed, received by the public and also their success? If only Philip Price had been paid for his work, we may have received the Philip Price version of The Dungeon and all the games in his Alternate Reality series.

 

It's also disappointing to see that Philip Price's Wikipedia article has been deleted by Wiki editors. Isn't the point of Wikipedia to be a resource of information? It seems that deleting information for no other reason than someone feels it's not important enough is the opposite of providing a resource of information, it's hiding information. It's ironic that someone named "Czar" is responsible for deleting the Wikipedia article on Philip Price: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philip_Price_(programmer)&diff=703005821&oldid=702992317

 

One of the viewers in the chat of the first stream I watched named thoughtlessdeed posted this link in chat to Gary Gilbertson's music at Demozoo which I was unaware of:

https://demozoo.org/sceners/50829/

 

I'm looking forward to watching the next 7 streams in the BillBull series when I get time, I followed the Alternate Reality categories on Twitch and will watch for notifications for new livestreams from anyone. Maybe I will see you there?

 

I also came across this new ad from 1987 that I had not see before at Moby:

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Xebec's Demise

[ZylonBane]

Dear lord, that Twitch guy is running in an emulator but manually swapping disks instead of just emulating a multi-drive setup.

[zzip]

9 hours ago, Xebec&#x27;s Demise said:

If we compare one of the most popular games of all time, which actually came out after Alternate Reality: The City, Ultima IV, the sound, graphics and design are fairly rudimentary in comparison. It's also remarkable that CRPG Addict appears to be overall ignorant or dishonest about games and game technologies in general, resulting in unfair comparisons in his reviews and ratings. Unfortunately, that's not unusual for game reviewers, especially when they're doing it as a job and for pay and the company they work for is receiving advertising dollars. I don't know if CRPG Addict is making money from his reviews, but he's just as ignorant or dishonest as many paid game reviewers.

That's selling Ultima IV a bit short, it was one of the most ground-breaking and influential CRPGs of all time!

 

AR :The City certainly nailed the presentation & music.  The intro was something to behold.  Nobody did that kind of thing better in 1985.   However I thought the gameplay itself was kind of lackluster compared to other RPG offerings.

 

by contrast, I got fully immersed in the world of Ultima IV and played it to completion,  but would get bored trying to play through the AR games-  And I wanted them to be good, I wanted to gameplay to live up to the quality of the presentation.

 

10 hours ago, Xebec&#x27;s Demise said:

I'm not sure if I've even seen any mainstream reviews for Alternate Reality the year it came out, it's like it got ignored the year of release and then poorly reviewed years later against newer games. For example, CRPG Addict tries to give his faulty review some credibility by proclaiming that he scored it about as well as Scorpia, someone paid to review cookie-cutter RPGs, which Alternate Reality certainly is not, in a November 1986 Computer Gaming World article, over a year after Alternate Reality was actually released. What a shame.

It came out during the worst part of the crash when many gaming magazines were folding   That's probably why it got overlooked.   I remember seeing it at a local retailer, knowing nothing about the game.   I picked up the box many times wondering "what is this game?" before ultimately putting it down.  Eventually one day I did buy it.   But soon there was a flood of RPGs on the market-  Bard's Tale and all the SSI RPG games and it probably did get lost in the shuffle.

[Xebec's Demise]

I don't think it's selling Ultima IV a bit short, Alternate Reality is technically superior to Ultima IV in sound, graphics and design and has more ground-breaking features and technology too, including concepts that didn't even appear in Ultima games until 1997 with Ultima Online. Though Ultima IV was much better marketed and is certainly far more popular and influential, if you seriously compare the graphics, sound and features of the games side by side Ultima IV is a fairly basic story and quest driven RPG in comparison, while Alternate Reality was far ahead of it's time venturing into the open world survival type gameplay that has become popular in modern games today.

 

The gameplay is more of a preference, if you like following pre-defined story-driven quests to completion, which is what most people expected and were accustomed to in RPGs back in 1985, then Ultima IV is your game, but if you're more into doing your own thing in an open-ended survival world then Alternate Reality was delivering that type of gameplay decades ahead of its time. This is also surely a reason that players of typical old-school RPGs don't get nor appreciate Alternate Reality very much, they're expecting to be told what to do by NPCs and have pre-defined quests to finish in order to complete the game and Alternate Reality doesn't do that; you have to decide for yourself what you want to do and what your own goals are in Alternate Reality, it's not a typical story driven game to be completed and put back on the shelf like Ultima IV, it's literally an alternate reality for players to immerse themselves in.

 

Of course, the main failure of Alternate Reality is that the expansions for the game were never completed by Philip Price after he was basically taken advantage of and never paid by his corporate publisher. On the other hand, Ultima IV was a complete game in itself, well promoted and very successful as a result. However, the popularity and success of Ultima IV alone tends to overshadow how much more innovative and advanced Alternate Reality actually is for a game that came out prior to Ultima IV.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Xebec's Demise

[zzip]

9 hours ago, Xebec's Demise said:

I don't think it's selling Ultima IV a bit short, Alternate Reality is technically superior to Ultima IV in sound, graphics and design and has more ground-breaking features and technology too, including concepts that didn't even appear in Ultima games until 1997 with Ultima Online. Though Ultima IV was much better marketed and is certainly far more popular and influential, if you seriously compare the graphics, sound and features of the games side by side Ultima IV is a fairly basic story and quest driven RPG in comparison,

Yes AR made excellent use of Music, animation, DLI color washes.   But its graphics fell short where it mattered most.

The "City" doesn't feel like a city,  it felt like wandering around a non-descript maze where all the buildings look the same

Bard's Tale came out the same year, and showed that it was possible to make a first-person city look like a city, even on 8-bit platforms:

 

AR The Dungeon did this a lot better,  you actually felt like you were exploring a dungeon. 

9 hours ago, Xebec's Demise said:

if you seriously compare the graphics, sound and features of the games side by side Ultima IV is a fairly basic story and quest driven RPG in comparison, while Alternate Reality was far ahead of it's time venturing into the open world survival type gameplay that has become popular in modern games today.

The Ultima series was always among the best at setting the atmosphere of a CRPG game, even when it used primitive 6-color Apple graphics, it still managed to communicate an aesthetic that was reinforced through the box art, cloth maps etc, to create a world that you couldn't wait to jump in and explore.  Every town had a unique character, every NPC had a story to tell.  There were a bunch of secrets you needed to unravel.   It was all very immersive.

 

Every game needs to communicate to the user what they should be doing,  even if it is something open-ended like survival otherwise the player is going to feel like they are missing something or that maybe the games just sucks, and quit playing.    The best survival games make gathering resources, building structures and securing food, fun and challenging,  you make your own objectives based on your character's needs rather than the game telling you exactly what to do, but most importantly the game needs to communicate that it is a survival game so there is no confusion there.

 

I'm not sure AR made that clear.  I plodded along expecting some objective to reveal itself eventually.  In the end it just felt unfinished because I knew there were other planned expansions that never saw the light of day.   It was ambitious for sure.  I liked the idea of what it wanted to be, I just don't think it got there.

Edited November 18, 2022 by zzip

[Xebec's Demise]

 

Philip Price was certainly artistic enough and capable of designing graphics that looked like a typical city, as above. However, this is quite a spoiler, but what you may not realize is that in Alternate Reality you are quite literally like a rat in a maze. You're not actually in a medieval town, the maze-like alternate reality city you're in is actually an alien computer simulation your mind has been connected to after being abducted by aliens and having your actual body put in an incubating cocoon-like state. Your actions and behaviors are being monitored and recorded in the simulation and you're being experimented on and studied by the aliens as your mind is busy wandering around in their virtual reality city maze. Alternate Reality is like the movie The Matrix, which was released in 1999, except 14 years earlier. You're like the main protagonist of the film, Neo, eventually discovering that you're actually living in a virtual reality simulation after all your previous memories of life on Earth have been blocked or erased, but instead of using your body as a power source, the alien beings are studying and experimenting on you.

 

The Matrix, 1999

 

Alternate Reality is actually a deep rabbit hole and according to Philip Price himself, may have actually inspired the The Matrix film:

 

I did talk to two guys while at a restaurant in Westwood [In LA , near UCLA, it's the core of Hollywood]. I explained to them AR and it storyline, ideas and the Hollywood movie Dark City similarities to some of it and it's differences [i.e. things I think they did wrong in that movie that made it a bomb in the box office]. They listened intently, and one of them remarked to me (as they smiled to each other) was that "ideas can't be copyrighted". Matrix came out a few years later, I very much doubt they were the two brothers who came up with Matrix, but it made me wonder after Matrix came out.

 

Technically the idea of being deceived into thinking one's environment is one thing, when it is actually another has been expressed in Science Fiction for decades before I used that core concept. Those books by great Science Fiction authors probably is where I got my kernel of an idea.

 

Phil

 

Alternate Reality, 1998

Edited November 19, 2022 by Xebec's Demise

[NorbertP]

I always wanted to like this game, but of the handful of RPGs I played back in the day - U3, Temple of Apshai, Bard's Tale 3 whenever I visited my C64 owning friend, and AR - I have to confess that AR was the one I enjoyed the least by quite a margin. I guess by modern standards Temple of Apshai barely counts as an RPG but I used to play the heck out of it, I was a little unclear what the goal was in U3 I still enjoyed wandering around murdering orcs and skeletons and always felt like I was achieving something even if I did very little to progress the plot, and I always really wished BT3 was available on the A8, but AR did nothing for me: I probably got far more enjoyment out of the opening graphics than I did from actually playing it.

 

I thought it was maybe because I was just a dumb kid with a dumb kid brain at the time, but every attempt to revisit it in the decades since hasn't done anything to change my opinion: technically impressive but aesthetically unpleasant and monotonous visuals combined with opaque gameplay mechanics and no clear sense of any kind of direction inevitably leads to a a combination of boredom, frustration, and confusion. I'm sure in terms of mechanics it's all very in depth and ground-breaking and whatever, and maybe the concept is interesting, but it kind of feels like the author was too busy being clever and forgot to put an actual game in there...