A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates computer or video games. ... Legend Entertainment was an American developer of computer games. ... Video game publishers are companies that publish video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer. ... Legend Entertainment was an American developer of computer games. ... A game designer is a person who designs games. ... A game engine is the core software component of a video game. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This is a listing of computer and video games genres with brief descriptions and examples from each genre. ... Adventure is a genre of video game typified by exploration, puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters, and a focus on narrative rather than reflex-based challenges. ... In computer games and video games, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. ... // History Main article: History of computer and video games The first primitive computer and video games were developed in the 1950s and 1960s and ran on platforms such as oscilloscopes, university mainframes and EDSAC computers. ... The acronym DOS stands for disk operating system, an operating system component for computers that provides the abstraction of a file system resident on hard disk or floppy disk secondary storage. ... It has been suggested that CD Rot be merged into this article or section. ... A computer keyboard is a peripheral modelled after the typewriter keyboard. ... Operating a mechanical 1: Pulling the mouse turns the ball. ...

Summary

Mission Critical is an adventure game released in 1995 by Legend Entertainment. Though its main advertising point was the presence of Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Michael Dorn, he played a very small role in the game. Adventure is a genre of video game typified by exploration, puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters, and a focus on narrative rather than reflex-based challenges. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Legend Entertainment was an American developer of computer games. ... The title as it appeared in most episodes opening credits. ... Michael Dorn (Born December 9, 1952) is an American actor. ...

In Mission Critical, you play the sole survivor of the USS Lexington and USS Jericho, a pair of starships sent by the Alliance of Free States on a secret mission to a world far from Earth. You are the only person capable of completing the mission, and saving not only the Alliance, but thousands of star systems from total destruction.

Storyline (currently incomplete)

You awaken on Deck 2 of the Lexington's habitat module after being rendered unconscious by the captain, the only clue to what happened being a hastily penned letter explaining that you are the only living member of the Lexington's crew and that you must complete the secret mission the vessel was sent on. Unfortunately, various immediate threats (a hull breach in a stateroom and a reactor on the verge of melting through the ship's hull) take priority.

Once you solve those crises, you are tasked with restoring functionality to the ship's computer, where a message from the Lexington's executive officer await. She asks you to repair the communcations system for the ship and to make contact with the Alliance military on the Erebus colony.-1...

Once you manage to contact Erebus, an Alliance admiral reluctantly fills you in on the true nature of the Lexington's mission: to investigate a construction on the world Persephone, believed to be developed by aliens, which may hold the key to ending the war between the Alliance and the United Nations. The only problem is: with only one crew member remaining, the UN will be able to destroy the Lexington and the Jericho, go to the surface of Persephone, and take the prize for themselves.

The solution lies in a highly experimental concoction called Hype. A mix of nanomachines and neurochemicals, Hype requires the brain of its user, allowing him to control the automated fighter drones used for intership combat directly. Without Hype, battle progresses too fast for the drones to be controlled remotely. Unfortunately, Hype has a side effect: it inevitably kills whoever uses it.

Gameplay & Design

Mission Critical has a varied mixture of gameplay elements, including a large number of traditional object puzzles, Myst-style backstory deduction from fragments of evidence found about the ship, a couple of fiddle puzzles, in-depth conversations with several characters and (possibly unique among adventure games) a real time strategy minigame, in which the player must defend the ship from several waves of enemy vessels. Certain puzzles are timed, but the time limit is extremely generous, though no easy way is provided to gauge the amount of time passed, as in Access Software's Countdown. This article is about the first computer game titled Myst. For the entire series, see Myst franchise. ...

Contrary to the example set by many other games, the strategy minigame is well implemented (it could pass for a full fledged game in its own right), and seamlessly integrated into the gameplay. The battles are controlled from a tactical computer interface on the ship's bridge, there is an analogue difficulty slider (which sets the battles to win themselves on the lowest setting, if the player does not want to fight the battles himself), and a speed control slider.

The way the minigame is designed is an example of the high general realism of the game overall - just as one might in real life, the relatively low-ranking player (a supply officer) must get authorization from command to use the tactical system, then modify the ship's systems to enable it to be controlled single-handed, then complete several well-thought out training missions (these can also be bypassed if desired) of increasing difficulty and varying strategy before being able to defend the ship proper. The attacks themselves are timed and usually occur when the player is attempting to do something elsewhere on the ship, and he must scramble to the bridge and fight them off before returning to what he was working on - this adds tension to the game once the enemy ships start to arrive.

The design of the game is scrupulously realistic, much more so than many other space games - the accomodation decks make up a tiny part of the ship, the bulk being taken up by machinery and a gigantic store of fuel, not to mention the docking bay. The accomodation areas themselves contain almost everything one might expect, including a canteen and store rooms crammed with spare parts for essential systems (there are still no sanitary facilities, though in science fiction TV, games and films this is something of a standard).

Graphics

The bulk of the game consists of well made 3D renderings (the entirety of the spaceship, and several other locations), presented in static screens with transitional animations between most areas. Cutscenes are in full screen video with live actors. A few locations were evidently too complex for the 3D renderers of the period, however, and in these cases the designers used a mixture of computer generated images and highly detailed, hand-painted backdrops, with some 2D animation effects to compensate for the lack of transition movies in these parts, though the painted backdrops are of a sufficient quality not to break the sense of immersion in the game.

Sound

The game utilises stereo sampled voice and sound effects, music being provided (like many games of the era) via MIDI, although the FMV cutscenes had the music incorporated in the sampled soundtrack. The voice, sound effects and music are of a uniformly good quality.

Technology

Like most DOS games, Mission Critical, though advanced for its time, is somewhat difficult to run on modern computers - it requires a soundcard compatible with those of the era, offers no windows executable, weighs in on three CDs and the strategy minigame runs much too fast on modern processors. There is a way to fix most of these problems, however - all three CDs can be copied and run from a single DVD with no additional modifications as long as the directory structure is preserved, many modern soundcards offer hardware support of "legacy" devices (though certain motherboards can stop this feature from working properly), and certain programs are available to artificially slow down modern CPUs to run the game at an appropriate speed. The game can also be run easily in emulators such as DosBox. DOSBox is an emulator which creates a DOS-like environment primarily intended for running older, MS-DOS-based PC computer games which may not run properly on newer PCs. ...

External links

• Archive of the official site