| abstract | - Another World is a Cinematic Platform Game developed by Eric Chahi. The title of the game was changed to Out of This World when it was released in America, to avoid confusion with the popular NBC Soap Opera, Another World. In Japan, the game is known as Outer World. To say the game was innovative was an understatement. Chahi himself wrote a polygon routine that would allow the graphics to be composed of vector outlines -- which would take up less space than normal sprite graphics. Like Jordan Mechner, Chahi also used video recordings of his own brother to create rotoscoping animations for the project. The result was an epic, cinematic masterpiece which told a story without the use of dialogue, voicework or screen text, and with cutscenes that led from one part of the story to the next. Controlling the player character was done via six buttons, with the player character performing a wide variety of different tasks depending on his location, speed, and movement. The story itself concerns a hapless, adventurous and athletic young physicist named Lester Knight Chaykin, whose particle accelerator experiment gets zapped by lightning one evening, sending him to a hostile alien world. There, Lester gets captured by an advanced race of huge warlike humanoids, who send him to an underground prison colony. With the help of a fellow prisoner, Lester breaks out. He then spends the rest of the game trying to evade recapture and death at the hands of...well... pretty much everything on the planet. This game is notable, not only for its dramatic storytelling and early survival-horror roots, but also for being one of the most Nintendo Hard games to come down the pike since Battletoads. The slightest misstep meant death in any number of horribly unspeakable ways. The console versions of the game -- such as the SNES port -- were made more difficult than the MS-DOS/Macintosh versions (which themselves were more difficult than the original Amiga version), reportedly to give players "more value for their money". (Although it may give some players a strong desire to throw their keyboard/joypad at their TV.) A decent (yet unpolished) sequel was made for the Sega CD without Chahi's involvement: Heart of the Alien, starring Lester's buddy from the first game. The original author did not agree with the sequel's extension of the story, and part of the fanbase is broken over whether the sequel even counts. The sequel is easy to ignore in this respect, since it was only released on one failed platform, whereas the main game got a release on practically every 16-bit and 32-bit gaming platform. Chahi eventually created a hi-def port of Another World for Windows XP with higher resolutions and better graphics. This version is known as the Collector's Edition and is well worth owning according to some, a blatant money grab according to others (because the first two levels, which are free, are markedly more "updated" than the later levels players must pay for). By the way, here's an official freeware GBA port (also playable on emulators, of course). The official PC version of the game can be bought from Good Old Games. An iOS version of the game optimized for both iPhone and iPad, featuring added difficulty levels (both easier and harder) and both the original and remastered graphics and sound, is currently available.
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