Smuggler Archive
Thread: The Perfect Model for Smuggler in SWG is a Video Game from the early 90s based on a P&P RPG
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maxtheusher
Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:32 pm
#1
That's right. Devs, Smugglers, everyone else, listen up.
I'm talking about a game that incorporates guns, slicing, illegal modfications, a fullfledged contraband system, SMUGGLING, FIXERS, drugs, and everything else, ALL incorporated into a sleek, enjoyable, robust package.
That's right, Shadowrun, for the Sega Genesis. Based on the long-lived Shadowrun pen and paper RPG. (Which of course features the same basic systems, but the Genesis version is packaged into a streamlined realtime form more in keeping with swg.
If any of you are familiar with the series, or remember the video games, then you know all this already.
Here's an exceprt of a review off the web, that nicely sums up the game. (ignore the stuff about elves, orcs and magic O.O )
Dancin Homer wrote:
The year is 2058. The once peaceful landscape of Seattle is now a far more desolate place than ever before. Humans and freaks co-exist in an uneasy façade of toleration. Monopolistic mega-corporations now rule the land with an iron fist and any force that prevents them from gathering the highest profits is expendable. Laws are broken flagrantly and people "mysteriously vanish" on a daily basis, but the bribable Lone Star police force simply turns its head at the crimes. All of this power and money circulates through one forum - the Matrix. This virtual world is the lifeblood of civilization, and should the Corps gain control of it, the masses would be kept under tyrannical rule. However, there are those who stand against them.
Shadowrunners.
These cybernetic felons are not heroes by any stretch of the imagination. They fight for money, power, and the highest bidder. They owe allegiance to no one, unless one counts the Johnson who they are temporarily contracted out to. Wherever there is a citizen in need of some nefarious task to be fulfilled, you'll find a Shadowrunner.
Shadowrun is a complex action RPG with an extremely loose gameplay system. After deciding which class you want to be (Samurai, Decker or Shaman), you control Joshua as he searches the city for hints concerning his brother's death. As you collect these, new tasks are placed before you to accomplish at your own pace. If you were to cut out all of the extraneous training and equipment gathering, you could probably finish the entire game in a little over an hour. However, when you throw in all of the extras, the game's length jumps to somewhere around 20-40 hours. Sounds like an unbearable amount of time to spend building yourself up, right? You couldn't be further from the truth.
Life in Seattle is dangerous. Thugs lurk everywhere and attack without warning, and when you first start, your character is a pathetic weakling. Your armor is garbage, your weapon (or magic) is a joke, and your stats are so poor that you could barely shoot an unarmed foe to death before he knocks you out. Even if you do manage to kill somebody early on, they rarely drop more than 10 nuyen (the Shadowrun Currency unit) and you are usually half-dead or nearly unconscious afterwards, depending on whether they were shooting at you or merely punching your face in. If you head to a hospital or hotel, you will be shocked at the outrageous prices for medical help, and, as a final blow to your hopes of surviving in this game, you have ammo. Once you're empty, you must punch enemies to death and hope they drop an ammo clip.
Fortunately, you can improve your stats through the game's karma system. By finding one of the Mr. Johnsons located throughout Seattle, you can contract yourself out to do a Shadowrun. These range from the extremely simple package delivery to hacking into a government computer system and stealing confidential information. Inside buildings, you face security cameras, Maglock systems, trained hellhounds, and the most efficient security forces money can buy. Some missions require the successful rescue of a civilian, completely unarmed and just as likely to get shot as you are.
Once you've completed your run, you receive a wad of nuyen and karma points. Then, when you go to sleep at a hotel, you can allocate these points on either your basic stats like strength, body or intelligence, or you could improve your specific skills like firearms usage or negotiation. Each skill comes in handy in a specific situation, and depending on which ones you improve, your gaming experience will be greatly altered.
As for the nuyen you receive after Shadowruns, there are several areas where this could be spent. If you like magic, you could head to a magic shop and buy some better spells or more powerful magic items. If you prefer technology to the mystic, you could go to a cyberware hospital and have some mechanical doohickeys implanted in you, granting extra strength or faster reflexes. The money-laden Decker could go to a computer store and buy a new cyberdeck or some state-of-the-art hacking software. Of course, there is always the classic weapons depot, filled to the brim with guns, explosives and body armor. If you manage to find some contacts, you can special order some extremely useful and illegal gear or even join the Mafia or the Yakuza, the poison fist of the Pacific rim.
However, you should never try to become a master at everything. Each type of goodie has its own disadvantages. Whenever you have cyberware installed, your essence level goes down, reducing your magical capabilities and your health. By purchasing higher-level magic spells, you increase the amount of mental drain on yourself, and with each spell casting, your alertness level goes down. Larger cyberdeck programs reduce the amount of available space you have for other files and such. Even better weaponry can lead to your downfall if it's illegal and a Lone Star officer finds you. For most of the game, you will always be trying to raise money to buy better toys and flashier gizmos, but due to the enjoyment of performing Shadowruns, it doesn't seem like training.
When in the real world, the battle system is fairly simple. After equipping a weapon or a spell, you simply press the B button to target an opponent, and by repeatedly pressing B, you can quickly shuffle through targets. Once the desired target is selected, you simply press A to fire whatever you have, whether it's a bullet or a blazing inferno. Repeat as necessary. You can set your character's level of power from full defense to full offense, granting you more control over how powerful your guy is. Eventually, you can hire other Shadowrunners you meet to join you under the computer's control. The AI is able to fight well enough, but make sure that you don't get between your partner and his target. Anything in the way will take the bullet, and by positioning yourself properly, you will find that it is very easy to get enemies to do your work for you by simply hiding behind one of them.
Once you get a Datajack installed into your head, you can use your cyberdeck to invade the Matrix. Here, combat takes an entirely different turn. Your character controls a virtual entity within the Matrix called a Persona and navigates him through the system map of the computer you're hacking into. At each node, the Persona will encounter different forms of anti-hacking software called ICE. The battle then begins between the Persona and the ICE, and there is a surprising amount of diversity in how these battles turn out.
Throughout the entire game, you only get one truly offensive program. Instead of merely trying to kill the ICE with that every time, you could try to use a password-guessing program to trick the ICE, a defensive program to reflect the ICE's own attacks back at it, or a program to bypass that particular node entirely. Also, the ICE attacks in different ways as well. Some break your cyberdeck, preventing you from using it until it gets repaired. Some actually injure the hacker, possibly even incapacitating him if you take too long. One particularly diabolical ICE can actually eat your programs, resulting in a loss of several thousand nuyen for you. That doesn't matter much in the end, because finding important files and selling them on the street can earn you more money than you'll ever need. Better cyberdecks can carry more programs, take damage better, and fire faster, so you often spend every cent you make just improving your board or purchasing more upgrades for it.
As you explore Seattle, random events will occur based on your surroundings. The game might tell you that a strange character has been following you or you notice an odd looking button that says, "Touch Me". You are then given a list of actions to respond with, and depending on what choice you make, you could get torn to shreds by grizzlies or find a heap of nuyen. However, the most interesting part of this is that each random encounter situation has multiple outcomes. Should you hear something moving in the brush and check it out, you could find a lost child or some other harmless thing. That does not mean that every time you hear something moving in the brush, it won't hurt you. I guarantee that you will screw up your game at least once by picking the wrong option and getting in over your head, but this segment of the game adds a lot to it.
Add a working Holonet into SWG and the foundation is there.
So yea. Thanks go to Tactical Dave for talking about old games. Makes me wish I had a Genesis and a copy of the cart.
I'm talking about a game that incorporates guns, slicing, illegal modfications, a fullfledged contraband system, SMUGGLING, FIXERS, drugs, and everything else, ALL incorporated into a sleek, enjoyable, robust package.
That's right, Shadowrun, for the Sega Genesis. Based on the long-lived Shadowrun pen and paper RPG. (Which of course features the same basic systems, but the Genesis version is packaged into a streamlined realtime form more in keeping with swg.
If any of you are familiar with the series, or remember the video games, then you know all this already.
Here's an exceprt of a review off the web, that nicely sums up the game. (ignore the stuff about elves, orcs and magic O.O )
Dancin Homer wrote:
The year is 2058. The once peaceful landscape of Seattle is now a far more desolate place than ever before. Humans and freaks co-exist in an uneasy façade of toleration. Monopolistic mega-corporations now rule the land with an iron fist and any force that prevents them from gathering the highest profits is expendable. Laws are broken flagrantly and people "mysteriously vanish" on a daily basis, but the bribable Lone Star police force simply turns its head at the crimes. All of this power and money circulates through one forum - the Matrix. This virtual world is the lifeblood of civilization, and should the Corps gain control of it, the masses would be kept under tyrannical rule. However, there are those who stand against them.
Shadowrunners.
These cybernetic felons are not heroes by any stretch of the imagination. They fight for money, power, and the highest bidder. They owe allegiance to no one, unless one counts the Johnson who they are temporarily contracted out to. Wherever there is a citizen in need of some nefarious task to be fulfilled, you'll find a Shadowrunner.
Shadowrun is a complex action RPG with an extremely loose gameplay system. After deciding which class you want to be (Samurai, Decker or Shaman), you control Joshua as he searches the city for hints concerning his brother's death. As you collect these, new tasks are placed before you to accomplish at your own pace. If you were to cut out all of the extraneous training and equipment gathering, you could probably finish the entire game in a little over an hour. However, when you throw in all of the extras, the game's length jumps to somewhere around 20-40 hours. Sounds like an unbearable amount of time to spend building yourself up, right? You couldn't be further from the truth.
Life in Seattle is dangerous. Thugs lurk everywhere and attack without warning, and when you first start, your character is a pathetic weakling. Your armor is garbage, your weapon (or magic) is a joke, and your stats are so poor that you could barely shoot an unarmed foe to death before he knocks you out. Even if you do manage to kill somebody early on, they rarely drop more than 10 nuyen (the Shadowrun Currency unit) and you are usually half-dead or nearly unconscious afterwards, depending on whether they were shooting at you or merely punching your face in. If you head to a hospital or hotel, you will be shocked at the outrageous prices for medical help, and, as a final blow to your hopes of surviving in this game, you have ammo. Once you're empty, you must punch enemies to death and hope they drop an ammo clip.
Fortunately, you can improve your stats through the game's karma system. By finding one of the Mr. Johnsons located throughout Seattle, you can contract yourself out to do a Shadowrun. These range from the extremely simple package delivery to hacking into a government computer system and stealing confidential information. Inside buildings, you face security cameras, Maglock systems, trained hellhounds, and the most efficient security forces money can buy. Some missions require the successful rescue of a civilian, completely unarmed and just as likely to get shot as you are.
Once you've completed your run, you receive a wad of nuyen and karma points. Then, when you go to sleep at a hotel, you can allocate these points on either your basic stats like strength, body or intelligence, or you could improve your specific skills like firearms usage or negotiation. Each skill comes in handy in a specific situation, and depending on which ones you improve, your gaming experience will be greatly altered.
As for the nuyen you receive after Shadowruns, there are several areas where this could be spent. If you like magic, you could head to a magic shop and buy some better spells or more powerful magic items. If you prefer technology to the mystic, you could go to a cyberware hospital and have some mechanical doohickeys implanted in you, granting extra strength or faster reflexes. The money-laden Decker could go to a computer store and buy a new cyberdeck or some state-of-the-art hacking software. Of course, there is always the classic weapons depot, filled to the brim with guns, explosives and body armor. If you manage to find some contacts, you can special order some extremely useful and illegal gear or even join the Mafia or the Yakuza, the poison fist of the Pacific rim.
However, you should never try to become a master at everything. Each type of goodie has its own disadvantages. Whenever you have cyberware installed, your essence level goes down, reducing your magical capabilities and your health. By purchasing higher-level magic spells, you increase the amount of mental drain on yourself, and with each spell casting, your alertness level goes down. Larger cyberdeck programs reduce the amount of available space you have for other files and such. Even better weaponry can lead to your downfall if it's illegal and a Lone Star officer finds you. For most of the game, you will always be trying to raise money to buy better toys and flashier gizmos, but due to the enjoyment of performing Shadowruns, it doesn't seem like training.
When in the real world, the battle system is fairly simple. After equipping a weapon or a spell, you simply press the B button to target an opponent, and by repeatedly pressing B, you can quickly shuffle through targets. Once the desired target is selected, you simply press A to fire whatever you have, whether it's a bullet or a blazing inferno. Repeat as necessary. You can set your character's level of power from full defense to full offense, granting you more control over how powerful your guy is. Eventually, you can hire other Shadowrunners you meet to join you under the computer's control. The AI is able to fight well enough, but make sure that you don't get between your partner and his target. Anything in the way will take the bullet, and by positioning yourself properly, you will find that it is very easy to get enemies to do your work for you by simply hiding behind one of them.
Once you get a Datajack installed into your head, you can use your cyberdeck to invade the Matrix. Here, combat takes an entirely different turn. Your character controls a virtual entity within the Matrix called a Persona and navigates him through the system map of the computer you're hacking into. At each node, the Persona will encounter different forms of anti-hacking software called ICE. The battle then begins between the Persona and the ICE, and there is a surprising amount of diversity in how these battles turn out.
Throughout the entire game, you only get one truly offensive program. Instead of merely trying to kill the ICE with that every time, you could try to use a password-guessing program to trick the ICE, a defensive program to reflect the ICE's own attacks back at it, or a program to bypass that particular node entirely. Also, the ICE attacks in different ways as well. Some break your cyberdeck, preventing you from using it until it gets repaired. Some actually injure the hacker, possibly even incapacitating him if you take too long. One particularly diabolical ICE can actually eat your programs, resulting in a loss of several thousand nuyen for you. That doesn't matter much in the end, because finding important files and selling them on the street can earn you more money than you'll ever need. Better cyberdecks can carry more programs, take damage better, and fire faster, so you often spend every cent you make just improving your board or purchasing more upgrades for it.
As you explore Seattle, random events will occur based on your surroundings. The game might tell you that a strange character has been following you or you notice an odd looking button that says, "Touch Me". You are then given a list of actions to respond with, and depending on what choice you make, you could get torn to shreds by grizzlies or find a heap of nuyen. However, the most interesting part of this is that each random encounter situation has multiple outcomes. Should you hear something moving in the brush and check it out, you could find a lost child or some other harmless thing. That does not mean that every time you hear something moving in the brush, it won't hurt you. I guarantee that you will screw up your game at least once by picking the wrong option and getting in over your head, but this segment of the game adds a lot to it.
Add a working Holonet into SWG and the foundation is there.
So yea. Thanks go to Tactical Dave for talking about old games. Makes me wish I had a Genesis and a copy of the cart.
maxtheusher
Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:39 pm
#4
OMG I totally hadn't even thought of that! *runs off to find a ROM and emulator*
xplayrh8rx
Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:50 pm
#5
i remember this game i loved the mini game when you hacked into systems 
Cooter_Scylla
Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:52 pm
#6
One of the best console games ever from that era. I wonder what cyberdecking would have turned into if SWG ever tried to copy it? (Probably pong where you have to loot the paddles and bean bag chair for your character to participate.)
The hacking and office runs, cybernetics, upgradable weapons and programs. Awesome game.
I'd have to give second place to syndicate for the Genesis. I still remember the radioactive contamination mission where it was cheaper for the corporation to eliminate citizens than fix the problem - and your team is used to implement the solution... heh.
I was just going off of Genesis games though. For PC I'd have to go Fallout all the way. Heck, I played primarily just on Tatooine for over a year just to have that scavenger post nuclear war feel. I could honestly care less that the SWG tag is on this game. I just went to Dathomir and Endor this week for the 2nd or 3rd time each since I started this game - I can't stand lively green planets. Give me grit in my teeth when I wake up, flat warm Jawa beer, and a dirty Twilek dancer any day of the week. It's easy to imagine the game as Fallout in those conditions. For people who haven't played Fallout, if you've seen Mad Max or any of that series - just imagine it as a video game, but meaner and grittier.
Saarek
Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:53 pm
#7
LOL Syndicate.
I have that game for PC - dont run on WindowsXP tho. DOS only game i think. Required a boot disk...
Cooter_Scylla
Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:59 pm
#8
Yeah, it came out before Genesis. It actually had decent graphics and pretty neat missions especially for the era it was made in. If you want to talk about way back, there is always Wasteland... can't remember too much about that one anymore other than mutant bunnies.
Oh! Buck Rogers for Genesis - was hard to find but a really really cool game. I know, I know... Buck Rogers... but it was really an awesome game. AND you even got to build your ships up and hijack other ships in space - and actually board them. That's sad when a 16MB console cartridge has better quality than one funded by two major corporations... (Buck Rogers cheated too... no matter how many times I'd get him surrounded by bad guys and launch missiles at enemies right next to him, he would be able to dodge out of the room and behind my guys without a scratch - exploiter...)
Golrok
Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:13 pm
#9
the graphics were the best for its time. it was like isometric I think so we considered it 3D.those were good sobertimes- 91 or something. Phantasy Star 1 was good also.
i was so hooked on syndicate the few times i played it. it wasported for PS1 but is now nearimpossible to find. same with X-com UFO defense- cant find it anymorefor PS1.
Message Edited by Golrok on 06-30-2005 04:15 PM
EnderUK
Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:21 pm
#10
Fallout and Fallout 2 are awesome, I do prefer Fallout 2 though, Syndicate is also an awesome game.
maxtheusher
Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:25 pm
#11
I need to get ahold of the Fallouts, for some reason, despite my love of the good old fashioned post-apocalyptic rpg/adventure games (Full Throttle anyone?) they somehow slipped past my radar...
Ekul05
Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:26 pm
#12
Was one of the most enjoyable RPG's that I've ever played. I remember trading in my SNES ( or was it NES back then ? ) after playing it on that, and then finding that the one on Genesis was a completely different game.
To be honest, always thought it would make a great MMORPG world, but hey, it never was the uber-popular game, I think it flew under the radar a bit.
Cooter_Scylla
Thu Jun 30, 2005 4:28 pm
#13
Was Phantasy Star the one with all those different characters you could team up with and as they leveled you could could make choices as to which elite direction they would go? Like I remember one where I had a turtle guy on my team I named "Morty" - he pretty much always sucked but always made me laugh when he got killed in fights.
OR, was Phantasy Star the one where you play a character for their lifetime, choose which queen to marry and have a new quest under the offsprings lifetime? I think it went for like 3 or 4 generations - pretty neat as the offspring had skills depending on the choices you make AND you could run into ruins and areas that had things from their ancestors.
Shining Force was a pretty neat game too. Why do rogues always have to be a rat type character? I mean it's neat to be a ninja rat or rat thief, but can't they be a little more creative and make us like a geko or a lemur or something...
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