Dark Seed (video game)
| Dark Seed | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Cyberdreams |
| Publisher(s) | Cyberdreams |
| Artist(s) | H. R. Giger |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Amiga CD32, DOS, Macintosh, Sega Saturn, PlayStation |
| Release | 1992 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Dark Seed is a computer game in the adventure game genre. It was developed and published by Cyberdreams in 1992. It exhibits a normal world and a dark world counterpart, which is based on the artwork by H. R. Giger. It was one of the first adventure games to use high-resolution (640 pixels wide) graphics, to Giger's demand. A sequel, Dark Seed II, was released in 1995. The original game was released for Amiga, Amiga CD32, DOS, Macintosh, Sega Saturn and PlayStation. Both console versions were released only in Japan, with the Saturn version being compatible with the Sega Saturn Mouse. There was also a version developed for the Sega Mega-CD and even promoted for American release, but publisher Vic Tokai never released it. An unlicensed version was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in Chinese.
Story
The main character, Mike Dawson, is named after lead designer and producer Mike Dawson, who also appears as the character's sprite. The fictional Mike Dawson is a successful advertising executive and writer, who has recently purchased an old mansion in the small town of Woodland Hills. As soon as he moves into the house, he falls asleep and has a nightmare where he finds himself in a place called the "Dark World" where it is inhabited by inhuman creatures called "Ancients". They forcefully hold Mike down and use an alien machine that implants an object called a "Dark Seed" into his skull. After Mike wakes up, he has three days to solve the mystery of the town before the "dark seed" erupts from his brain and the "Ancients" take over the real world.
As the game goes on, Mike discovers that events in the normal world reflect in the darkside. Using the Ancients' power nexus, he energizes a loose stone and combines it with an axe handle he received earlier that day to make a hammer. He returns to the normal world, fills the dilapidated car in the garage with scotch, and starts it with keys he found under the loose stone. Returning to the darkside, Mike launches the Ancients' spaceship, foiling their plans. He returns to the normal world and, with the mirror portal to the darkside now de-energized, he smashes it, preventing access to the normal world.
Mike then answers the door, and finds the cute librarian he met earlier there. She says she was drawn to him, but finds it even odder that she found a vial of pills in her purse, made out to him, for treatment of severe headaches. Her face then briefly morphs into that of the Keeper of the Scrolls, a friendly alien who aided him earlier, and he realizes that the pills will kill the alien embryo. Mike replies that he's just starting to understand.
Legacy
Dark Seed is notable for its impressive graphics.[citation needed] Unlike most adventure games, which give the player time to explore, almost every action in Dark Seed has to fall within precise time limits, or the game will end up in an unwinnable state. As a result of this as well as the game's frequent crashes, one must start over repeatedly to win without resorting to a walkthrough.
An urban legend spread that the intense pressure of designing Dark Seed gave lead designer, Mike Dawson, a mental breakdown. However, he actually left the games industry after completing Dark Seed and moved into television writing until the late 1990s, wrote two books on programming (Beginning C++ Game Programming and Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner) and is teaching game design and programming classes at Stanford University and UCLA.[1]
References
External links
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