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Alternate Reality:The CityParadise Programming, 1985Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Amiga, Apple II, DOS, C64 and MacintoshIn 1999 PhilipPrice and GaryGilberson teamedup again to createan MMO calledAlternate RealityOnline, but theproject wascanceled due tolack of funds.The charactercreation screen,where yourstats and wealthare rolled. Thegraphics werequite impressivefor the time.26Created by Philip Price, Alternate Reality wasoriginally planned as an ambitious seriesof seven scenarios – City, Dungeon, Arena,Palace, Wilderness, Revelation and Destiny. The Citywould be patched by subsequent scenarios, creatinga huge, seamless adventure. Sadly only the first two –The City and The Dungeon – were ever released.Kidnapped by an alien spaceship, you find yourselfdropped into the hostile city of Xebec’s Demise,fighting against the elements and a wide variety ofinhabitants from thieves, robbers and noblemen tofantastical creatures of the night as well as trying tounderstand why you were abducted.As you step through the doorway of the spaceshipthe spinning numbers above your head will rollyour initial statistics within the world of AlternateReality. As well as the traditional Strength, Stamina,Skill, Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence, the gamefeatured a number of additional statistics about thecharacter, such as hunger, drunkenness and exhaustion,which remain hidden from the players. Even 30years later there’s still discussion about the impactstats have on events and certain types of encounters.You explore a large city (64x64 squares) througha small first person window in the center of the screen,using either keyboard or joystick. Unlike Wizardryand Bard’s Tale, which used relatively simple 3D viewswhich “jumped” as you moved to each map square,Alternate Reality provided full colour textured wallswhich scrolled smoothly by as your character movedfrom one map square to another.Combine that with other graphical effects suchas numerous sprite animations, day & night cycle,rain and flashes of lightning and you have a gamewhich was graphically and aurally way ahead of itspeers. It made use of the Atari 8-bit unique strengthsto achieve some special effects, such as maximizingthe number of colours on-screen, that programmersfound challenging to port to other computers lateron. It’s elaborate opening sequence (almost 5 minuteslong and with a theme song), movie-style credits andcareful sync of sound and image were novel featureswhich only became common many years later.The music by Gary Gilbertson is memorable andwell employed. There’s a variety of songs for speciallocations and events – including a Game Over song –with lyrics appearing on-screen. During encounters,the type of music can be used to determine the natureof the encounter and how hostile it is likely to be.With the absence of any defined quests withinThe City, your goals are simply to develop a characterwith powerful stats, obtain high quality equipmentand amass sufficient wealth so that you mayhave a chance to survive in future scenarios. This isdone through encountering the city’s inhabitants anddefeating them in combat, though wealth can alsobe increased through the use of variable rate bankaccounts although a higher interest rate also meansthere is a higher risk of you losing your money!