October 29th, 2007
“Another World,” Another Time
Not so long ago, “Another World” was re-released. The game first appeared in 1991, but I had never played it. I loved “Flashback”, a title very similar visually, and because of that sometimes mistakenly called the sequel to “Another World”.
Some time last year Eric Chahi released the game with updated graphics. It still has its distinct style, but now the graphics are more detailed (hi res). Especially the backgrounds. I downloaded the demo and was blown away. Great atmosphere. You can buy the game for 7€ which is dirty cheap for a game. In Poland “Another Wold” is also available in retail; with some extra goodies in a box (short video with interviews with people involved in the game’s creation, soundtrack CD, a postcard and a little book). I ordered mine on Tuesday, got it on Friday.
The most distinguishing feature of “Another World” is its animation style. Back in the early 90s, the pre 3d era, animation was done with a series of bitmaps, swapped every x milliseconds or so. But in another world characters were animated with vectors. I always wanted to know how exactly it was done. I mean, motion capture was not a standard equipment in game production, yet. You can read about how Eric Chahi did it on the official page.