William Shatner’s Tekwar, launched manner again in 1995, was precisely the form of recreation you’d anticipate to see from a gathering of minds as good as Ol’ Bill Shatner (baffler of evil computer systems, aspiring author of phrases) and Capstone Software, the studio behind such classics as Surf Ninjas and Terminator 2: Chess Wars. It mixed stilted FMV Shatner monologues, incoherent stage design and extra bugs than you possibly can shake a cyber-stick at.
It stands to cause, naturally, that there’s a mostly-complete engine port, permitting the sport to be loved at fashionable widescreen resolutions on no matter cutting-edge machine you employ on your modern-day manshoots. A nice(?) side-effect of Blood’s revival on modern machines due to the efforts of Russian modder and coder Alexander ‘M210’ Makarov.
In all equity, Tekwar was not a recreation with out ambition. Breaking from FPS custom, it was extremely non-linear. You’re tasked with assassinating seven high-tech drug lords, every one holed up in a hideout someplace in a large metropolis, its a number of districts related by a subway system. While this sounds attention-grabbing on paper, the end result is among the most complicated and directionless shooters of its period, with every map being a sprawling mess of buildings full of oft-identical FMV-sampled goons, turrets, androids and holograms, with little sense of the place try to be going. Imagine Duke Nukem 3D’s very worst keycard hunts on a large scale and also you’re midway there.
Owing to each the open-plan nature of the sport and the wonky Build engine’s dealing with of shifting atmosphere objects, first-time gamers will probably lose many hours of pointless wandering and dying to Tekwar, with roaming buses honesty being a larger menace than any gun-toting minion. Even public transport is waits for no man within the grim future-world of Shatner’s creativeness. The recreation additionally implores you keep away from murdering civilians, regardless of most of them attempting to gun you down too if given half an opportunity.
Thankfully, speedrunners have managed to trim the expertise all the way down to a slightly more palatable 10 minutes, 34 seconds, the whole latter-half of devoted to the much more baffling and nonsensical Cyberspace stage that makes up Tekwar’s finale. Sadly this additionally entails skipping the Shatner-tastic FMV sequences of him standing in entrance of a vaguely cyber-esque wanting backdrop whereas paraphrasing excerpts from his cheesy (and ghostwritten) sequence of sci-fi detective novels.
If this sounds just like the retro expertise you want in your life, my condolences. But should you should expertise Tekwar on fashionable machines due to the marvel that’s TekwarGDX, you’ll first want a replica of the unique recreation. Unfortunately, no person has seen match to re-release the sport since its unique debut again in 1995 (probably on account of it being a manufacturing of three long-defunct firms; Capstone, Intracorp and US Gold) so that you’ll should supply it your self. Luckily, it’s not exhausting to trace down both via frequent abandonware circles or on eBay, the place unique CDs tends to hover underneath the $10 mark.
There’s additionally a 3rd GDX-series port within the works, trying to make Capstone’s FPS/RPG hybrid Witchaven extra palatable for contemporary machines. While not fairly as incoherent as Tekwar, I’d nonetheless wrestle to explain it as an excellent recreation. Still, it’s good to see this stuff preserved and made useful once more, even when they serve solely as object classes in how to not design a shooter.
