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The Chaos Engine is a top-down run and gunvideo game developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Renegade Software in March 1993.^[1] The game is set in a steampunkVictorian age in which one or two players must battle the hostile creations of the eponymous Chaos Engine across four landscapes and ultimately defeat it and its deranged inventor.

It was first released for the Commodore Amiga, with a version available for AGA Amigas, and later ported to MS-DOS, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari ST, Amiga CD32, RISC OS and Sega Mega Drive platforms. In the SNES and Megadrive versions, the character The Preacher had his clerical collar removed and was renamed The Scientist. The U.S. versions of these two ports were retitled Soldiers of Fortune. A sequel to the game, The Chaos Engine 2, was released in 1996.

Plot[edit]

The setting is a steampunk Victorian era England. A time traveller on a reconnaissance mission from the distant future became stranded in the England of the late 1800s, and his technology came into the hands of the Royal Society, led by Baron Fortesque (based upon Charles Babbage), a grand inventor. Fortesque then retro engineered many of the futuristic contraptions, creating an entirely different, alternate timeline.

Baron Fortesque then succeeded in his greatest creation yet: the Chaos Engine, which was able to experiment with matter and the very nature of space and time. Unfortunately for the rest of the proud kingdom, the Engine then proceeded to become sentient, captured and assimilated its creator, and began to change the countryside for the worse. Vile monsters and destructive automata appeared everywhere, and even prehistoric beasts were resurrected. Telegram wires connecting the British Isles to the European mainland are cut, and any ship attempting to enter a British port is attacked. The British Royal Family, members of Parliament and a large number of refugees manage to escape across the sea, bringing with them many tales of horror. The British Empire is left in tatters, and the world in economic and political chaos. That lures a number of mercenaries on a potentially-rewarding quest to infiltrate the quarantined Britain, find the root of the problem and swiftly bring a full stop to it.

At the end of the cellars in the hall of machines, the player characters face the Chaos Engine itself in a last battle. Upon its destruction, the narrator of the game is revealed to be the baron himself, trapped within the machine and studded with implants.

The introductory sequence is displayed in text on the screen on the floppy disk Amiga versions, but a slightly modified version is narrated with a voiceover on the Amiga CD32 version, together with some scene-setting animations.

Characters[edit]

Players choose two mercenaries from a group of six to take on the task of defeating the mad Baron Fortesque and the Chaos Engine itself. The playable characters have various qualities that affect gameplay, such as speed and combat ability. The players are provided with a certain amount of money to start the game and must hire the chosen characters at their set prices.

In one-player mode, the computer artificial intelligence controls the second player, so that one never has to fight the chaos alone. Control of characters cannot be swapped once chosen. It is possible to play with only one character, by starting a two-player game and letting the enemies kill the second character.

Navvie and Thug[edit]

The Navvie and Thug are the strongest and most expensive of the group. They have the highest health and most destructive specials but are slower than the other characters. The Navvie uses a bazooka, which fires straight ahead and does heavy damage; the Thug uses a shotgun, which is less powerful than the bazooka but fires many shots in a wide angle.

Brigand and Mercenary[edit]

The Brigand and Mercenary are the all-rounded characters and have a mid-range price. Though they are slightly weaker than the Navvie and Thug, they have access to more specials and can move faster. The Brigand uses a rifle, which works the same as the Navvie's bazooka but is not as powerful. The Mercenary uses a Gatling gun that operates similarly to the Thug's shotgun, but with a different pattern.

Gentleman and Preacher/Scientist[edit]

The Gentleman and Preacher are the least expensive, with the highest movement speed and widest selection of specials; however, they have the lowest health. The Gentleman uses a flame pistol, while the Preacher carries a laser. Their shots are weaker than those of the other characters, but can pass through enemies after hitting them.

For the North American release, the Preacher character was redesigned slightly and renamed as the Scientist because the game's North American publishers felt that a priest killing people was offensive.^[2]

Gameplay[edit]

The players must traverse through each level, picking up power-ups, gold and keys to pass through the various puzzles and mazes. A number of 'nodes' must be activated via weapon fire (or special power) to open the final doors at the end of each level. At the end of every second level the player has a chance to spend their collected riches to upgrade their weapons, increase the number of hit points of their character, purchase new items and improve other character attributes.

Development[edit]

Developers included Steve Cargill, Simon Knight, Dan Malone, Eric Mathews and Mike Montgomery. Joi composed the title theme and Richard Joseph composed all other in-game music.

The game was inspired by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's novel, The Difference Engine, and its basic plot and stylistics are both based on the novel.^[2]

The game's coder developed the partner AI by observing play-testing of the game, then coding the AI according to his observations of the player's behaviors.^[2]

The game was later ported to consoles. In order to fit the soundtrack into the Super NES's audio memory, which is much smaller than the Amiga's, Joseph both used standard compression methods and put all the note data and drivers in the console's main memory, reserving the audio memory for samples.^[3]

Beta version[edit]

An early version of the game was previewed on the British TV show Gamesmaster, and some screenshots were featured in Amiga magazines of the time. The early version was reportedly 'running on an Amiga 3000' and featured simultaneous three player action.

Reception[edit]

Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the Super NES version a 6.8 out of 10, summarizing it as 'A decent overhead shooting game in the spirit of Technoclash and Gauntlet.'^[4] They gave the Genesis version a 6.4.^[5]GamePro remarked of the Genesis version that 'Overhead-view gunfighting has never played better', citing the heavy challenge, solid controls, and use of teamwork. They criticized the sprites as overly small, but also noted that the sharp artwork ensures that it is still easy to make out what is happening on screen.^[11]

Fortuner Game Download Mod

Reviewing the computer version, Computer Game Review's Tasos Kaiafas wrote, 'For the price, this a must-buy if you like two-player arcade shooters, especially since another one for the PC may not come along for awhile.'^[7]

Remake[edit]

A remastered version of the game of The Chaos Engine, essentially a widescreen port of the Amiga AGA version (named AA version in the title screen) with the original intro and music intact, was developed by Abstraction Games and released for Windows, Mac and Linux on August 29, 2013.^[12] The game retains all gameplay features, the audio and the graphics of the original.^[2]

The remastered version adds the option to play a remote two-player game through Steam. There is also a global high score list, and two optional graphics effects: a softening filter to alleviate the low-resolution pixelated graphics and a bloom effect on selected parts of the game graphics.

References[edit]

1. ^https://web.archive.org/web/19961030092837/http://www.bitmap-brothers.co.uk/sychaos.html
2. ^ ^abcdLocke, Phil (December 2013). 'Creating Chaos'. Retro Gamer. No. 122. Imagine Publishing. pp. 71–73.
3. ^'Making Tracks: The Noble Art of Game Music'. Next Generation. Imagine Media (3): 50. March 1995.
4. ^ ^ab'Review Crew: Soldiers of Fortune (SNES)'. Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 54. Ziff Davis. January 1994. p. 44.
5. ^ ^ab'Review Crew: Soldiers of Fortune (Genesis)'. Electronic Gaming Monthly. Ziff Davis (55): 40. February 1994.
6. ^Mindscape International Catalogue(PDF). Mindscape. 1993. p. 14.
7. ^ ^abSnyder, Frank; Chapman, Ted; Kaiafas, Tasos (August 1995). 'It Would Be Total Chaos!'. Computer Game Review. Archived from the original on December 21, 1996.
8. ^ ^ab'No Business Like Show Business'. GamePro. No. 57. IDG. April 1994. pp. 8, 60–61.
9. ^Amiga Power magazine issue 64, Future Publishing, August 1996
10. ^Mega magazine issue 26, page 74, Maverick Magazines, November 1994
11. ^'ProReview: Soldiers of Fortune'. GamePro. No. 53. IDG. December 1993. pp. 64–65.
12. ^'Here's what the new Chaos Engine looks like'. Eurogamer.net. 30 August 2013.

External links[edit]

• The Chaos Engine at Bitmap Bros.

Finance, or The Fascinating Game of Finance or Finance and Fortune, is a board game originally released in 1932. The game is based on The Landlord's Game in the movement of pieces around the board, the use of cards, properties that can be purchased, and houses that can be erected on them. The game also has railroads; however, these may not be purchased. The game is a predecessor to Monopoly.

Overview of game[edit]

The game begins with each player on 'Cash Here' with $1925. Properties clockwise around the board begin with low value to high value purchase prices, with costs for additional houses and rents also increasing. Players move again on doubles, with no limit on numbers of doubles that may be thrown, and if a player lands on another player, the original player moves back five spaces, with the same effect as if the player had landed on that space originally. Players may trade properties or sell them back to the bank, but may not mortgage property. If a player is unable to pay, all their property is returned to the bank, and the player is out. The game continues until only one player is left. An alternate rule establishes a time limit and players total up their wealth.

History[edit]

Finance[edit]

Finance was created by Dan Layman who played, with Louis, Louis and Fred Thun's version of the auction-monopoly games that had been spawned from The Landlord's Game at Williams College in Reading, PA. When the Thuns wanted to patent their game they found the Landlord's Game patent and only copyrighted their rule additions (additional railroads own double rent, Community Chest, paying $50 to get out of jail). With the Monopoly name and game then in the public domain, Layman decided to call the game Finance.^[1] With L. S. Ayres & Co.^[2] then Electronics Laboratories, Layman published the game for a year before selling it to Knapp Electric for $200.^[1] Initially, the game was sold in small black boxes (some of which came with poker chips for money) with four different versions of the rules. Otherwise, it was almost identical to Monopoly including Chance and Community Chest cards.^[2]

It is said that Layman taught Ruth Hoskins, who moved to Atlantic City and played it there using local Atlantic City streets. One theory on the street names chosen is that these were the streets players lived on with a couple of later changes of South Carolina to North Carolina and Arctic to Mediterranean.^[2] Pete Daggett Jr., a friend of Dan Layman, actually taught Ruth Hoskins. Hoskins then moved to Atlantic City to teach school in 1932 and created the Atlantic City version in the late 1930s with her friends. Eugene and Ruth Raiford, friends of Hoskins, showed the game to Charles E. Todd, a hotel manager in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Todd introduced Charles and Esther Darrow to the game. The Darrows were occasional hotel guests; Esther was Todd's former neighbor.^[1]

With Parker Brothers taking over for Darrow in publishing his Monopoly game in 1935, Parker Brothers purchased Finance from Knapp for $10,000. Parker Brothers changed Finance so it was less similar to Monopoly and published it under the Finance Game Company name in 1935. Parker Brothers made additional changes in 1936 and published it with the Parker Brothers name.^[1][2]

Fortune[edit]

During 1935, Parker Brothers was developing its own version of Monopoly, Fortune,^[1] in case its deal with Darrow and the patent fell through. Almost an exact copy of Monopoly, Fortune had only 10,000 copies made due to the deal with Darrow working out and was only published to keep the trademark to the name. Also in 1935, Finance outsold Monopoly.^[3]

Finance and Fortune[edit]

Fortune Game Apk

With Parker Brothers wishing to hold on to the trademark on Fortune, the second version of Finance by Parker Brothers was named Finance and Fortune. With its 1958 edition, the game's name reverted to Finance as they developed a new marble game having the 'Fortune' name. The last known version was printed in 1962.^[2]

Known changes[edit]

Known changes between the original and the Parker Brother editions:

Cyrus Open Up Where The Game Fortune

• removed Community Chest
• dropped colored property groups^[2]
• Rent chart card^[4] replaced the Property Cards^[2]
• colored standard pawns^[2] changed to colored different shaped pawns^[5]
• properties renamed^[6]
• property purchase prices increased^[6]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcdeBellis, Mary. 'Monopoly, Monopoly: Part 1: The History of the Monopoly Board Game and Charles Darrow'. ThoughtCo. About.com, Inc. Retrieved 22 February 2012.
2. ^ ^abcdefgh'Finance'. Monopoly History. World of Monopoly. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
3. ^Anspach, Ralph. 'Game Evolution'. The Board Games. antimonopoly.com. Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
4. ^Smidt, David. 'Rent chart'. Finance and Fortune board game record. boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
5. ^Smidt, David. 'Box contents'. Finance and Fortune. boardgamegeek.com. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
6. ^ ^abFinance at BoardGameGeek

• Orbanes, Philip (2006). Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game-- and how it Got that Way. Da Capo Press. pp. 9–10. ISBN0306814897. Retrieved July 5, 2015. The Landlord's Game.

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External links[edit]

• Finance at BoardGameGeek
• Fortune at BoardGameGeek