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From: uzdb0025@sable.ox.ac.uk (Bill Bennett)
Subject: Re: What is Neuromancer?
Message-ID: <1995May23.185910.27972@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk>
Organization: Oxford University, England
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Date: Tue, 23 May 95 18:59:10 BST
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Vassili Bykov (vbykov@CAM.ORG) wrote:
: Hi all,

: I keep hearing about the game called Neuromancer. Can anyone tell me what
: is it? (No, don't tell me about Gibson's novel). What system is it for? Is
: it close to the book? I am a fan of Gibson, and this game really intrigues
: me. By now, I haven't heard anything but the name, and I couldn't find it
: anywhere. 


Interplay wrote the graphic adventure, Electronic Arts published it in about
1991 for the Amiga - I have no info on other platforms, but I'd be really
surprised if it didn't come out for the PC.  Totally unavailable now, AFAIK - 
I had a really hard time locating a copy for the Amiga only a year or so after
it came out.

Is it any good, I hear you ask?  Well, yes and no.  The graphics are crude and
blocky, 16 colours lo-res, and are rather bright and cartoony - not very
evocative of the Chiba city of the novel, to say the least.  However...  the
gameplay is excellent:  A conventional "travel around the locations, talk to
people and pick up useful items", coupled with a strong element of hacking
and puzzle-solving.  You spend the first half of the game unearthing various
linkcodes and passwords to gain access to various databases, the bulletin
boards give important clues, and the software libraries allow progressively
more powerful tools.  Eventually, you gain a cyberspace-capable deck and
enter cyberspace.  Graphically disappointing, but very engaging, you now
attack the databases direct from cyberspace with ice-breaking software and
do battle with the ICE and with the malevolent AIs which inhabit some of the
DBs, culminating with the mighty Neuromancer.

Overall, a technically crude, but absorbing graphic adventure, with a lot of
scribbling notes and cross-referencing all sorts of titbits of info.  Unique,
atmospheric, really good, but rather easy.  Plotwise, not particularly close
to the book, but with lots of elements nicked fairly directly from it. 
And don't expect cyberspace to look anything like as exciting as you probably 
imagine it if you've read the novel :-)

Bill Bennett
CRC Growth Factors Group, Oxford

# The most horrifying thing about Unix is that, no matter how hard you keep
# hitting yourself over the head with it, you never _quite_ lose 
# consciousness.  It just goes on and on.
