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Comment by ffhhj | Hacker News Reader

This could have been an amazing screensaver, or even the world of a AAA Karateka game.

My uncle was a prolific PC software pirate in the 80's, and I remember finding a french game in his collection that I've never seen again. Maybe it was actually a demo or prototype, that used the VGA palette in an incredible way with metallic reflections. Nothing that I saw for many years used those graphics until games started using prerendered 3D, and even those didn't look as impressive. I regret not saving a copy.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Blood_(video_game) ?

Looks nice, but it's not that one. The metallic surfaces could have been similar to the bottom alien hand (cursor?) in that screenshot, but I remember those looked way better:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/Captain_Blood...

I think it was a demo because it only had an animated intro I didn't recognize from other games, a menu, and the game was a plataformer with a large sized alien or android that could walk and shot. But it restarted (or crashed?) after a few seconds.

More input Stephanie, more!

lol. Yeah, the intro was a rotating metallic object. It used the blue to orange gradient giving it a steel look. I remembered it had this sound of buzzing metal (Transformers alike) which should have been an advanced effect for the PC speakers. The game itself didn't have much content to it, other than the (female?) metallic android, the gradient sky and simple terrain. I guess these elements had so much detail because of their large size.

Here's the answer that ChatGPT gives to this riddle; it thinks that it must be the 1991 game Metal Mutant by French developer Silmarils:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOl_fBWIuac

The video seems to match your description quite well!

Wow, that's it! But I still think that I played a leaked prototype of that game, because it didn't have any other details like the vegetation, and the rotating cube didn't transform into the game's title. Great to see they actually finished it! lol

So, Metal Mutant (1990-1991) came before Flashback and Legend of Kyrandia (both 1992). I can't recall a previous game that has such impressive artwork. It seems they modified the gradient from blue-orange (sky-desert reflections) to colors that match the environments, which makes it kind of monochromatic. So the prototype looked even better as I recall.

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Metal_Mutant_1991

Yes, I don't recall the game myself. But I recall Flashback. I had an Amiga at the time, but not a PC until a few years later. 1991 probably was about the time when the PC started to catch up to the Amiga in terms of graphics.

I like how ChatGPT can be used to to do fuzzy "queries" like this and come up with the right answer:

https://chatgpt.com/share/4cfcffdc-48e3-4780-a55a-091836c79c...

It guesses wrong to begin with, but then I give it the additional information that the game is French, and it gives me the right answer.

See Living Worlds: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/worlds/

There's a iOS and Android app: https://pixfabrik.com/livingworlds/

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