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Out of this World

post #1 of 38
3/16/08 at 3:00am
Thread Starter 



Either you've played it or you want to. A.K.A. Another World, this is one of my favorite games of all time and one of the best for the Super NES. I know it was originally on the Amiga and PC and such, but I grew up with the Super Nintendo version with cheesy (and sometimes creepy) music and bizarre alien languages. I always secretly wanted to see a film version of this, starring Eric Stolz.

If for some reason some of you have never played this game, here are some more screenshots to get you to:







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post #2 of 38
3/16/08 at 3:07am
This just reminds me of Flashback. I kept get killed by the damn snake.
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post #3 of 38
3/16/08 at 3:43am
Out of this World was a phenomenal game. The fluidity of the graphics on the SNES was a sight to behold, and I loved the way it told a story without dialogue to speak of. It was a real eye-opener in its time. I'd be afraid to see it now, though. I doubt it can live up to my memory of it.
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post #4 of 38
3/16/08 at 3:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by James May View Post
This just reminds me of Flashback. I kept get killed by the damn snake.
I think Flashback was by the same team.
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post #5 of 38
3/16/08 at 3:49am
I always dug the end of this, when Lester has to crawl to get to the switch to kill the boss.
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post #6 of 38
3/16/08 at 4:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg David View Post
Out of this World was a phenomenal game. The fluidity of the graphics on the SNES was a sight to behold, and I loved the way it told a story without dialogue to speak of. It was a real eye-opener in its time. I'd be afraid to see it now, though. I doubt it can live up to my memory of it.
Yeah, the animation was so damn good for it's time, screenshots really don't do it justice. The style always reminded me of Prince of Persia, I wonder if any of the same people worked on both games.

Flashback was great too, but Out of This World was on another level, if you ask me, and less conventional. Damn, I want this game on the Wii VC, like now.
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post #7 of 38
3/16/08 at 5:08am
Damn this game. I could never get out of the cage in the first level or so. But yeah, this and Flashback were wwaayy ahead of their time.
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post #8 of 38
3/16/08 at 5:24am
Thread Starter 
Eric Chahi, the man behind the story, music (I think), and pretty much everything else with the game had nothing to do with Persia or Flashback. Persia was before this and Flashback after, but I really like how this is so cinematic.

Chahi also did the insanely (insanely insanely) underrated Heart of Darkness for the Playstation.





Since then he's gone into seclusion claiming he hates how monotonous games have become. He had a site up not too long ago with a redux of Another World for the PC. Revamped graphics and music and such. It's nice to look at, but the atmospher isn't the same. I wish he'd make another game.
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post #9 of 38
3/16/08 at 5:32am
The Wikipedia page has some interesting tidbits. And no, apparently he didn't do the music himself.

According to the entry, this was built on a vector graphics engine, and was the first 2D game to use polygons instead of sprites, which would explain the smoothness of the animation. It's also the first game I can remember having context-sensitive controls.

Here's the official site. Looks like there's a downloadable high-res collector's edition. I may have to trip down memory lane.
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post #10 of 38
3/16/08 at 5:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZombieFever View Post
Damn this game. I could never get out of the cage in the first level or so. But yeah, this and Flashback were wwaayy ahead of their time.
With the alien guy? You swing back and forth until the thing breaks off. It wasn't that hard.

I could never get past like the third or fourth bad guy that had the gun. Always zapped me before I got charge up the gun.
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post #11 of 38
3/16/08 at 7:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg David View Post
The Wikipedia page has some interesting tidbits. And no, apparently he didn't do the music himself.

According to the entry, this was built on a vector graphics engine, and was the first 2D game to use polygons instead of sprites, which would explain the smoothness of the animation. It's also the first game I can remember having context-sensitive controls.

Here's the official site. Looks like there's a downloadable high-res collector's edition. I may have to trip down memory lane.
Weird, I wonder why they renamed it in the states. It's not like the names are that different. Maybe someone somewhere was afraid "Another World" would imply it was a sequel or something.
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post #12 of 38
3/16/08 at 7:37am
Thread Starter 
Yeah I got mixed up/forgot that the music was the only thing he didn't do. For the main character he actually used motion capture on his brother, and I knew the thing about the polygons. Always loved the look of it.

And the name change was because there was a soap opera in the states with the name Another World at the time. They didn't want anyone to...get confused. According to wikipedia, a science fiction sitcom called Out of this World came out the same year as the game, probably causing a bigger level of confusion than the former.

I played the demo of the revamped one. It runs real smooth, but if you're used to the SNES version it's best to just get an emulator or an old system. Even though the SNES version has some terrible slowdown, I'm too used to the unique music in that one.
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post #13 of 38
3/16/08 at 8:10am
I used to play this on my 486. I loved the matter-of-fact fatal errors, like getting your shin nicked by those gelatinous worm thingies or being snatched up into a cave ceiling by tentacles that go 'munch munch munch' and drip your blood. And the first time I was turned into a charred skeleton that crumbled, I just laughed.
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post #14 of 38
3/16/08 at 8:21am
My boss brought a copy into work once - said it was one of the best games ever, and I simply stared on in awe - clearly another generation of gamer, I could never keep up with that.

The underwater bits were brilliantly frustrating.
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post #15 of 38
3/16/08 at 9:25am
I played this, Heart of the Alien, and Flashback last time I dragged my Sega CD out of storage.

It is my sincere regret to inform that they.....have not aged well.
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post #16 of 38
3/16/08 at 12:04pm
Am I the only one who thinks this game basically just plain sucks? I like the way it looks, and I enjoy a lot of unintentional humor that the difficulty provides, but that is about it. I don't know how people can say that this game isn't absurdly difficult. There are far too many situations where the only way to move on is to do an incredible amount of trial-and-error where you end up dying 100 times before you figure out what you are supposed to actually do. That said though, my favorite part is when you break free from the cage, and your new alien friend says "My Tuba!" I know that he really says "Let's Move!", but I like to imagine that it isn't.
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post #17 of 38
3/16/08 at 12:15pm
"Monsoba!"
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post #18 of 38
3/16/08 at 12:57pm
One of the first games i played on the Pc. Loved it as a kid. The controls and the storytelling seemed great.


That HD version for download looks interesting... mmhh..
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post #19 of 38
3/16/08 at 1:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flaparoo View Post
Am I the only one who thinks this game basically just plain sucks? I like the way it looks, and I enjoy a lot of unintentional humor that the difficulty provides, but that is about it. I don't know how people can say that this game isn't absurdly difficult. There are far too many situations where the only way to move on is to do an incredible amount of trial-and-error where you end up dying 100 times before you figure out what you are supposed to actually do. That said though, my favorite part is when you break free from the cage, and your new alien friend says "My Tuba!" I know that he really says "Let's Move!", but I like to imagine that it isn't.
Why would the difficulty be a bad thing? Christ, some people really do want things too easy. It's a challenge, if you're crap - fine, but trial and error is part of how these games were meant to play. You figure things out!
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post #20 of 38
3/16/08 at 2:10pm
When it comes down to it, 90% of games are trial-and-error, even moreso back then. That seems like a silly thing to complain about to me.
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post #21 of 38
3/16/08 at 2:21pm
If we want to get really deep, we could say most of life is trial-and-error.

But we won't
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post #22 of 38
3/16/08 at 4:08pm
Yay, the first password-protected game I ever hacked.

I remember being totally awed by the opening animation sequence. That, and I died about 10 times before I realized you had to press the 'up' button to get away from the control desk at the very beginning of the game.

Wonderful game all around, though, and at the time, the ending was the most satisfying gaming experience I'd had at the time. I recently played the high-res version, which essentially changes around a lot of the backgrounds, while the characters remain largely the same. It's totally worth it, though.

This and ''Flashback" were two of my favorite games in high schools.
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post #23 of 38
3/16/08 at 4:34pm
I never, ever played this game and I always wanted to. I'm not familiar with the game's history. Is there any chance this will come to Virtual Console?
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post #24 of 38
3/17/08 at 12:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bees?! View Post
Why would the difficulty be a bad thing? Christ, some people really do want things too easy. It's a challenge, if you're crap - fine, but trial and error is part of how these games were meant to play. You figure things out!
I don't mind a challenging game, and in fact I like when a game is challenging. This game however is frustrating instead of challenging. Challenging would require to actually become somewhat more skilled at a game in order to progress; something like Ninja Gaiden comes to mind. Frustrating is when there is no skill involved at all and the vast majority of deaths are caused by things you couldn't have possibly predicted. If the controls were fluid in the least, this wouldn't be as much of a problem as it is, but the controls are pretty bad.
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post #25 of 38
3/17/08 at 12:22am
Which platform did you play the game on? I had no control issues on the SNES.
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post #26 of 38
3/17/08 at 12:56am
I played it on SNES. When I talk about the bad controls, I guess I'm referring to the way in which you had to jump. An awful lot of situations required precision jumping, and it was such a pain in the ass to pull them off generally. I suppose the controls technically do work as they should, they just aren't as fluid as they should have been considering what was required of you.
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post #27 of 38
3/17/08 at 1:54am
Thread Starter 
I always chalked it up to Lester being a very clumsy character. The fact that he's shitty at running and jumping kind of added to it for me. It can get kind of cheap, but I can only recall 3 parts which were incredibly frustrating/anger inducing. The laser battles were sometimes fucking impossible, as you had to kill an entire army of Sloth-mutants.
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post #28 of 38
3/17/08 at 2:45am
Was his name Lester? That's funny because he actually controls a lot like another SNES game, Lester The Unlikely. I don't expect many people to have played that game, but it was similar in how jumping worked in that you have to be standing in the exact right spot or else you will fail.
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post #29 of 38
3/17/08 at 4:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dean Stockwell View Post
I always chalked it up to Lester being a very clumsy character. The fact that he's shitty at running and jumping kind of added to it for me.
He was a physicist, after all. I expect that most scientists thrown into an alien world to fight for their lives wouldn't last very long. Unless fighting for their lives meant competing for high score in Desktop Tower Defense or something.
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post #30 of 38
3/17/08 at 6:16am
That's pretty much what I thought too - the whole point of this game was that you weren't playing an action hero - there was nothing, no communication - to tell you what to do.

So you figure the puzzles out, even if it requires attempting a jump in several different ways at different times.

Saying that, there is a skill to it. I've seen people who grew up with the game play it now who finish it with little or no lives lost.
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post #31 of 38
3/17/08 at 1:58pm
That was the nature of games back then. For a story driven game like this, if it was easy, you'd be done with the game in no time. Unfortunately, for games like this, amping up the difficulty, like the timing of jumps, was a way to lenghten the games playtime.

Now, a few years back, I played this again on an emulator, and got stuck at the same part I did when I played the original, in the tower with the light (I think). I wonder if there's footage on the web of this being played thru to the end. I'd like to see that.
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post #32 of 38
3/17/08 at 3:51pm
Late to the thread, but yeah, this game (and the others mentioned) were an absolute blast.
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post #33 of 38
3/17/08 at 3:59pm
Part 1 of speed run

Part 2
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post #34 of 38
3/17/08 at 4:59pm
Great memories of this game, I was absolutley blown away by the animation and the way the story was told. And this was the game that actually got me to go out and buy the SNES. I remember the whole process at Toys R Us circa the '90s, retrieving the paper slips from the gaming aisle, paying, then taking my receipt to the pick-up window. I was pretty darn excited at the time, and was not the slightest bit disappointed when I finally got to play this game.
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post #35 of 38
3/17/08 at 7:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin Clark View Post
I played this, Heart of the Alien, and Flashback last time I dragged my Sega CD out of storage.

It is my sincere regret to inform that they.....have not aged well.
Heart of the Alien was the sequel to Another World/Out of this World, right?
I think it was only released on the Sega Cd, so i never got the chance to play it.
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post #36 of 38
3/17/08 at 7:57pm
I was watching that youtube speedrun video and I'll be damned if Feargus Urquhart wasn't one of the testers listed in the credits.

Small world.
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post #37 of 38
3/17/08 at 8:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Hughes View Post
That's not so much a speed run as it is a speed shitloat-of-hopping.
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post #38 of 38
3/17/08 at 10:28pm
This thread prompted my immediate purchase of this game on Ebay.
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