CyberMage: Darklight Awakening demo

1995 · shooter · MS-DOS · Origin Systems, Inc.

Here is the demo for a 1995 game that, unless you were familiar with Electronic Arts and its catalog or got your news regularly from computer gaming magazines then, you are unlikely to ever have heard of. That game is CyberMage: Darklight Awakening by Origin Systems, a first-person shooter designed by David W. Bradley, known for his work in Sir-Tech's Wizardry role-playing video game series. As one can imagine, it is a cyberpunk-themed first-person shooter in which the galaxy has come to be dominated by corporate conglomerates warring for world domination as they genetically engineer new species. After the titular character sacrifices himself to save an alien from a nasty fate, the alien decides to revive him by embedding a mystical gem called Darklight in his forehead. As CyberMage seeks to resolve the corporate crisis, the human-turned-cyborg fights impossible forces. Fortunately for him, that Darklight gem endows him with a superpower that, in addition to 12 conventional weapons and four Darklight Icons to pick up, will help him overcome the odds. Notably, the game is packed with role-playing elements, not least of which is that CyberMage can walk over his slain enemies and inhale the smoldering blue fumes to either restore or permanently increase his health or Darklight energy, as well as up to seven other Darklight superpowers. This demo contains a single level that appears as the training mission in the full game. According to the DEMO.TXT file, CyberMage infiltrates a "secret combat training facility", where he blasts corporate minions with a tank, then grows his Darklight powers at "a temple of mystic fanatics" before stealing a gunned flying car and penetrating the enemy fortress to verify that the villain of the game is behind the base's operations. This game did not become a blockbuster hit, and I only learned about it early this morning on RGB Classic Games , where I downloaded this shareware. I may be able to explain in three points why CyberMage: Darklight Awakening is so obscure. My theory's first point is that the hardware requirements were demanding, recommending the pricey Intel Pentium processor at a time when most computer gamers had at best a much more affordable 486. Put in perspective, when this shareware was released, the cheapest Pentium still on the market, clocked at 75 MHz, retailed for $184, while the 486DX2 was beginning to sell for double digits . Concurrently, the most powerful CPU on sale, the Pentium 133 MHz, cost an eye-watering $694 , and yet the game would still suffer a few frame drops in SVGA mode without shrinking the window size. The game's success was thus beset by gamer apathy for such an investment. It was just too early to upgrade. Speaking of "too early" brings me to my theory's second point: timing. As well as technologically, CyberMage was conceptually ahead of its time, maybe too far ahead. With an innovative focus on storytelling over pure action—a trait that would gradually define many shooters up to this very day—the first-person shooter broke from the id Software-pioneered premise of running from point A to point B and gunning down everything that moves. For whatever reason, that failed to catch on among gamers then. Maybe players simply wanted to jump into the action. Maybe they figured that the gameplay would be too complex or the game otherwise overpromising. In any case, it certainly failed to garner a wide appeal, which is my third point explaining this game's lackluster commercial performance. CyberMage was rated M by the ESRB for "Animated Blood and Gore" and "Mature Sexual Themes". The violence here is not as intense as high-profile shooters in the 1990s. It lacks splatter effects and looks T-rated in retrospect. As for the sexuality, there is none in the shareware version , but I can understand why it would turn away potential players. Besides, the sexuality added little to the plot and came off as gratuitous. As for this demo, I will be the first to admit that it is okay. While blending in role-playing elements is a novel approach to the fledgling first-person shooter genre, I found the experience to be clunky and tedious. Part of it is that the shareware, by fault of its programmers, is sensitive to the speed of the computer's CPU. I purposefully capped the emulation at the speed of the Pentium 133 MHz as a compromise between smooth gameplay and ensuring that the game does not run too fast. The player, especially in SVGA mode, can change the screen size with the [ and ] keys as needed. Speaking of keys, be sure that you pull up the help menu with the / key every now and then, because you will need to know what on Earth the controls are (forward + Ctrl to jump?). They cannot be remapped, but at least that's only in the demo. As an extra layer of clunk, you can strafe and circle your foes with ease, but good luck strafing and walking backwards at the same time, which you cannot. All this adds to the tedium. The bad guys, as formidable as they can