Back in the day, together with my good friend Alexander Lentjes I would spend many, many hours developing games that we hoped would take the world by storm. Unfortunately, we were both 12 and our skills were not nearly sufficient to develop anything good (actually, I’m speaking mostly for myself here). At the time, our great example was Space Quest III, and we desperately wanted to make a clone.

We had made several forays into developing a 3D-animated adventure game (called The Pirate Encounter – and it was actually conceived before The Secret of Monkey Island), but after piles of unfinished prototypes we decided to do a text adventure with static graphics, like the games that Level 9 used to produce at the time. Our company was (and still is) called Procurion 9.

The game was Awakening, and I have recently been able to decode its BSAVEd 4-colour CGA graphics. These were done by Alexander Lentjes, where he was limited to four (very ugly) CGA colours and had to use a self-written graphics package that only allowed him to plot one pixel at a time (there was no flood filler…). By the way – the application I wrote to load BSAVEd CGA images can be found here.

It’s the not too remote future. Scientists have discovered that a meteor is on the way to earth, and will destroy all life on the face of the planet. All proposed solutions to the impending catastrophe have failed, and there remains but one thing to do: make sure that the human race can go on. To this end, a man and a woman are buried deep in an underground base, there to remain in cryostatis until the earth’s surface has recovered enough to support life. The man is you, your partner is Eve.

Many years later, the meteor comes and actually misses the earth by a fraction. The people rejoice, but the underground Adam and Eve are forgotten. This is not to say that the human race does not meet its eventual doom: it survives the meteor impact only to enter into a global thermonuclear war, which ends all (intelligent) life at any rate.

More time passes and you awake from your cryosleep, but prematurely. As it turns out, Eve’s cryochamber is failing and she will die if you do not find an electronic chip to replace the broken one. You’ll need to leave the underground base, but the surface situation is certainly not ready to sustain life. There are zombies, radioactive rats, and other things that will kill you if you’re not careful...

In the cryofreezer chamber. Star Trek sliding doors check.

In the cryofreezer area. Complicated computer terminals abound with room for additional components

Underground base corridor. Evidently, over the years, the roman alphabet fell into disuse.

Underground base corridor. Oooh, a locked door!

Another door in the underground base

In the elevator. Yes, it's radioactive.

On top of the elevator. Has someone been playing with the counterweight again?

Underground base, upper level

Underground base, upper level. Yes, that's a mirrored image.

Yet another door

Radiation suits – don’t forget to don one

Cinema – this is where you get the game story

Leaving the underground base

Escape shuttle – naturally, it’s broken

Leaving the underground base

A pool of liquid (radioactive!)

Ruined streets

Bloody tracks

A bomb crater

No game complete without a public phone (555-6969!)

A street

More street, more radioactivity

Of course, as is traditional in game of the 90s and in good Sierra tradition, there were lots of ways to die and have to restore your game.

Bitten by a rat is another way to go

Zombies. It’s got to have zombies.

Thus ends the game...