Page 10 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #21 Free Edition

BRIAN MCNEELY: POWERSLAVE
(JUMP, SHOOT AND) WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN BY Patrick Hickey, Jr.
First-person shooters were all the rage in the ‘90s, mainly because they were different. They weren’t arcade shooters, light-gun shooters, or platformers, genres that had all been done to death by that time. Thanks to games the likes of DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D, there was a ton of developers that saw in the genre an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon. While there were a plethora of weak copycat FPS games out there (even cereal brands the likes of Chex and Cap’N Crunch designed their own FPS games to try and cash in), Lobotomy Software’s Powerslave was a unique, fast-paced shooter with a cool storyline that is undeniably different from the ton of other games in the genre available at the same time. Although there was never a sequel in the series and low sales (thanks to poor marketing and a limited number of copies available) on the PlayStation hindered its legacy, it remains anything but a DOOM clone. Add in a design team that consisted of Ezra Dreisbach (Champions of Norrath), Dominick Meissner (Days Gone
and Assassin’s Creed: Rebellion) and Brian McNeely (Quake and Duke Nukem 3D) and it's easy to see how influential the game is to the genre.
Thanks mainly to its sense of speed, a banging musical score, cool assortment of weapons and abilities, sometimes brutal difficulty and fun story, Powerslave felt different from other games in the genre, but had enough already cemented FPS sensibilities to be recognizable to those addicted to the style of gameplay. Fighting off aliens and mummies in the Egyptian city of Karnak, you’ll have to jump, swim, and run through caves and temples - and do it all through narration by legendary voice actor Don LaFontaine. With items to collect through the gun- slinging journey and a pair of endings, Powerslave was an under-appreciated title that proved more could be done within the constraints of the first-person
view. It’s safe to say that, in its own way, Powerslave laid the groundwork for games such as Fallout 3 and Metroid Prime.
But way back in 1994, at the time of the game’s devel- opment, Powerslave’s goal wasn’t to be iconic, but to be different and fun. Seeing the first-person shooter genre as an avenue to be explored more, McNeely and his team had to work for years before they were even close to having an opportunity to do something that ambitious, however. “I was working at Lobotomy Software, where I was one of the co-founders of the company and the director of our creative works. I was also heavily involved in game design and art asset creation,” McNeely said. “In our early days, we dreamed of developing an original game from the ground up. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the luxury of choosing exactly what we wanted to work on, so we took anything that came our way to keep the studio running. Some of
Brian McNeely and friend parting the waves.
10 OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #21