$rescue on fractalis$

Once you've found all the pilots in a sector or you're running out of fuel, you return to orbit on the mothership. But beware! In later levels, a jaggie is used instead of a pilot. If you reach the stranded pilot, you land with him, collect him and let him board. During the flight you have to make sure that the lasers don't catch you from the mountain walls. You also have to pay attention to your fuel consumption with the radar you can determine the pilots who have crashed. You fly through mountains and valleys and have to defend yourself against lasers, UFOs and missiles. You take off from the mothership and go from there to the planet, where you try to save the pilots. So you have to fight your way to the pilots.

$rescue on fractalis$

The problem with this is that the planet's surface is controlled by the jaggies. You control a newly developed Valkryrie fighter with which you should rescue the pilots who are on the planet. A transport ship is sent from Earth on a rescue mission. On the planetary fracture Fractalus, the battle is over and many crashed ceramic warships are there. According to head developer David Fox, this shock moment made Rescue on Fractalus! 'the first game to really scare people'.Humanity is at war with an alien race called 'Jaggies'. This, along with an unpredictable pause between the human/alien approach and the tap-tap/alien jump makes for a very tense experience. However in later levels the aliens evidently learn to don the human helmet and become identical in appearance. In early levels, the Jaggi can be distinguished by their green heads versus the white human helmets. Likewise, inadvertently letting a Jaggi pilot into the player's ship has disastrous results - it begins to dismantle the ship. Unless the player restores the ship's shields, the windscreen cracks open and the pilot is killed. After landing near a downed pilot, the player watches him run off-screen, and then has to wait for several tense seconds-if it were human, the familiar, frantic 'tap-tap' noise would be heard from the ship's hatch otherwise, the alien Jaggi would suddenly jump back into view, sans helmet, roaring and trying to smash into the cockpit. Failing to open the door kills the pilot his knocking on the hatch becomes at first frantic, then slower and more feeble as he perishes in the corrosive environment.Īs an amusing twist on this relatively straightforward premise, added at the suggestion of George Lucas, some of the 'pilots in distress' are actually hostile aliens in disguise. The downed pilot then disembarks his crashed ship, runs down to the Valkyrie's cockpit, and knocks on the crew entry door the player can then open up and let the pilot in to complete the rescue. Turning on the engines prematurely would incinerate the exposed pilot and the sheilds would prevent him from entering the ship.

$rescue on fractalis$

This makes it imperative that the player rescue pilots as quickly and efficiently as possible.Īfter landing within sufficient 'walking' proximity to the pilot, the player shuts down the engine, also turning off the ship's shields. An exposed pilot's survival time outside his craft is less than a minute, due to his flight suit and helmet literally dissolving.

$rescue on fractalis$

The thick atmosphere is sufficiently acidic that downed pilots' craft were being slowly disintegrated. The way to replenish this supply is to rescue downed pilots who bring their remaining fuel supplies on board. Night missions are particularly difficult, requiring diligent use of the altimeter to avoid crashing.įlying consumes fuel. The mission area also moves into day/night boundaries. Due to the varied terrain, the direction finder has to be used to locate the pilots, whose visual beacons are often masked by mountain ridges.Īt higher levels, the enemy Jaggis begin flying kamikaze saucers. Some of these mountains hold anti-aircraft guns, which have to be avoided or destroyed. The player controls a fictional 'Valkyrie' space fighter (converted for search and rescue duty) from a first-person view, attempting to land and pick up downed Ethercorps pilots. The game utilizes fractal technology to create the craggy mountains of an alien planet, where the visilibility was drastically reduced by the dense atmosphere.

$rescue on fractalis$

Rescue on fractalis