What is Your Alternate Reality?

I’ve been banging on about ancient 8-bit RPG Alternate Reality since the last SquadCast now and am finding the process of revisiting it with an adult’s mind (i.e. one that understands what an RPG is) equal parts addictive and frustrating. The reason for this is that Alternate Reality itself is an incredibly ambitious game with very grand designs… yet its difficulty level at the outset is absolutely maddening… and yet (again) this difficulty level makes it incredibly addictive. You start think that if you could just get a little further… or if you hadn’t tried to punch that knight in the face while not wearing any armour… things would be better.

At this point, let’s pause for a typical playthrough from beginning to inevitable early death. Strap yourself in, we’re going to another world.

It’s a typical day in the city. Perhaps I’m on the way to work, or on my way to meet a friend. But disaster is waiting just around the corner, because…

Holy shit! Aliens! AAAAHHH!!

And now they’re abducting people! Interestingly, I’m not the only one abducted… it looks like the ship picks up three others. (I’m not sure if these other three people are ever mentioned… or perhaps it’s a reference to the fact you have four “save slots” on your character disk)

Uh-oh… we’re leaving. But where are we going…?

Ah, yes, space. Of course. They are aliens, after all. Wait a minute, I know how we can lift our spirits…

A little sing-song! Maybe this won’t be so bad…

As the song ends, two sets of big scary doors slam shut and I’m locked in a green room where I am invited to “become a new person”.

When the doors slide open again, I’m in front of a gate with a force field over it. Numbers rotate over the gate. As soon as I step through the force field, the numbers freeze in place, defining who I am to be in this new world.

There’s a flash of… lightning? Static? Something, and then…

Apparently I am “joined”, and ready to enter an alternate reality.

(In the subsequent loading break, you have to swap disks twice unless you have more than one drive. You thought you had it rough with JRPGs.)

And here I am at the Floating Gate, ready to begin my adventure. You’ll notice my statistics are distinctly average. From left to right, we have Stamina, Charisma/Charm, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Skill/Dexterity. These have a potential initial maximum of 21, so Stamina, Charisma and Skill are pretty good, but Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom are pretty feeble. Fortunately, Skill is probably one of the most helpful stats early in the game, as it allows you sufficient mobility to avoid attacks from early enemies.

So, first job? Find a weapon. You begin your adventure in the city of Xebec’s Demise with only the money given to you by the strange portal at the beginning, no equipment and only some basic clothing. Fortunately, your starting area is the City Square, with the Floating Gate in the middle and shops all around. So, let’s take a look.

A smithy, huh? This sounds promising. I know he’s in at the moment, too, because I can hear him hammering away inside. (And yes, you actually can. This is just one of the cool “environmental effects” that you hear throughout your travels). So, let’s pay him a visit.

(Single-drive users can expect a disk swap at this point.)

The Best Armorers, huh? Sounds expensive. However, as the smith seems quite happy to stand there singing while I browse his wares, I take my time and consider my options carefully.

7,424 coppers? I was right, this place is expensive. In fact, there’s nothing I can even nearly afford in here. I tell him to forget it rather than risk offending him by making him a paltry offer (which might make the smith reluctant to deal with you in the future, when you could potentially afford his wares – one of the many things that AR keeps track of in the background). I step back onto the windy streets, still distinctly lacking in equipment. Time to explore.

As I leave the Best Armorers, it starts raining, which makes it difficult to see where I’m going and slows me down. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes. But at least I haven’t run into any ne’er-do-wells as yet.

Spoke too soon. A wandering zombie notices me but doesn’t have time to act. I don’t fancy taking it on in my current state, so I run for it. Fortunately, I managed to get away before it was able to do anything unpleasant to me.

A little further down the road, I surprised a rabid-looking Giant Rat. I elect to leave it alone as I don’t fancy adding a disease to the list of my woes. It’s still early days in this strange place.

After a little exploring (and a Hobbit surprising me, then running away without saying a word) I hear the sound of a smithy again… but there’s no doors in this building. Curious. I press against a wall and find myself slipping straight through it. A secret door!

Sure enough, it’s another smithy. Occums Weaponsmiths, to be precise. It’s cheaper… but still way out of my price range. Curses.

Outside, it’s still raining, and worse, I run into a Goblin. Desperate, I try and sweet-talk it into stepping down and maybe giving me some of its treasure and equipment. The conversation doesn’t go well, with the Goblin responding to my polite request by trying to stab me. This place is just like Southampton. Maybe I haven’t gone anywhere at all.

I respond in kind to the Goblin by punching it in the face. It’s a feeble attack, but at least it connects, which is more than can be said for the Goblin’s attacks. With my high Skill, I nimbly avoid and parry all of his blows and manage to knock the foe to the ground without sustaining any injuries myself. Unfortunately, the Goblin doesn’t seem to be carrying anything of value. I do, however, gain a total of 59 experience points from the whole encounter.

Night falls, and it’s still raining. I surprise a Fighter in the street, but he looks tough so I decide to avoid him while he’s still surprised. I begin to think it might be an idea to try and find somewhere to spend the night. It’s clear the City is an inhospitable place, but I imagine this becomes even more apparent in the night-time.

In search of an inn, I get mugged by a Skeleton. What a bastard. Fortunately, I manage to get away before he can attack properly. But how much did he steal…?

I check my pockets. Fortunately, I don’t seem to have lost anything irreplaceable, and I still have a few copper coins to my name. Enough to spend the night somewhere, hopefully.

I encounter a Dwarf a little further down the road. I’m not sure if he’s friendly or unfriendly, so I decide to turn on the Charm and see what he has to say about that. Bizarrely, he dies. I think this is AR’s way of telling me that this was a successful encounter, not that my tongue was so silver he simply collapsed and died in wonderment at my words. Possibly. Whatever actually happened (and I guess we’ll never know), I now have 205 experience points. Not yet enough to reach level 1 (You have to earn level 1! The indignity!) but a step closer, nonetheless.

A Troll shows its face next. It looks scary, so I try and disengage from it and escape. I do so, but not before it steals some of my water and food. This isn’t going well.

For a worrying moment, despite working with a map (an absolute necessity, as this was, of course, the days long before automapping) I think I’m lost, and I haven’t bought a compass yet. Fortunately, I get my bearings shortly afterwards and manage to stumble my way to the doorway of Mom’s Bar, where the giant rat I ran away from earlier (possibly) is waiting for me. The rat tries to steal some more of my food and water then tries to bite me, but I dodge it and duck into the bar to get out of the rain.

The bartender informs me that the band are on a break, but invites me to watch a dwarf dancing. Since I’m hungry and thirsty, I decide to take him up on his offer and sit at the bar watching the dwarf and listening to his quirky music.

I order some water and a food packet to take with me. This only costs me a few coppers, fortunately, and should give me enough sustenance to get through the night… I hope. I step back out of the door. I wonder if it’s stopped raining yet…

It has. But it’s still dark and I need a place to sleep. I stumble through the city streets some more, pausing only for another giant rat (the same one again?) to steal the food packet I just bought.

Eventually I come across a welcome sight – a door marked “Inn”. Unfortunately, as I reach for the handle, I’m attacked by a Gremlin. I ask it very politely if it wouldn’t mind awfully stepping aside if it would be so kind, and it dies at my words, finally giving me enough experience to reach level 1. Not only that…

TREASURE! The Gremlin drops a potion. I can’t work out what it is, but it tastes dry and is red in colour. I decide not to quaff it right now just in case it is deadly poison, which is entirely possible in this harsh world. The Gremlin also drops a shield, which looks “mundane”, apparently. I pick it up and wield it on my off-hand, not caring that I look ridiculous wielding a shield but not a sword. Cutting a rain-drenched yet distinctly self-satisfied figure, I barge into the Green Boar Inn.

I elect to spend the night on the common room floor as despite having my first taste of acquiring treasure, I’m not exactly flush with cash. I hand over 10 coppers and spend the night on the floor, asking to be woken at 9am the next day.

(Aside: This is, I think, the longest I’ve ever survived. It figures that the one time I decide to show you a “typical playthrough” and make reference to “inevitable early death” I’m here for ages.)

I step outside the door and give a charming greeting to a passing commoner. The commoner is obviously in a bad mood and promptly stabs me in the stomach. I try and apologise, but he stabs me again, so I run away, bleeding a bit. I’m also now very hungry and very thirsty. Time to pay that tavern another visit.

Seriously hungry and thirsty now, and my stats now starting to drop from thirst, I impulsively spent my remaining coins on food and drink – some grape juice, a couple of food packets and some chocolate cake. When I leave a few hours later, I’m still thirsty but I’m not hungry any more. Plus I enjoyed the band’s song.

Back on the street, the sun is setting (Already? I must have been in that tavern longer than I thought) and I encounter a Thief. I charm him successfully and take his two pieces of silver that he was carrying – this equates to twenty copper pieces. It paid for the chocolate cake if nothing else.

Incidentally, reading the official guidebooks and cluebooks for The City indicate that successfully Charming someone is indeed killing them – you pretend to be their friend then stab them in the back. So to the Dwarf I met earlier… uhh… sorry! This is something you have to be careful of in your time in the City. Encounters fall into three categories – Good, Neutral and Evil. You can safely do whatever you like to Evil creatures. Attacking a Neutral creature (and these include most of the humanoid ne’er-do-wells such as thieves and fighters) first before they do anything to you is considered an evil act… and tricking or charming a Good creature is a very evil act. As you might expect, dropping your reputation in this way is a sure-fire way to get the whole city pissed at you.

In a case of art mirroring life, I find myself “very thirsty” again, much as I am feeling now, sitting here writing this with a sore throat. Keen to prevent my already feeble statistics (in-game) from dropping any further, I head back to Mom’s Bar to rehydrate myself.

I order three glasses of water and sit at the table for a while, sipping them. It’ll be time to sleep again soon, which should help me recover the injuries I sustained with my ill-advised encounter with the Commoner earlier. The band sings an entertaining if unnerving song about not going into bad parts of town at night for fear of being set on fire.

I stagger out of the tavern and head back towards the inn. Perhaps tomorrow will be a more productive day.

I wake up and, once again, I’m hungry and thirsty. Time for breakfast at Mom’s Bar.

Unfortunately, I get jumped by a Swordsman outside the inn. The swordsman steals all my coppers then cuts me up with his sword. Fortunately, he proves easy to Charm. I hold my hands up in truce until he comes over, then I snap his neck. Unfortunately, he seems to have eaten my coins, so I’m now penniless, hungry and thirsty.

I’m not proud of what I do next. I use my not-inconsiderable skills of persuasion to “convince” a passing Courier to part with what he was carrying. Unfortunately, he was the walking equivalent of a white van with a “NO TOOLS ARE KEPT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT” sign posted on the back, as he is carrying nothing but a bitter-tasting potion which disappears in a puff of smoke when I attempt to quaff it.

I do hit level 2, though, so it’s not all bad news.

I’m reaching desperation point now. I come across a Fighter and attempt to sweet-talk him out of some coins. This fails and I get hit again. I manage to run away before too much injury is done to me, but things are starting to go downhill.

Saved! I find another tavern – this one called the Misty Mountain. But they want three thousand copper coins before they’ll let me in. Given that I don’t have any copper coins whatsoever, I am quickly ejected from the premises.

I begin to feel that my demise might be on its way. Death is peering over my shoulder. I slink back onto the street, dejected, weary and very thirsty. I manage to dredge up a food packet from my pocket to satiate my hunger for the moment, but there’s no water anywhere to be seen.

Unable to help myself, I stumble into the path of a robber and attempt to beat him back, but I fail. He takes my last remaining possessions and runs away. By now I’m parched and starving, and I can feel myself weakening moment by moment. I must cut a pitiful sight.

I collapse somewhere around the city’s walls and am confronted by a guard. My attempts to mug the populace out of desperation have not gone unnoticed, it seems, as he attacks me without warning. By now, I am grateful for the attention. I put up some meager resistance but secretly, within, am hoping for the sweet release of death as this existence has become too difficult.

I am slain by his greatsword and crumple to the ground, never to be heard from again.

Alas, I am dead.

So there you go – in slightly longer format than I anticipated, but never mind.

Alternate Reality: The City is one of those games that is infinitely better when you treat it much as I did above – as a “playground” where you make your own story. This is largely because the game has no aim as such – partly due to its design, and also partly due to the fact that the whole series was never finished – a crying shame, as the whole series had a huge amount of potential.

For the unfamiliar, the series was originally planned to be split into several interconnected volumes – The City (and the Dungeon beneath its streets), The Wilderness, The Palace, The Arena, Revelation and Destiny. Only The Dungeon ever made it out onto shop shelves – as a separate game rather than part of the original City package. The Dungeon had much more structure and actually had an “end” too – or more specifically, a point that clearly led onto the final two chapters, Revelation and Destiny.

Revelation and Destiny were the interesting-sounding ones. Towards the end of The Dungeon, the player character was supposed to acquire a keycard, which could be used to enter the Revelation area where everything suddenly became a bit more futuristic. The player would find themselves walking the corridors of an alien spacecraft, looking out through windows into a dramatic spacescape, while Destiny would allow the player to finally discover the truth – that abducted humans had been placed into a form of suspended animation within “cocoons”, each living out their own parallel life in the city of Xebec’s Demise and its surroundings.

Hold on a minute, you might think. This all sounds a little bit familiar. A bit Matrix-y if you will. And you’d be right.

Philip Price, author of the series, claims he once met a pair of movie directors who wanted to discuss Alternate Reality. It’s never been verified whether or not this was the Wachowski brothers, but there are certainly plenty of similarities between the two series, and it makes a nice story for geek folklore nonetheless. It’s a crying shame that Price never got to realise his ambition, however, as the whole thing would have been a magnificent achievement had it come to fruition.

As it is, The City and The Dungeon stand as two extremely interesting (not to mention playable and addictive) curios – role-playing games that were many, many years ahead of their time that arguably could finally have their original intentions fulfilled nowadays. It would certainly be interesting to see Bethesda working on a re-imagining of the series. But I guess we’ll never know.

Some great info and links on Alternate Reality can be found here and here. Check it out. Oh, and here’s that glorious intro sequence in full – a five-minute long intro on a 48k machine isn’t bad going, is it?