Captain Blood

"It is Him! Him who has been in our offices for months... He who comes
 from outside the Universe. He that we reveal today to the world,
 because the hour has come. I name Exxos."

    - From Philippe Ulrich's Exxos announcement litany
      (translated from French)

Captain Blood is a 1988 video game created by ERE Informatique (soon relabeled with their short-lived Exxos label) and published by Infogrames. The game was first released on the Atari ST, later for the Commodore 64, Macintosh, Amiga, Apple IIGS, IBM PC, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Thomson TO8 / MO6.

It was developed jointly by Didier Bouchon and Philippe Ulrich, both contributing design and scenario, and Bouchon graphics and programming for the Atari ST version. Bouchon originally designed covers for ERE informatique's Gazoline Software label, but he learned to program in assembly language for the Atari ST after Ulrich provided him with an assembler. Bouchon then created fractal-generated realtime graphics that inspired both to do a sci-fi inspired video game.

After ERE's absorption by Infogrames in summer of 1987 (partly justified by preliminary versions of Captain Blood), Ulrich and Bouchon isolated themselves in the Landes in order to have the game ready for Christmas. Many adaptations for both 16-bit and 8-bit machines were developed in successive months, although they were straight ports of the original Atari ST version in graphics, sound effects or music.

Captain Blood's trippy intro screen

Captain Blood's H.R. Gieger-esque ship

Captain Blood's large procedurally-generated galaxy

Captain Blood's OORXX baby piloting segment

Captain Blood's alien interrogation segment

Playing It

The ST version is widely considered to be the best version because it is the only one that includes the full set of alien language sounds. If you do not have/wish to emulate an Atari ST, the PC and Amiga versions are the next best alternatives.

Novella

The Captain Blood novella came only with the full version of the game, and explains the bizzare backstory behind the events of the game.

I have created a .txt copy of this novella which you can read here.

Captain Blood

Playing It

Novella

Links

Reviews