Many games made during the 90s took advantage of the familiar point-and-click template. It allowed stories to be easily told, action sequences to play out rapidly. A once lost treasure from Westwood Studio’s, Blade Runner, has recently resurfaced and can now be easily enjoyed on the PC.
This game’s rebirth is due to the diligent work of ScummVM development community. Blade Runner the video game was originally released back in 1997 and was created by Westwood Studios. The studio does not exist anymore leaving ancient relics like this forgotten in the depth of the internet.
You play as the role of Ray McCoy as you embark on an investigation into a cyberpunk world. The game’s adventure is largely randomized and scattered with the danger of replicants. The game randomly decides which characters in your story are artificial and which are real, subtly changing how they act as you progress.
Mixed into this world are NPCs that don’t follow a scripted role in the story. They instead move around in real-time based objectives branching narrative pathways and opening the possibility for different endings. The game is much more than simply a dystopian cyberpunk society, in many ways it is alive.
Back in its day, the game was hailed as an instant classic. Sadly the slow pace of technological advancement has made the game difficult to play. To load anything from the 90s it takes a level of technical understanding that is beyond many fans of this game.
This is where ScummVM comes into play. This piece of software has made it possible to play classic LucasArts games on modern systems. This was being used way before publishers realized there was a market for remastered versions of games.
It took eight years to reverse engineer the engine and build it as part of ScummVM. It then took another three before it was ready for testing. As of last Friday, Blade Runner is now officially supported and playable on ScummVM.
The game is available for free download from the ScummVM main site. This means that if you are one of the fans who have been looking at reentering the world of Blade Runner you no longer need those old CD-ROMs. There may be a future where this game is officially released from EA, but till now you can experience it on modern systems using ScummVM.
There are many other games available on ScummVM so be sure to check out their site and see what is available for your nostalgia burst.
