Epic

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The Sun is about to turn into a Supernova and humans are evacuating their home planet via large spaceships. Unfortunately the best escape from disaster leads straight to the territory of the Rexxon Empire and this is considered as an act of war! You're the best fighter pilot around and your fate is to protect the human kind by flying one of the most advanced "Epic Class" space-fighters! The game starts with a wonderful intro that shows the story via great visuals and a really great soundtrack. The game offers eight different levels in full 3D that take you either in deep space or over a planet's surface. Each mission has a time limit to complete and usually involves destroying assigned targets or protecting the humans' space fleet from incoming Rexxon fighters. Before each mission, briefing is done by the Fleet Commander's Headquarters. The controls and the action is exactly the same as in a typical fighter-pilot simulator where you fly the Epic fighter from inside the cockpit. The cockpit shows a few digital instruments (speed, heading, shield etc) for your navigation.

NOTES
Extra missions were released only for the Amiga version several months later and were given through a cover disk from "The One", a UK video games magazine. Also, a sequel titled "Inferno" was released exclusively for the MS-DOS in 1994.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
EPIC offers wonderful 3D environment of great detail and smooth animation for its time. The Atari ST version uses a nice color palette, slightly different compared to the original (Amiga) and MS-DOS versions. The ST version is also a bit slower compared to the other two 16bit counterparts. The game's visuals are taken from the (excellent) F-29 Retaliator flight simulator (released in 1990 by DID/Ocean). All visuals are viewed in 3D and consist of a mix of colored polygons and bitmaps performing astonishing screens of animated objects. The ST sound is also cool, with an incredible, orchestral intro music (but of lower quality compared to the Amiga version) mixed by the famous David Whittaker. The original tune is taken from the "The Planets Suite", a masterpiece composed and offered by Gustav Holst. The game also includes some other cut-scene tunes as well as several in-game sampled sound effects (laser/missile firing, explosions, spaceship thrusts etc).

GAMEPLAY VIDEO
On our compilation video we have included the Atari ST, Amiga and DOS versions of the game.