Captain Blood

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Captain Blood was originally designed and released for the Atari ST, having wonderful graphics, sound effects and awesome intro music. You play the role of a games developer, trapped inside his own computer game (quite original huh?). Inside this game, Captain Blood was cloned into 5 different species. Now you must travel across space, visit various planets and discover the rest of his clones in order not to let him transform into a machine forever. You must correspond with a variety of aliens and gain their trust. The communication with the alien species can be accomplished via an icon-based interface known as UPCOM. The UPCOM consists of around 150 different icons, each representing a different concept. As each alien race discovered speaks its own language and reacts differently, you must learn how to negotiate with them by mastering the UPCOM concepts, in a style that suits each race. Captain Blood is a really unique formula, a well executed game that sports some nice graphics, an impressive music and great action and strategy!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The ST visuals are good and the colors are mainly based on blue. Nevertheless, the game shows some more colors (in fractal shapes flashing around the screen) when you warp into other planets. The animation is smooth and the main interface quite user-friendly. The ST version's sound consists of many digitized sound effects -including a robotic voice that provides important info and instructions during gameplay- plus a fantastic intro music, a mixed version taken from the sci-fi score Ethnicolor, composed by the great musician Jean Michelle Jarre.