The greatest game that no one played. It just came out at the wrong time I suppose. At least it's finally starting to get some recognition these days. I still have my copy but I might throw a few bucks at GOG to have it in my library there. It's sort of what the original Heavy Gear should have been instead of just a MechWarrior 2 knock off. That said, Heavy Gear II does come closer to what this game is.
This game was epic. Brought new ideas to the table. The 3D effects and graphics were too much for many computers to handle in its day. Shattered Steel might have been a Mechwarrior knock off but was also influential with destructible environments and a more action type approach. As soon as Mechwarrior 3, Starsiege, and Heavy Gear 2 came out in 1999 we had 3 of the most awesome mech games ever created. This game definitely helped set a high standard 3 years before.
Just FYI, Looking Glass actually self-published Terra Nova, which is why there's no other studio listed. Between funding development completely in-house and self-publishing the game, this is why Terra Nova almost put LG out of business; There was no bigger publisher/studio to help absorb the costs. And because the game wasn't a huge hit, the promised multi-player add-on was abandoned. Shame, because Terra Nova was such a great game and literally created the squad-based sci-fi combat genre that Tribes and other titles capitalized on.
I loved the one ambush mission where you attack a convoy. I perfected having the demo lay explosives and then another mortar and mop up the remaining enemies. Loved this game and still have the CD!
Thanks alot for this video! This is one of my nostalgic games I've been meaning to re-visit :) After exiting the game, I remember there was a counter showing me how many trees I destroyed. Might've only been in the shareware version though.
+Joonas Loppi I forget if the full version does this too or not. Terminal Velocity was another game which tracked how much "Green" you destroyed, aka "Greenery" ;)
Brings back a lot of memeories for years I couldn't remember what it was called as I no longer had the box. Now looking forward to playing it and wish they'd release a sequel or remaster the old game ! My fav all time game next to likes of Dungeon master and Eye of the beholder .
A little information about the game; the reason that Terra Nova did not list a publisher is that it was entirely self-funded and published by Looking Glass, themselves. They licensed the distribution out to third-party distributors/managers.
The mission briefing song is one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever. The only problem is I just cannot find a decent sample of it online. All of the UA-cam listings are for the Roland sound card version, and it just doesn't sound as good.
I think I picked this up from Electronics Boutique for £2. Inside the box was a flyer proclaiming "Multiplayer add-on coming soon!" I loved exploring the whole map to find secret enemies, even if the dropship pilot did bitch at you a lot.
+K.o.R Oh yeah, the maps were HUGE in this game compared to how little of them you typically needed to traverse. For instance, the single-mission demo version normally runs you down a fairly linear path, but if you break off and take a LONG trip towards a corner of the map you normally wouldn't go near, you get to a small lake which lets you taste the reflective water effects which don't appear anywhere else in that demo! :o
The demo I had had three missions: Brickdagger, Flashlight and Citadel. Brickdagger had a single pirate tower plus guards in the very very corner of the map, plus a couple of patrolling pirates about halfway between it and the mission area. Flashlight had an entire pirate depot with a couple of squads and several passive vehicles to smash up. Can't remember any secrets in Citadel, but it took me ages to find the _one_ remaining group of sentries.
+K.o.R Yup! I remember a long while back when I was talking to a friend of mine about the demo for this game and he was mentioning squad mates and I was like, "I... I don't have any squad mates...", and that was when it started to dawn on us we were both talking about DIFFERENT demo versions! ;)
Yeah, the release state of these games is almost never constant, so while the videos are representative of the state of the game when the video is made, that can change and it's one of the main reasons why I have an "Additional Info and Corrections" section in my video descriptions! (Also, I'm Human, so I just flat out screw up sometimes.)
I used to have this on my compaq presario with a pent 3 at 750 MHZ around 1999? I loved this game, if it wasn't for this game; I wouldn't have majored in Computer Engineering and Science.
Well I meant I had to play it on the lower of the two options (320x200 rather than 320x400). Honestly it looked better at the lower res anyway; square pixels and such.
Hey pixel do you know a game from the 90s that put you in a spaceship that can turn into a land tank ? The game is similar to desert strike because you need to rescue people and pick up fuel and when you are done with the land rescue you transform into a ship again and fly into a dimensional gate to get into the next level (It was shown in the old TV show the cybernet if it helps)
i just remember beiing so blown away on how they made the charicters this hybrid 2d/3d the models had alot of movement to them and looks so much better then the sprite characters from say doom. tn suffered because mechwarrior 2 just kicked ass on the shelves and mechwarrior mercenaries was shortly due to kick the snot out of it again.
I wonder how close the multiplayer module was to being finished? I'm sure if this went open source it could eventually be added in as the authors originally intended. Clearly this game was ahead of its time.
+Pixelmusement Surprisingly I got this working on Windows ME. The installer complains about This version of Windows is unsupported. But if you load up a Dos shell and install it the game runs fine. I'm starting to feel like I unfairly avoided ME back in the day due to it ditching Real Mode Dos in order to make the boot times faster.
Wouldn't surprised me if Terri Brosius has made cameos in other games, though she's not credited in Mass Effect and its credits listing for vocal talents is pretty complete from what I can tell. :P
@@Pixelmusement oh I didnt think it was the samn v.a., just that it might be a homage or such. Wouldn't surprise me if a dev or two had played this. Surprised me that I Hadn't! Also, wow a reply awesome ty
The only other game around the time that tried to do something similar that I can think of is the 1993 game Seal Team. You controlled a squad of SEALS in Vietnam, so obviously no power armor. It was 3rd person perspective, but otherwise there were a lot of similarities in terms of orders, objectives, and feel. ua-cam.com/video/-h1M9i6Z818/v-deo.html
+Pixelmusement couldve sworn it was q though. thanks for replying. Being born in 98 I never got to experience fos games except for system shock so watching your videos are the closest I'll get to playing some of these games.
***** yeah, nothing quite so comforting as piloting that while you're wondering if your AI is going to try and take over to be the next god of the universe.
Engh... this is one of those games where as much as I would like a remaster, I think it would turn out the same way Starsiege did: Dumbed down too far and thus losing the sim-charm of the original in favour of straight action. :|
A low-resolution game where everything takes place inside a tiny viewport was a tough sell in 1996, the year Quake came out and a year after Mechwarrior 2. I played the demo back in the day but I never got the full game because it just didn't seem to be worth the eyestrain, especially since I already had MW2. Even now, I've got this game in my GOG library but haven't bothered to actually play it.
+221b The game supports 320x400 resolution, so it's at least double the res of 320x200, plus both this game and System Shock support full-screen rendering, I just prefer the viewport mode so that my MFDs don't get in the way. :B
Believe me, if you played Quake or MW2 when they were new you would have most likely been forced to run them on "eye-straining" resolutions too, unless you regularly blew your cash on new boards and CPUs (unlikely).
Most underwhelming game in the LGS library. I just recently finished this game today. For some reason a lot of people rave about how awesome this game is but I just don't see it even for 1996. Graphically it's behind the times even for 1996, when games like Quake were out and even the Build engine looked better. Mechwarrior 1, Mechwarrior 2, Earthsiege 1 & 2, were better mech games and had a lot more going on than Terra Nova. Even for FMV games you had Wing Commander 3 & 4 which came before, and allowed for more interaction and replayability because you had multiple endings and character interaction gave you multiple decisions that branched out and was worth replaying just for that. Even the home base interaction in Terra Nova was basic as f*ck compared to WC. The Pirate suit stealth mission that seemed impressive, wasn't even a stealth mission since the pirates didn't even care about your presence there. You had one A to B objective with a feature for eavesdropping (which was present in only that mission) and afterwards you had to escape to the dropship. I got more use out of the nav marking feature than I ever did out of the infrared view, since there are no enemies or missions that outright require using infrared. Other than that out of 37 missions you only have exterminate and escort missions. And some missions needed a repair, or electrical guy to hack a cannon or a demo expert. But even then you only used them when you cleared out the enemies, and usually using them would just trigger more enemies afterwards. Even games like Magic Carpet 1&2 and Comanche 2 had reflective water before Terra Nova, and Magic Carpet even had deformable terrain so I don't know why are we supposed to be impressed. If the budget wasn't burned on costly FMVs that aged horribly, then maybe the game would have a longer more replayable campaign, and maybe it would've gotten more features as well. Even a better resolution like 640x480 would've been better than 320x400, I mean System Shock allowed 640x480, and by 1996 that became a standard. MechWarrior 2 allowed up to 1024x768, Quake up to 800x600 and even the build engine did that as well.
This game is one of the very few to really capture the feel of fighting in power armour. Especially in the later missions.
You talking from personal experience?
@@killdeer Definitely is. That's why they are no longer welcome in the Badlands.
The greatest game that no one played. It just came out at the wrong time I suppose. At least it's finally starting to get some recognition these days. I still have my copy but I might throw a few bucks at GOG to have it in my library there.
It's sort of what the original Heavy Gear should have been instead of just a MechWarrior 2 knock off. That said, Heavy Gear II does come closer to what this game is.
This game was epic. Brought new ideas to the table. The 3D effects and graphics were too much for many computers to handle in its day. Shattered Steel might have been a Mechwarrior knock off but was also influential with destructible environments and a more action type approach. As soon as Mechwarrior 3, Starsiege, and Heavy Gear 2 came out in 1999 we had 3 of the most awesome mech games ever created. This game definitely helped set a high standard 3 years before.
This game is my childhood. Such an epic experience I still miss to this day.
I must have played through the whole thing like 20 times.
Just FYI, Looking Glass actually self-published Terra Nova, which is why there's no other studio listed. Between funding development completely in-house and self-publishing the game, this is why Terra Nova almost put LG out of business; There was no bigger publisher/studio to help absorb the costs. And because the game wasn't a huge hit, the promised multi-player add-on was abandoned.
Shame, because Terra Nova was such a great game and literally created the squad-based sci-fi combat genre that Tribes and other titles capitalized on.
I loved the one ambush mission where you attack a convoy. I perfected having the demo lay explosives and then another mortar and mop up the remaining enemies. Loved this game and still have the CD!
Thanks alot for this video! This is one of my nostalgic games I've been meaning to re-visit :) After exiting the game, I remember there was a counter showing me how many trees I destroyed. Might've only been in the shareware version though.
+Joonas Loppi I forget if the full version does this too or not. Terminal Velocity was another game which tracked how much "Green" you destroyed, aka "Greenery" ;)
Brings back a lot of memeories for years I couldn't remember what it was called as I no longer had the box. Now looking forward to playing it and wish they'd release a sequel or remaster the old game ! My fav all time game next to likes of Dungeon master and Eye of the beholder .
i never heard of this gem before,
but it looks awesome!
I bought, played and loved this game when it came out and for many years afterwards it was an awesome replay.
the reflective water blew my mind. and didn't get rivaled until unreal 1's reflection effect. but that only had resolution going for it not grandeur.
+homelessEh Incidentally, Magic Carpet had reflective water in a 3D game long before any others. ;)
A little information about the game; the reason that Terra Nova did not list a publisher is that it was entirely self-funded and published by Looking Glass, themselves. They licensed the distribution out to third-party distributors/managers.
The mission briefing song is one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever. The only problem is I just cannot find a decent sample of it online. All of the UA-cam listings are for the Roland sound card version, and it just doesn't sound as good.
Pretty amazing game with excellent graphics and atmosphere
I think I picked this up from Electronics Boutique for £2.
Inside the box was a flyer proclaiming "Multiplayer add-on coming soon!"
I loved exploring the whole map to find secret enemies, even if the dropship pilot did bitch at you a lot.
+K.o.R Oh yeah, the maps were HUGE in this game compared to how little of them you typically needed to traverse. For instance, the single-mission demo version normally runs you down a fairly linear path, but if you break off and take a LONG trip towards a corner of the map you normally wouldn't go near, you get to a small lake which lets you taste the reflective water effects which don't appear anywhere else in that demo! :o
The demo I had had three missions: Brickdagger, Flashlight and Citadel. Brickdagger had a single pirate tower plus guards in the very very corner of the map, plus a couple of patrolling pirates about halfway between it and the mission area. Flashlight had an entire pirate depot with a couple of squads and several passive vehicles to smash up. Can't remember any secrets in Citadel, but it took me ages to find the _one_ remaining group of sentries.
+K.o.R Yup! I remember a long while back when I was talking to a friend of mine about the demo for this game and he was mentioning squad mates and I was like, "I... I don't have any squad mates...", and that was when it started to dawn on us we were both talking about DIFFERENT demo versions! ;)
@@Pixelmusement I love stuff like that
First I was sad when the episode said there was no digital version available, then I was happy when I saw the video description.
Yeah, the release state of these games is almost never constant, so while the videos are representative of the state of the game when the video is made, that can change and it's one of the main reasons why I have an "Additional Info and Corrections" section in my video descriptions! (Also, I'm Human, so I just flat out screw up sometimes.)
I used to have this on my compaq presario with a pent 3 at 750 MHZ around 1999? I loved this game, if it wasn't for this game; I wouldn't have majored in Computer Engineering and Science.
My rickety old Packard Bell with a Pentium 120 and 16MB of RAM ran this like a champ. On low resolution though.
pretty sure mine was low res to, but to us geriatrics 800x600 was what 4K res is now lol
Well I meant I had to play it on the lower of the two options (320x200 rather than 320x400). Honestly it looked better at the lower res anyway; square pixels and such.
Nightdive Studios has re-released this game now, and it's available on GOG and Steam.
+James Sisk Yup! Even have a link in the video description with my GOG affiliate tag tacked on! ;)
It’s a mysterious thing - for many games, I can play 1000 hours; for this game maybe 50h.
Don’t know why, but same happened with Mech2.
Hey pixel do you know a game from the 90s that put you in a spaceship that can turn into a land tank ? The game is similar to desert strike because you need to rescue people and pick up fuel and when you are done with the land rescue you transform into a ship again and fly into a dimensional gate to get into the next level
(It was shown in the old TV show the cybernet if it helps)
Was it polygonal 3D or sprites with an isometric view?
i just remember beiing so blown away on how they made the charicters this hybrid 2d/3d the models had alot of movement to them and looks so much better then the sprite characters from say doom. tn suffered because mechwarrior 2 just kicked ass on the shelves and mechwarrior mercenaries was shortly due to kick the snot out of it again.
I wonder how close the multiplayer module was to being finished? I'm sure if this went open source it could eventually be added in as the authors originally intended. Clearly this game was ahead of its time.
+Lord Terra This game was WAY ahead of its time, but it suffered the same fate most Looking Glass games suffered: Not enough people played it. :(
+Pixelmusement
Surprisingly I got this working on Windows ME. The installer complains about This version of Windows is unsupported. But if you load up a Dos shell and install it the game runs fine. I'm starting to feel like I unfairly avoided ME back in the day due to it ditching Real Mode Dos in order to make the boot times faster.
+Lord Terra No, trust me, WinME had all kinds of compatibility issues; you were right to avoid it. Win98SE and Win2K were where it was at! :B
Dont know how.i missed this when it came out. That 'probe launched' bit sounds veeerrrryyyyy similar to the same sound in mass effect lol.
Wouldn't surprised me if Terri Brosius has made cameos in other games, though she's not credited in Mass Effect and its credits listing for vocal talents is pretty complete from what I can tell. :P
@@Pixelmusement oh I didnt think it was the samn v.a., just that it might be a homage or such. Wouldn't surprise me if a dev or two had played this. Surprised me that I Hadn't! Also, wow a reply awesome ty
....a grenade..... that can whip out a city. This seems like a bad idea.
Man, this had awesome graphics for 1996.
Agreed and to think it did all that with no 3d acceleration. I imagine Terra Nova 2 would have been like Tribes and Mechwarrior blended together.
The only other game around the time that tried to do something similar that I can think of is the 1993 game Seal Team. You controlled a squad of SEALS in Vietnam, so obviously no power armor. It was 3rd person perspective, but otherwise there were a lot of similarities in terms of orders, objectives, and feel.
ua-cam.com/video/-h1M9i6Z818/v-deo.html
omg, even the menu sounds are from SS oO
was one of the actors for this game the same guy that played q from star trek? or Collin from whose line is it anyways?
+mrtyler603 ...don't see 'em in the credits, which does have actors and voice actors listed so... gonna say "no". :P
+Pixelmusement couldve sworn it was q though. thanks for replying. Being born in 98 I never got to experience fos games except for system shock so watching your videos are the closest I'll get to playing some of these games.
mrtyler603 Don't forget that a lot of them are freeware now, or cheap on places like GOG or Steam, and tend to run perfectly fine in DOSBox! ;)
+mrtyler603 This one is out now on GOG and Steam for 6$, enjoy! :)
IT was AWESOME!
Is this like science-fiction Delta Force?
Woah, that UI and sound effects is way too close to System Shock for my comfort. *shudders in remembered terror*. Neat game though.
Timothy Wetzel Same voice actor for the helmet interface even. ;D
***** yeah, nothing quite so comforting as piloting that while you're wondering if your AI is going to try and take over to be the next god of the universe.
I did play a lot of Terra Nova as a kid. Don't even remember where I got it from. I just remember it was super cool and super hard xD
Needs a Nightdive Remaster
Engh... this is one of those games where as much as I would like a remaster, I think it would turn out the same way Starsiege did: Dumbed down too far and thus losing the sim-charm of the original in favour of straight action. :|
this game is $6 on steam and supports both PC and Mac
+PlinaZ It's been available on GOG for awhile now too. ;)
A low-resolution game where everything takes place inside a tiny viewport was a tough sell in 1996, the year Quake came out and a year after Mechwarrior 2. I played the demo back in the day but I never got the full game because it just didn't seem to be worth the eyestrain, especially since I already had MW2. Even now, I've got this game in my GOG library but haven't bothered to actually play it.
+221b The game supports 320x400 resolution, so it's at least double the res of 320x200, plus both this game and System Shock support full-screen rendering, I just prefer the viewport mode so that my MFDs don't get in the way. :B
Believe me, if you played Quake or MW2 when they were new you would have
most likely been forced to run them on "eye-straining" resolutions too,
unless you regularly blew your cash on new boards and CPUs (unlikely).
Most underwhelming game in the LGS library. I just recently finished this game today.
For some reason a lot of people rave about how awesome this game is but I just don't see it even for 1996.
Graphically it's behind the times even for 1996, when games like Quake were out and even the Build engine looked better.
Mechwarrior 1, Mechwarrior 2, Earthsiege 1 & 2, were better mech games and had a lot more going on than Terra Nova.
Even for FMV games you had Wing Commander 3 & 4 which came before, and allowed for more interaction and replayability because you had multiple endings and character interaction gave you multiple decisions that branched out and was worth replaying just for that.
Even the home base interaction in Terra Nova was basic as f*ck compared to WC.
The Pirate suit stealth mission that seemed impressive, wasn't even a stealth mission since the pirates didn't even care about your presence there.
You had one A to B objective with a feature for eavesdropping (which was present in only that mission) and afterwards you had to escape to the dropship.
I got more use out of the nav marking feature than I ever did out of the infrared view, since there are no enemies or missions that outright require using infrared.
Other than that out of 37 missions you only have exterminate and escort missions.
And some missions needed a repair, or electrical guy to hack a cannon or a demo expert.
But even then you only used them when you cleared out the enemies, and usually using them would just trigger more enemies afterwards.
Even games like Magic Carpet 1&2 and Comanche 2 had reflective water before Terra Nova, and Magic Carpet even had deformable terrain so I don't know why are we supposed to be impressed.
If the budget wasn't burned on costly FMVs that aged horribly, then maybe the game would have a longer more replayable campaign, and maybe it would've gotten more features as well.
Even a better resolution like 640x480 would've been better than 320x400, I mean System Shock allowed 640x480, and by 1996 that became a standard.
MechWarrior 2 allowed up to 1024x768, Quake up to 800x600 and even the build engine did that as well.