This week I’ve continued work on refining the cities in Super Space Galaxy, so instead of writing about that I decided to share another important game from my childhood in the 90s: One Must Fall 2097.
For a game from 1994, One Must Fall has a remarkable amount of depth. Different mechs, different pilots, combos, special moves, arena hazards, all sorts of difficulty modes and options, fatality-like Scrap and Destruction moves, and many secrets all add up to make the game worth delving into. In a way, the game reminds me of Tyrian because of the massive array of things they put in the game. It’s probably not a coincidence that both games were released by Epic Megagames around the same time.
Easily my favourite feature, though, has to be the Tournament Mode. In this mode, points you earn fighting in each battle can be spent on upgrading your mech or training your pilot, giving a kind of long-term progression you don’t see in most fighting games. To this day I don’t understand why more fighting games don’t have something like this; it seems like a natural extension of their core mechanics.
I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect the games title is inspired by a line from the original Transformers film. Before he faces Megatron in combat, Optimus Prime says:
One shall stand, one shall fall!
Optimus Prime
It’s easy to assume that the game’s creators watched the Transformers movie in 1986, then remembered Optimus Prime’s legendary line when they were thinking of titles for the game. After all, One Must Fall is about robots too.
Some versions of the game also came with a printed Strategy Guide that featured all the special moves and combos. Of course, nowadays you can simply look those things up on the internet, which makes the guide rather a relic of the past.
One Must Fall 2097 has inspired my own games in a few different ways. One detail I remember vividly from the game it the way the Pyros mech’s flame attacks could make robots glow orange, as though they were heating up. Getting the Pyros was an exciting milestone for me because in the shareware version, you could only use one by winning the tournament. Years later, I’ve included this for the flame-based attacks such as the flamethrower in Super Space Galaxy.
One Must Fall also came to mind when I was making Super Space Slayer 2. I was at a point where the Pirate King has been implemented and I wanted to commemorate his defeat with the first cutscene in the game. I didn’t have the resources for any lavish cinematics or anything, so somehow I imagined the game’s cutscenes as simple moving images like in One Must Fall. It’d been done before, and I would do it again!
One Must Fall 2097 was declared freeware in 1999, so if you like the sound of it there’s no reason not to give it a try! It can be now be downloaded for free.
Thanks for reading,
Kenneth Dunlop
Kenneth Dunlop's Game Dev Blog 