Vulcan have returned!!

Yup, those former stalwarts of the Amiga games scene have come back, albeit on a different platform.

It’s a few years back now, but Vulcan were one of the premier games companies on Amiga. Their game sold in vast quantities, and their last epic was the acclaimed Genetic Species.

Vulcan made their name with a series of adventure games ….  The Valhalla Series, to be precise.

They announced that they were leaving the Amiga arena and vanished without trace.

However, appearances can be deceptive and now they have returned to show what they were up to .

In the intervening years, it seems they weren’t just resting, but were actively developing their new approach and assault on the P.C. market.

So, here it is. The Vulcan portal!

 

 

The portal is a futuristic approach to how Vulcan intend to continue and is a multi pronged approach.

The portal is where you play their games, but is so much more. It also deals with mail and news from the company and can be used to develop commercial websites and trade. As you can see above, it has a guide… the 3 D figure. Now for the novel part.

The guide uses a synthesised voice to speak all the hints, mail, news etc.

So, what can we do with the Portal?

Firstly, Vulcan has released or is in the process of releasing all the old Valhalla series. Each episode comes as a download. The first episode “the Crypt”…. Now there’s a name to conjure with …. Is free after registering. Thereafter, each episode is the princely sum of £2.50. Yeah, it’s really expensive!!

            So, how do we get this portal? The easy way is to go to the website http://www.vulcan.co.uk  and follow the instructions. Basically, you download and install the portal, fill in your details, and register. You are then allowed to download the first episode and can play the game off or online. The portal and game is also available on download sites like Cnet. As a small matter of interest, the download figure on Cnet is  currently over 3ooo          , which is no small potatoes, considering it has been on the site since the eleventh of January! You can either think that there are a lot of nostalgic old Amiga gamers out there or it is attracting considerable interest.

            So, how does the portal work? After you have finished installing the portal, you enter the ID code they send when you register. This allows you to download the first episode. There are a couple of niggles with the portal that I’ll explain just now.

 

The portal displays ok in any resolution but if you intend to use their “Mother” technology, you need to go into 16bit colour. This is for the 3D effect on the guides. Also when you enable speech for the guide etc., you need to download and install the Microsoft engine for it. Neither of these is a major bugbear. Another niggle is the speech, it took a little while to get the speech working as it kept telling me that my sound card wasn’t up to the job. Back to the site…… Winamp gives the portal gyp, so disable it BEFORE you try and use speech. After this , everything works normally.

            One of the things I didn’t like about the portal is the size of it. It’s small and you should take your desktop down to  800 x 600 to see detail properly. Again, not a major bugbear but nevertheless , something that I hope is altered in later versions. The portal is being constantly updated (or evolved as Vulcan put it). The portal has a part that deals with this and shouldn’t be a problem when you wish to upgrade it.

            One of the many nice touches (I only seem to have told you about drawbacks), is downloading. All the files come separately, so getting knocked offline doesn’t really bother it. It simply continues where it left off.

            I was knocked offline twice when I downloaded the first episode and was pleased that when I went to actually play the game, the portal told me that files were either missing or corrupt and went back to the site and re-downloaded what it needed.

 

So, let’s show you some of the grabs of the portal to give you a feel for it. The settings are varied, you can alter your guide .

You can alter your sound preferences, also your own online persona and welcome message, even the language.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                             

As I said earlier, the portal does more than just play their games.

As you can see from the screenshot, this is the area dealing with communications . It allows you to exchange mails between users of the portal and has an address book etc. To date , I haven’t bothered too much with this but it will probably get some use sooner or later. Vulcan seem to be aiming for a community of players with all these touches, and shows a real ambition to conquer this arena as well. From this area , you can also get your voice mail and news from the company, as well as launch the websites for the 3D part, Mother, and Classic games etc.

          

 

As for the game, its wonderful to be able to play it again, and I believe it has been tweaked slightly so it isn’t a straight copy of the original.

      

 

The gameplay is similar to the original though, so you won’t be confused to find yourself in a top down view adventure game. The speech samples for the game are as good as ever. If you ever played the original and liked it, you’ll love it all over again!!

I have really enjoyed trying out this  portal and fully expect to keep it on the drive and make use of it.

Hopefully, this will launch Vulcan back to their former exalted status, because a lot of work and thought has obviously gone into it.

Right, I’m going back to try and find my way through this….the little git just fell down a hole again……….

Give this a try, play around with the settings, and I believe quite a few will be entranced with this!!