Atari XL/XE - The Eidolon [Lucasfilm games] 1985

[Beast222Jolly22JWB]

Ah my 800 xl :(

[HardWarUK]

What would games be like today if fractals kept on being worked on in games, and voxols, and procedural coding, an text parsers!

[vapourmile]

I never ceased to be amazed by this game: The curved crypt ceiling, the speed of drawing it, the tunnels, I just can't stop wondering how they got that level of detail from that level of hardware. It rivals game environments from today.

[TheInformalstyle]

Graphics remind me of rescue on Fractalus

[jonwoodscience]

I am right in remembering this as the first game to use fractal graphics, aren't I? Or did Jeff Minter do something weird? What am I saying? Everything Jeff did was weird, but not fractal.

[KieferSkunk]

@jonwoodscience - Rescue on Fractalus was the first Lucasfilm game to use fractal graphics, and that engine was then modified to produce the caves in The Eidolon. I don't know of any games in general prior to Fractalus that used fractals.

[HypercatZ]

I had this on my C64! Pretty amazing for the time.

[B5guy]

Oh i remember this game all the way to the end where you reached the Dark Cave....lol.

[Diarmata]

The little guys with helmets look like they are dancing, especially once the sfx starts sounding like drums.

[billmarrs]

ah memories! thanks for posting...

[Regenwurmbaendiger]

3D at its simplest ! but soooo great

[nuclearthelab]

hehe this is upside-down fractalus :)

[Optimus6128]

How are these voxel-like graphic possible in 8bits? Both in this, in rescue on fractalus and some other titles by lucasarts? It looks like some flat polygon rendering and 3d dot rendering combination to highlight some edges but is there a discussion on the methods use or an interview with the programmers of these great engines? I can't believe these game were 8bit and such good engine was released at such an old time and I have seen also the same game in CPC, C64 and other systems and it's good.

[AGWhiteman]

@Optimus6128 It's a fractal engine of some sort.... probably a harnessed version of the lakes and mountains fractal landscape system.

Very good though.. and as Lucasfilm say somewhere... faster than the engine created for Flight Simulator!

[brendantmcguire]

Imagine if the space program had advanced as fast as action rpg's did

[mushypeas20]

did anyone kill the dragon at the end,didnt it have eight heads or something and each head required a different coloured ball to be fired at it?It was 25 years ago now!!

[MapleStoree]

@mushypeas20 I never could finish off that last one! lol

Cracking game though, loved it - and the music :)

[redos111]

wow really good gfx for 1985 and atari!

[bedtime420]

wow not bad for 1985

[theonevanessa]

thank you for posting this! i have fond memories of playing this on my Commodore 64 during my lunch break from school. used to scare the crap out of me, for some reason.

[brynolf11]

Christ! This was totally ahead of its time!

[HardWarUK]

25th anniversary of 1985 C64/Atari games this year and 1986 games next year etc!

[scorpiouk1982]

jesus you are the only person who uploaded this game and thank you coz i thought it was wicked! I had soooo much fun on my atari!

[Bananadine]

huh... that smurf or whatever is much more expressive than most of the sprites from Doom; yet when it comes closer to you the effect fails, because it doesn't scale--so it appears to be moving downward, rather than inward (toward the screen)

if the monster scaled, even in a fake way (like, by switching amongst three or four pre-scaled versions of the sprite), it'd be a pretty nice-looking scene

that's impressive for 1985

[EricBarbman]

Really impressive... I never knew well these 8bits atari machines.

[thePavuk]

Sadly, I missed this game. does it have some RPG elements? It looks better then Dungeon master.

[mnemo70]

One of the few games I actually completed at the time. And I didn't even cheat! Soooo good.

[rexpop992]

This game scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

[scorpiouk1982]

@rexpop992 god yeah when you heard the noises lol

[PicklesReallySuck]

what the hell is going on in this game.

[tricuspa]

You were trying to rescue your grandfather after a strange experiment when the Eidolon along with a journal appeared in your garage, the notes telling you of odd creature he encountered and the bizarre crystals he had to collect in order to free the creatures.

[summergypsy1]

these grafics suck!!!

[corporatewhite]

1985 apologizes for being unable to please you in the graphics department.

[HypnoToad72]

@corporatewhite - Given what home computers could do at the time, and with resolutions that were advanced for the time (yes, they're primitive *now*), the fact Lucasfilm engaged gaming with fractals, antialiasing, and other state-of-the-art concepts is no less than amazing.

[deusprogrammer]

@corporatewhite Thanks for saying so elegantly what I have tried to tell these spoiler Playstation 2 generation kids. They will never know good games.

[odraconiandevil79]

Someone should remake this game with enhanced graphics and sound.

[fronkenpoop]

Aaargh!  This wouldn't work on my original Atari 800. The XL / XE was required to run Eidolon and consequently I was disappointed at the time. This was a breakthrough in the respect that it was OK to sacrifice frame rate in order to gain complexity of on-screen graphics. Like Fractalus, shallow by today's standards, but a paridigm in its time from a technical perspective. These are the building blocks that make today's games what they are. Thanks Lucasfilm.

[Mirkoyanque]

@fronkenpoop Fractalus shallow??!!, lol, it was the first game ever made using Fractal mapping for the mountains (so that's why they are so highly detailed for an 8-bit short memory computer)

[fronkenpoop]

@Mirkoyanque READ... I said, "shallow by todays standards."

[Mirkoyanque]

@fronkenpoop lol, I still like to play it sometimes in my emulator :P, and I think it doesn't deserve to be called shallow, even by today standards, which are based in pioneering games like that :), btw, are there other games that use fractal mapping nowadays?

[LockHoodlum]

I remember this game, when a friend of my mom gave me his Atari 800XL as a present. It was one of my favorites together with BlueMax, "The last V12", Raid over Moskow and Koronos Rift.

The good old times :)

[TechnoEstate]

I've never been into Atari computers, and I must say I'm impressed by the graphics programming LucasArts pulled off here.

[shaktazuki]

Impressive tech for the time. Beats what Origin was doing with the Ultima series.

[Mirkoyanque]

@shaktazuki well yeah, I played this game as a boy (scary as hell for the time) and you are right comparing it with Ultimas 1-3. Ultimas 4-6 improved a lot. My favorites were Ultima 6-8, and I lately played Ultima 5 fan remake (Lazarus) which is the best thing fan made out there I have seen... a little offtopic, but it's just for the people that doesn't know Ultima series, and can get a bad impression of the entire saga.

[Crosis2814]

I should put up my longplay of Koronis Rift, You can beat the game in about 5 minutes if you know what your doing (skip to level 20 and count out the time between sausers approach and use your RT Repo bot to destroy the "base" Hulks)

[1981Myname]

LucasFilm was really one of the first developers that took some brave first steps into 3D gaming. They made some awesome games for the XL. Rescue on Fractalus, Ballblazer...

[PeddlePowerSF]

Very cool. I remember playing this game for the first time and thinking, "Woah, this is the beginning of a new generation of games."

Fast, full-screen, first person. Plus cool fonts and gauges. It was amazing.... And the dragon WAS scary.

Thanks for the flashback!

[alienorbiter]

I liked the booklet that came with this game !

[sergeu78]

How many levels was in this game?

[datim]

wow, never saw this before. random gaming-sites often say wolfenstein 3d was the first ego-shooter, but this must be many years before!

[ShinX3]

THis was the best game! I remember I got so far in it, to one of if not the last level with this ultra dragon that no matter how many different color fireball combinations I tried I never could figure out what it was that did the trick.

[Breckett]

hey, first ego-shooter ever! =D

[rouncer81]

heh

[Kampy187]

yeah I think so too

[KaitainCPS]

@Breckett

What about Battlezone?

[Maryoalpha4]

Hey game is Pre- Doom.

[KHASHTHAN]

best game ever! music is great! it was scary sometimes

[themaxxfan]

I loved playing the Commodore version of this game when I was a little kid.

[FrakAttack]

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream...

[voodoo1000]

Nice graphics and sound......

[lordtomtom]

wow a primitive first person game awesome

[FarthestWanderer]

The yellow attack doesn't do anything during most of the game, but when fighting a dragon, you have to shoot the four colors in proper sequence to defeat it.

[johnnyconsumer]

Huh. I never played this game for the 800. I thought I had played them all. I wish someone would post 'Ali Baba and the 40 theives'. One of my favorite rpgs.

[mamapus]

Loved that game. Thanks for the memory.

[bloodguzzler]

What does the yellow attack do?

[dragonforces]

I was always trying to figure out the name of this game, I remember the gameplay very well. Always was hell of a scared when playing it (I was like 8) and I never finished it.

[Brigand22]

My (3 years) younger brother recalls the same sentiments - it used to frighten the bollocks off him and give him nightmares! Never understood that. Interesting to hear someone else say it though.

[mikesheley]

heh, it was the same for me. great game but the combination of sound and music was scary.

Same with Rescue at Fractalas when you could have the alien guys get in your ship. That scared the shit out of me as a kid!

[LordBicen]

My first Encounter was around level 16, and like a complete idiot, i would open the airlock for the pilots without making them knock first. An Alien got in, and started tearing up the ship and i started losing fuel. Thankfully i had my quota of Pilots and the Mother Ship was up so i hit the Rocket Boosters and made it into space, and the little bastard was sucked out the back. It's scary when you didn't know what your dealing with, So i borrowed from Sigourney Weaver. Not bad for an 11 yr old.

[Harrybigloaf]

Thanks for posting,brings back great memories.

[mnemo70]

Most important: HAMMER the space bar when fighting a dragon to immediately collect the crystals he is shooting. That's the only way to replenish your own energy during the boss fight. The higher the color (blue being highest) the more each shot will cost.

[mnemo70]

Okay, I played a bit up to level 6. The colored crystals that are guarded by the animals are used as keys to confront the dragon. That means you don't even have to collect each protected crystal if you already have the needed colors for a level. The first four dragon are killed by rot, yellow, green and blue, respectively. The fifth is killed by yellow again.

[mnemo70]

The crystals had different side effects as you can see in the video. The green one changes the shape of the one creature. You needed specific colored crystals to break the barrier that protected each dragon (level boss). The dragon itself could also only be killed with crystals of the same color as the dragon. The dragons in later levels needed combinations of crystal colors to be killed. The last dragon had 4 heads, I think and needed stacks of crystals to be killed.

[mnemo70]

One of the very very very few games at the time that I actually played through till the end. Even twice, if I recall correctly.

[svenigan]

Certainly brings back great memories.Thanks

[eccocid]

wouw is it before Wolfenstein?!

[jjnature]

Yes, seven years before Wolf3d. Also other first person 3d games on the Atari 8bit (not the 2600) were Alternate Reality, Encounter, and Ball Blazer, Questron, Star Raiders and maybe others that I can't remember.

[visionon]

It was years before Wolfenstein 3D; games of that type were early 1990s. I wonder if Lucasfilm's fractal technology has been used in any modern games?

[kirk1968]

I had Rescue on Fractalus but not this one, always wondered what it looked like in play. Thanks for sharing!

[Al99]

Thank You !! :D

I remember it...

[invertedbeardthe2nd]

lucasfilm made some superb games for the atari

[bluenote71]

Great memory. Thanks. I had a bootleg of this when I was 13, and I was never quite able to figure out what it was I was supposed to do...no instructions.

[jjnature]

Same here. I think the crystals gave strength to fire more times so you could take out more. But there were different colors, too. Would be nice if someone made an instructional video.