WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - The Lawnmower Man
Publisher: Sales Curve Interactive (SCi) Developer: Sales Curve Interactive (SCi) Release: 1994
Considering how ubiquitous The Lawnmower Man was when it came out in 1992, it's kind of amazing how it's more or less been completely forgotten. This was one of the first films to seriously tackle virtual reality, not to mention make extensive use of 3D generated computer graphics. It also featured a post-Remington Steele, pre-James Bond Pierce Brosnan.
Of course, it was also really terrible. So there's that.
The Lawnmower Man is a story about one Dr. Angelo and his pioneering work with the brain. More specifically his research on increased intelligence and behaviour modifications through the use of drugs and virtual reality. Following a horrible accident involving one of his chimpanzee research subjects, the good doctor decides it's time to experiment on the human brain instead. He settles on a landscaper named Jobe – a mentally challenged orphan who is the ward of an abusive priest and constantly at the mercy of various terrible people around him.
Of course, Dr. Angelo's work goes so well that not only does Jobe become super-intelligent, but also gains telepathic powers, which he quickly uses to punish all those who have wronged him. Ultimately Jobe turns himself into pure energy and enters the worldwide network.
The video game is a pseudo-sequel to the movie, I guess? It's hard to tell, because it seems to take place after the film, but also resurrects several characters who are already dead by the end of the original script.
Anyway, this is another one of those meetings of video games and hollywood, which is to say it's an entirely full-motion video affair. You play as a cyber-version of Dr. Angelo on a quest through the network in order to find and stop Jobe. This is represented through a series of minigames and short travel bits that closely resemble those found in Sewer Shark. Peppered throughout are clips from the movie in the form of Jobe's memories.
It's awful. The video is of extremely poor quality, even by Sega CD standards. And the source material is bad to being with – computer animation was really not up to dealing with humanoid characters back in1992. Plus due to the nature of the game and multiple branching paths, the flow of the game is interrupted constantly as the single-speed disc drive searches for the proper clip to show next.
Trivia time! Sales Curve Interactive still exists in some form today. You'll know it as Square Enix Europe. In 2005, four years before Square Enix acquired the group, Sales Curve gained ownership of Eidos Interactive. Of course, the Eidos group also included U.S. Gold, which created Flashback (which was covered in an earlier WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL). And U.S. Gold owned Core, whose games I've covered a few times in this series.
See? The Sega CD is somehow linked to everything great.