Most readers come away from George Orwell’s traditional dystopian novel 1984 with the identical singular want: to inhabit the world of the guide by enjoying a late ’90s first-person puzzle-adventure PC recreation that features a “zero-g coaching sphere” for some cause. In 1998, writer MediaX got down to fulfill that widespread literary want with Massive Brother, an officially licensed “sequel” game set within the 1984 universe.
After showing as a demo at E3 1998 and receiving some scattered press coverage, the Massive Brother venture fell apart earlier than the sport may see a full launch. Now, although, you possibly can expertise a small style of this ill-fated literary sequel due to a newly unearthed demo that was recovered and posted to the Internet Archive over the weekend.
Struggle is Peace
The Lost Media Wiki has a bit extra data on the historical past of Massive Brother, which was announced in May 1998 as the primary recreation ever from multimedia CD-ROM maker MediaX. In that announcement, the corporate mentioned the sport would transfer focus away from 1984‘s Winston Smith and to new character Eric Blair, who’s on a seek for his lacking fiancée Emma (certain, why not) in “a totally modified world dominated by the Thought Police.”
The pre-rendered introduction for the demo ignores the lacking fiancée plotline fully and as an alternative locations Eric within the heart of a resistance motion on the run from the Thought Police:
“Eric, the Thought Police have been monitoring down our brotherhood leaders in hopes of destroying our resistance motion. We now have just a few hours left, we should do one thing to get the police off our path. As a MiniPac soldier, it is best to have the ability to get into the ministry and create a diversion. The larger the distraction you possibly can create, the higher.”
It is unclear how any diversion could be sufficient to sufficiently distract the all-encompassing monitoring and thought management community that Orwell describes in 1984, however we digress.