Revolution Software

Book soon available in english

The book is about Revolution Software, the company behind the cult games: the Broken Sword series, Lure of the Tempress, Beyond/Beneath a Steel Sky, Knights of Baphomet, etc. The author is Emmanuel Babarit, known for the Lucas Arts encyclopedia and the encyclopedia dedicated to Captain Tsubasa.

The book has 330 pages, 100% in color with many illustrations. The whole is in A5 format (15X21 cm) and has a hard cover.



Description of the book

Mentioning the point & click adventure game genre to a gamer of the 90's will inevitably bring up memories associated with firms like Sierra or LucasArts, the two studios having largely contributed to build the genre which reached its peak with titles like King's Quest or Monkey Island. Although it is impossible to question the impact of these two big American companies, it would be reductive to focus only on them in the study of the genre.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, a British company was going to make its contribution in a very nice way, showing a capacity largely comparable to that of its competitors in the art of creating universes as a backdrop for their games, some of which were fantastic representatives of the genre. That firm is Revolution Software, which reached its consecration with the adventures of a hapless American tourist in The Knights of Baphomet. But beyond this major work, the studio founded by Charles Cecil was at the origin of equally qualitative works that plunged the player into exciting adventures, visiting a dystopian future in the shoes of Robert Foster, solving a dark case of espionage by playing the role of John Cord, or limiting himself to less ambitious experiences that could nevertheless lead him to win a million dollars in a famous TV game show!

These are all works that we propose to introduce to you in Revolution Software: The Chronicles, through detailed articles with many anecdotes. If this new book is based on the same structure as its predecessor dealing with LucasArts, the smaller number of games produced by the British studio has allowed us to add some additional elements. For each game, we have included a complete summary of the storyline. Some titles have also been given a special treatment, which led us to focus on specific points such as the construction of a specific puzzle or the different physical editions offered over the years.

Even if a development studio is mostly defined in our eyes through the prism of its game library, some had an atypical trajectory paved with fantastic successes and cruel setbacks. Revolution Software undeniably belongs to this category, and tracing the history of this company from its creation to our time could only be the subject of a dedicated section in a book which, we hope, will teach you a lot of little-known information about its destiny.

This is what Revolution Software: The Chronicles offers you to discover, a book in the direct continuity of its predecessor dealing with LucasArts.


The Contents

I.HISTORY OF REVOLUTION SOFTWARE

    Part I: Artic Computing, U.S. Gold, and Activision
    Part II: The beginnings of Revolution Software
    Part III: The Birth of a Legendary Duo
    Part IV: The transition to 3D and the new millennium
    Part V: From the depths of the abyss to the revival




II.THE SOFTWARE LIBRARY

    Beneath a Steel Sky
    Beyond a Steel Sky
    Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars
    Broken Sword II : The Smoking Mirror
    Broken Sword 2.5 : Return of the Templars
    Broken Sword : The Sleeping Dragon
    Broken Sword: The Angel of Death
    Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse
    Disney's Story Studio Mulan
    Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado
    In Cold Blood
    King's Quest VI
    Lure of the Temptress
    Who Wants to be a Millionaire







III.BONUSES

    The OST
    The Compilations
    Revolution 25th Anniversary Collection
    Broken Sword 5 Collector's/Backer Edition
    Beyond a Steel Sky Utopia Edition