What is Spaceship Warlock?

Unlike most adventure games, Spaceship Warlock is not about solving puzzles or perfecting hand/eye coordination. Warlock is pure exploration that rewards players for using good old common sense. And Warlock offers plenty to explore: The game’s artwork weighs in at 128 megabytes' worth of data that spans a CD-ROM. The result is entertainment that’s guaranteed tokeepeven the most fanatical gamers intrigued for hours at a stretch.

Spaceship Warlock is a joint creation of Mike Saenz and Joe Sparks. Saenz is well known for his work on Shatter and Iron-Man, two comic books created entirely on the Macintosh. If you're Familiar with Saenz's comic books, then you already have a feel for Warlock’s futuristic graphics. The artwork, which incorporates 2-D and 3-D images plus animation, is truly phenomenal.

Players begin their space adventure in the unlikeliest of places: getting mugged by a pop-eyed green alien in the back alley of a city on the dreary planet of Stanbul. Next, after you've successfully KO’d the slippery mugger, you collect a reward from the police for capturing your assailant, a wanted criminal. The reward money is your ticket to escape off-world, far from grimy, drab Stanbul. From there, you’re off, traveling through space on a luxury cruiser, getting hijacked by space pirates, and battling to liberate mankind from the evil Kroll.

Despite its brawls and battles, Warlock is no shoot-'em-up game. It’s an animated space-age world that makes you an inhabitant. What's more, Warlock offers fast action that doesn't bog you down with heavy text-input requirements. Point-and-click is all there is to navigating. To move forward, you simply click in the middle of the screen; to move right or left, click on the corresponding sides.

In addition to its outstanding graphics, another of Warlock's strengths is good use of sound. Characters actually speak to you, and the background noises and music set definite moods, from the sinister to the suspenseful. It’s readily apparent that a great deal of work and care went into this game.

Spaceship Warlock is suitable for all ages. Although Reactor’s uncharted world may not be quite as thrilling as the one in the movie BladeRunner, the game draws you in and makes you part of the action, an experience no movie can match.

Somogyi, Stephan. (February 1992). Spaceship Warlock. MacUser. (pg. 103).

Download Spaceship Warlock for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 6.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

• Macintosh II
• CD-ROM drive
• 256-color 640x480 display
• System 6.0.7
• 3.5 MB of free RAM

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II