Blade Runner (1997 Video Game)

Blade Runner (1997 video game)

90 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, 2 MB video card RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX 5.0, 150 MB available hard disk space, Windows 95 / Windows NT 4.0

Blade Runner is a point-and-click adventure game, developed by Westwood Studios for the PC. It was published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment and released in 1997. Rather than re-tell the 1982 Blade Runner film, the developers created a different story set in the same universe, serving as a side story. The game has thirteen possible endings.

The player assumes the role of "Blade Runner" Ray McCoy, who must hunt down a group of replicants—bioengineered beings — in 2019 Los Angeles. The new story takes place at the same time as the events of the film. Several of the film's characters are also in the game, with the original actors returning to voice them. Although the film's main character, Deckard, only appears fleetingly in a non-speaking role in Blade Runner, he is referred to multiple times, and his recent activities are mentioned by non-player characters. Other parallels with the film include the in-game reproduction of several prominent locations, buildings, and scenes.

Blade Runner was advertised as "the first real time 3D adventure game", since it was the first adventure game to use both 3D character rendering and a game world which progressed in real-time (as opposed to waiting for certain player actions to progress the game world). Unlike many games of its time, which used polygon-based renderers exploiting 3D accelerators, Westwood opted for their own software-based renderer using voxel technology (called "voxel plus").

Blade Runner received generally positive reviews, won the Interactive Achievement Award for Best PC Adventure Game and was nominated for Best Adventure Game of 1997 by PC Gamer.