Space Hulk (video Game) - Development

Development

The original Space Hulk board game was published by Games Workshop. It was the company's third board game that was adapted as a video game; the previous two board games were HeroQuest and Space Crusade, whose video game adaptations were both published by Gremlin Graphics. The board game version of Space Hulk is played between two players, who assume the roles of the Marines and Genestealers. The players take turns moving their pieces to accomplish their objectives; the Marines' player, however, is given a certain amount of time to complete each of his or her turn. The game is designed to encourage the two players to adopt different tactics in their play—the slow-moving Space Marines with long-range guns versus the fast-moving Genestealers who fight hand-to-hand.

Conversion of Space Hulk into a video game was initiated in 1991 by video game company Electronics Arts, who also managed the project's development. Instead of following Gremlin's approach and creating exact copies of the board games in digital form, Electronic Arts and Games Workshop opted to develop a video game, based on Space Hulk, with features that took advantage of the personal computer's technological advancements. The interior walls of the space hulks were rendered by ray tracing, passing much of the graphical work to computers. This method reduced the time needed to introduce new sets of walls into the game from two weeks to twelve hours. Although digital speech was a relatively new technology at the time, the team made use of sound card technologies to produce alien screeches and roars that permeate the hulks, and warning cries from Marines under attack. The game's opening tune, "Get Out Of My Way", was recorded by British hard rock band D-Rok, with Brian May of Queen as guest guitarist. Games Workshop helped Electronic Arts keep the game true to its Warhammer 40,000 roots by providing the writers with materials and answers on the fictional universe. The development team created the tutorial missions, but adapted the other missions straight from the board game and the Deathwing Campaign expansion set.

Initially released in June 1993 on floppy disks for IBM Personal Computers and their clones that ran DOS, Space Hulk was later published for other platforms and media. The CD-ROM version of Space Hulk included nine new missions, new cinematic animations, and new digital sound effects and speech (which required a sound card). Unlike the versions that ran on DOS, the Amiga version (published in Autumn 1993) cannot be installed on a hard drive; Amiga users have to swap floppy disks at several points of the game while playing it. In Japan, the game was ported to the NEC PC-9821 in Japan by a local video game company, Starcraft. In 1996, Electronic Arts produced a sequel, Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, to Space Hulk.