''Nether Earth'' is one of the earliest computer real-time strategy games. It was released for the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sin ...

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

in 1987. It was published in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

Argus Press Software Argus Press was a British publishing company. It was acquired by British Electric Traction (BET) in 1966, and became the publishing arm of that company. It was the subject of one of the most hotly contested management buyouts of the 1980s when a m ...

and re-released in

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

by Mind Games Espana S.A.

Plot

The player takes the control of the human side in a war against the mysterious Insignian race. All of the warfare is carried out by enormous military robots.

Gameplay

The player controls a flying machine which can fly over any part of the play-area and is used to command the player's bases and robots. In essence it replaces a mouse cursor, but it can hinder the robots' movement. The player must build robots and give them orders to seek out and attack Insignian robots and capture neutral or enemy factories to increase production and thus aid the war effort. Once a robot is issued an order it will keep being active until all its targets have been conquered or destroyed, the robot itself is destroyed, or other orders are received. The ultimate objective is to capture or destroy all the enemy bases and thus win the war. Everything takes place in real-time with the action being ongoing rather than turn-based. Because the player's view of the battlefield is limited to where their flying-machine is, much of the front-line fighting is left to the machines whilst the player concentrates on building more robots. However the player can choose to take direct control over one of his/her robots and effectively use it in a commando style to capture factories and bases and to destroy enemy robots. The game is displayed in forced-perspective isometric graphics. Building robots takes place at the player bases (called warbases) and consists in the player selecting a number of modules that robots will be built from. Modules can be categorized in 4 types:

locomotion Locomotion means the act or ability of something to transport or move itself from place to place. Locomotion may refer to: Motion * Motion (physics) * Robot locomotion, of man-made devices By environment * Aquatic locomotion * Flight * Locomoti ...

, weapons, nuclear bombs and electronics. There are 3 types of locomotion modules (

Bipod A bipod is a V-shaped portable attachment that helps support and steady a device, usually a weapon such as a long gun or a mortar. The term comes from the Latin prefix ''bi-'' and Greek root ''pod'', meaning "two" and "foot" respectively. Bipod ...

, Tracks and Anti-Grav) and 3 types of weapon modules (Cannon, Missiles and Phasers). The modules' efficiency increases in the specified order, with the Anti-Grav (anti-gravity) module enabling robots to pass over uneven terrain at maximum speed. One locomotion module and at least one weapons module must be added to every robot, but robots can be built with all 3 weapon modules as well. Adding nuclear bombs and electronics modules is optional, however the electronics module enhances robots'

pathfinding Pathfinding or pathing is the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the sh ...

. Once the player captures factories, receiving resources begins without any other action required from the player or his/her units. Resource types largely correspond to the module types and consist of: Electronics, Nuclear, Phasers, Missile, Cannon, Chassis and General. Each factory produces only one type of resource, alongside General resources, indicated by a copy of the corresponding module on the top of the building, thus the player can concentrate on conquering only those factories that produce the resources he plans on using.

Legacy

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

remake A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same ...

of ''Nether Earth'' was completed in 2004 and is available for Windows, Linux and OS X. Another remake is available for iOS.

References

External links

* *{{Lemon64 game, id=1778
Nether Earth Remake (Android)
1987 video games ZX Spectrum games Commodore 64 games Amstrad CPC games Video games developed in the United Kingdom