''Manhunter: New York'' is a

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based ...

Sierra On-Line Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genr ...

. A sequel, '' Manhunter 2: San Francisco,'' was released in 1989.

Plot

The opening of the game shows the New York City skyline in 2002 and depicts it being attacked by a mysterious force. The main game is set in the futuristic year of 2004, when Earth has been enslaved by a race of aliens known as the Orbs. The Orbs, who look like giant floating eyeballs, have implanted all humans with global tracking devices, forced them to wear nondescript robes, and forbidden them from speaking or communicating. The protagonist has been assigned by the Orbs to track down fellow humans who are believed to be forming an underground resistance. Over the course of the game, the player discovers that the Orbs are not the benevolent rulers they claim to be; they are actually harvesting humans as a food source. The player then "switches sides" and works to overthrow the Orbs. The player works against Phil, the antagonist, who is murdering members of the resistance. The game ends with the player flying an Orb ship and bombing various locations in Manhattan, before Phil escapes, chased by the player. The ending sets up the game for a sequel, ''Manhunter: San Francisco''.

Gameplay

''Manhunter: New York'' used Sierra's

Adventure Game Interpreter The Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) is a game engine developed by Sierra On-Line. The company originally developed the engine for ''King's Quest'' (1984), an adventure game which Sierra and IBM wished to market in order to attract consumers ...

(AGI) development tool. It was very different from other AGI games in that it did not use a text

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term ''parsing'' comes from Lat ...

, incorporated a first-person rather than third-person perspective, and featured a rudimentary

point-and-click Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button (''click''), or other pointing device. An example of point and c ...

interface. The gritty, sometimes gory visuals, unique interface, and use of real-life locations in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

all helped set the game apart from Sierra's other titles, which were typically more family oriented. The Apple II version of ''Manhunter'' allows the option of skipping the sewer maze because memory limitations prevented saving the player's progress in that section.

Reception

The game sold more than 100,000 copies.

Reviews

*''

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' is an American science fiction magazine which publishes science fiction and fantasy named after science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It is currently published by Penny Publications. From January 2017, the publicatio ...

'' v13 n6 (1989 06)

References

External links