Microcosm

Microcosm is the CD-ROM FMV game in microcosm. That’s partly because it was influential and early. It’s a little unfair on it that we come to it so late, making it look like it’s taking after Rebel Assault and MegaRace when in fact it was before them, but its initial release was on Fujitsu’s FM Towns Marty console, which didn’t make it out of Japan. The game took a while longer to get to the PC and back to the UK where it had been developed.

Psygnosis used the possibilities of the CD-ROM to provide music from Rick Wakeman, except that it doesn’t actually play during gameplay. And maybe it was only on the CD32 version and not the DOS one? They also used it to create a lengthy cinematic introduction complete with real actors. Well, real people. The real people that made the game. Damien McFerran’s delightful retrospective of the game in Eurogamer, with interviews from the developers, highlights that one of the characters was played by a future Oscar winner… just not for acting. It shows. MegaRace’s cinematics were camp; Microcosm’s are just crap. Once you get to the game bit of the game, it’s another marginally interactive shooter on rails, without even the style of Rebel Assault. There are branching paths, but when neither branch offers anything interesting that’s not much of a plus.

---

Microcosm is the preservation of popular games history in microcosm. Psygnosis were a long-standing British success story, formed in the mid-’80s and responsible for publishing Lemmings. Microcosm and early success with CD-ROM gaming in Japan was enough to get Psygnosis signed up by Sony to work on games for their PlayStation (on which much more soon). Psygnosis were later absorbed by Sony and then eventually shut down in 2012. Sony carries on putting out new Lemmings games, awful microtransactions and all, but doesn’t have much interest in keeping less lasting successes available.

Microcosm was popular enough to be a best-seller at the time, and was pioneering enough to be reasonably considered as pretty important. Unlike many of the PC games I’m covering from this era, though, it is not possible to buy Microcosm now. There is a Microcosm on Steam, but it’s not this one. I downloaded a copy of it from the Internet Archive instead, and reacquainting myself with DOS commands on an emulator I managed to get through the installation process, do the set up, see the Psygnosis logo and… nothing more. I can’t get past that point or find any clue of how I could fix it. I could buy a second-hand copy of the game on CD, but even if I solved the problem of my laptop not having a CD drive, presumably I would find exactly the same result. Achieving an authentic 1994 PC setup would be a commitment beyond that of equivalent consoles on several levels. My experience of Microcosm is limited to reading about it and watching videos of it, which only cover the start of the game, are frequently of different versions, and in some cases are mediated by someone talking about why it’s one of the worst games ever. Playing it and fully understanding the experience remains out of reach.

---

The intro, and more so the manual, present the world of Microcosm as one of a high tech but harsh life. Hypercapitalism has led to the world being dominated by two megacorporations, competing for the number one spot. “The corporations take what they need from the planet, leaving toxic and barren wastelands behind”. Theirs is described as a “tyrannical rule”, before the manual goes on to say that the imaginatively-named top corporation CyberTech’s “only crime” in the corporate war with #2 corp Axiom was being the top corporation. Which neatly skirts over their contribution to the overall poisonous environment in order to place someone else as the bad guy.

This sets up the plot of the game in which the head of CyberTech has been injected with some nano-attacking-mind-control-thing as part of an Axiom plot to take over. The bits of Microcosm where you get (limited) control take place entirely inside the CEO’s body as your miniaturised agent makes their way through vessels to his brain to prevent this event. Barring a theoretical twist ending which I have no way of seeing, never mind playing, this leaves an interesting picture of Microcosm’s message. In short, in a capitalist hell world, you are asked to take action to defend the biggest corporation from attackers, on the basis that as the established lesser of two evils they are to be supported unquestioningly. Microcosm is gamer politics in microcosm.

---

[All gifs taken from video by hfric]

Top of the charts for week ending 21 January 1995:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•