Night Shift
| Night Shift | |
|---|---|
| Studio | LucasArts |
| Publisher | LucasArts |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1990 |
| platform | Atari ST , DOS , Amiga , Commodore 64 |
| genre | Jump 'n' run |
| Game mode | Single player , hot seat |
| medium | 1 floppy disk |
| language | English |
Night Shift is a computer game by LucasArts (formerly Lucasfilm Games) from 1990. The player controls a character (Fred or Fiona FixIt) with the keyboard , whose job it is to work as a night shift worker in a toy factory of a fictional company IML (based on Industrial Light & Magic , a real company of the Lucasfilms empire) to maintain the production of dolls .
Gameplay
The game character hops along the platforms and conveyor belts of the production plant ( called BEAST in the game ) and has to operate switches, buttons and levers in order to produce a specified number of characters with changing colors for each level ( called shift in the game ) within a time limit to reach. As the level rises, further parts of the machine are unlocked and must be operated manually by the player. Before they are activated, these machine parts are indicated schematically behind red areas and automatically produce the corresponding parts.
The orders are awarded by a foreman at each stage. After successfully completing several levels, the game rewards you with an animation in which the character is shown on the way home. The house is improved with increasing success, which visualizes the progressive success of the player. The success is also measured in the earned salary of the game character, which is entered in a highscore list and saved.
The game has 30 levels, whereby no saving is possible, but the levels must be selected via codes (consisting of several fruits).
At higher levels the game is made more difficult by other actors who try to hinder the player in his work:
- A lawyer tries to shut down and sabotage the company by knocking down the pawn with a contract and temporarily stunned it.
- Two lemmings (probably based on Lemmings ) have sneaked onto the site and try to slow the player either by massive expressions of affection or adjust the controls and buttons of the system, which leads to incorrect production.
In the hot seat mode for two players, the players had to complete the same level one after the other, which was exactly the same as in the single player mode .
The BEAST
The original and at the same time bizarre production facility BEAST ("Bingham's Environmentally Active Solution for Toys") consists largely of parts from the junkyard and household items. The central component for mixing the raw materials was made from a discarded washing machine , the quality control from a boxing glove .
The game world extends vertically over several screens; a scrolling horizontally not take place.
The parts of the machine are very colorful and imaginative, the game world is divided into several sections:
- Material creation
- Pressing the plastic into molds
- Painting the body and trunk
- Assembling the parts and quality control
- Warehousing
Copy protection and equipment
The game has a code disk that was common at the time, which is used to overcome a query when the program starts. The program itself does not have any further technical protective measures; the manual even explicitly requests that a backup copy be made. Resourceful hobbyists simply dismantled the pane and copied the parts on a photocopier .
The package also contains the "IML Employee Handbook", which describes parts of the BEAST . However, some pages are (intentionally) smeared or missing, so the player has to research these elements himself. A quick start guide and some tips for the first shifts are also included. The pack also contains an article from the fictional "Toy Executive" magazine about IML and the BEAST .