Le Transarctica

in hoc signo vinces Transarctica

Game presentation

 
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l'horloge du transarcticaContext

By the XXIst century, Earth suffers a terrible cold after a scientific experiment. It had been set up to slow down the greehoust effect: the "project Blind". An enormous dust cloud covered the whole sky, blocking most of the sunshine. Continents and oceans iced, and are now covered by a gigantic snow cover. The only way to move from a city to another is the rail. The hegemony of trains has begun.

The player is leading an armoured train, the Transarctica. He stole it from the powerful Viking Union, in order to find how it is possible to get the sun back. The only way for this is to make commercial deals with cities to get coal, in order to run the train. But in these unsettled times, tracks are not safe: packs of starving wolfes attack the convoys. Mammooths --an re-evolution from the elephant-- roam around the icy plains, and the Viking Unions has sent war trains against you to get the Transarctica back!

The player is looking for information and discivers about the "Project Sun" and the famous "Gycode". Le player is an "ambivalent": a person that believes in the possibility that the sun is not a myth.

 

Playing Arctic Baron

The game mainly plays with the mouse. Keyboard is used sometimes for numbers --in this case, NEVER use the numbers up the keyboard and only use the numbers of the numpad.

Rarely, letters are used: only for the saving file name.

The sound is absolutely uninteresting, but is useful to react rapidly to alerts.

The game plays alone. There is no multi-players mode.

The game plays real-time : 1 second real time is 1 minute of the game. You can speed up by clicking the clock. Go back to standard time speed by clicking the clock again.

To leave the game you either:

  • win the game --it is quite long
  • lose the game
  • commit suicide (from the wagon-boudoir only)

the boudoir the HQ

Losing the game

The game is lost immediately with one of the following events:

  • there is no more Lignite or Anthracite (even if the train has enough speed & pressure to reach a city)
  • the players loses any train fight:
    • either the player has no soldier anymore (the ones coming from mammoths are not counted)
    • either the player loses his locomotive | boudoir | headquarters wagon
  • the Transarctica boiler explodes --too much pressure in the locomotive steam engine
  • the Transarctica explodes by running on a mined track
  • the Transarctica is touched by a missile-armed track car
  • the Transarctica is eaten by the Loch Ness
  • monster
  • the player commits suicide
  • the players faults while anti-piracy checking

 

Winning the game

The game is won when a the player arrives to find the Gycode and to go to it. For this, you need to go to the himalaya, and destroy the Minotaurus.

Be prepared to spend some hours in order to reach the end of the game. Saving often your game is useful.

 

About Transarctica

Year: 1992 / 1993 (dates differ depending on sources)
Systems: Atari ST, Amiga 500 / 1200, PC DOS
Author: André Rocques
Programming: André Rocques, Louis-Marie Rocques, Michel Pernot
Graphics: Jean-Christophe Charter, Eric Galano, Pascal Einsweiler
Music: Fabrice Hautecloque
Développing studio: Silmarils
Éditor: Silmarils
Support: floppy disk / CDROM

Box artwork

The box cover art used for the game is actually a 1985 poster by fantasy artist Rodney Matthews called "Heavy Metal Hero".

Releases depending on the distributors, hardwares and regions

Amiga

Published by Silmarils
Developed by Silmarils
Country : United Kingdom
Release Date : 1993

Atari ST

Published by Silmarils
Developed by Silmarils
Country : United Kingdom
Release Date : 1993
EAN-13: 3 328170 038676

MS-DOS

Published by Silmarils
Developed by Silmarils
Distributed by ReadySoft Incorporated
Country : United States
Release Date : 1993

Published by Silmarils
Developed by Silmarils
Distributed by Daze Marketing Ltd.
Countries : France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom
Release Date : 1993
EAN-13 : 3 430921 021025

Published by Silmarils
Developed by Silmarils
Distributed by Prism Leisure Corporation Plc
Country : United Kingdom
Release Date : 1994
Comments : CD-ROM release

Macintosh

Published by Silmarils
Developed by Silmarils
Country: United Kingdom
Release Date : 1993

 

 

 

 

in hoc signo vinces Transarctica ©2002-2012 Olivier Bourgeois