BlueSmoke - Preview : One Must Fall : Battlegrounds

		Date	: Feb 24th, 2001
		Genre	: 3D Fighter
		Developer	: Diversions Entertainment
		Author	: Jin-Ning Tioh

I'm sure most of the old timers can remember fondly of the good old days when classic side-scrolling fighters dominated the market, big hits being series such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. One Must Fall 2097 was also one such hit, a Mortal Kombat with a difference. Instead of using a group of humans with special abilities, in OMF you control 90-foot-tall robots. But before we cut to the chase, here's a background of the OMF series...

Two enter the arena, but only one remains standing...

The year is 2097. National governments are no more than puppets of multinational corporations. One such corporation, World Aeronautics and Robotics otherwise known as W.A.R, currently runs the show with a silk-covered iron fist. W.A.R started as a research institute to provide human-assisted robots (HAR) for space travel. The HAR's were better than conventional robots due to the fact that they were completely operated by a single human whose brain controlled the robot's systems via remote. The "pilot" actually "became" the robot for all intents and purposes, but no danger to the pilot was possible.

Now, W.A.R is Earth's leading corporation. Every other company relies on W.A.R for space travel to Earth's four off-world stations. W.A.R provides systems for governments and companies alike for both security and defense. Needless to say, W.A.R is power, and you want a slice of it. Ganymede, the next moon on Jupiter to be colonized, needs a W.A.R representative to run things there. The Board at W.A.R has decided that the applicants for the position, being equally qualified, should fight for it. Now, the ten applicants must choose which HAR will be their weapon and beat the others in a one-on-one competition.

Anyone who has even a remotely important position at W.A.R is trained in the use of HAR's. Most have spent considerable time "in" a real working model to get the feel of it. But the recent usage of HAR's for sparring is a completely new scheme brought about by the need to know that when one company attacks another the 'bots can handle the stress. The idea of using W.A.R robots for entertainment is a new one, but The Company believes that it will be good press for the next prototypes cooking in W.A.R's design rooms. Therefore, the general public is invited to view the proceedings. It will be the greatest one-on-one combat since the Roman Era. Years of training on the 'bots makes you think you can take the other pencil-pushers who show, and you know that your reason for being the boss of this hunk of rock is much better than any they could have. As the 21st century comes to a close, you prepare to put a massive dent in the 22nd! Long live rock!

Your good old two-dimensional scroller, OMF 2097 incorporates the best factors of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, as well as spicing it up with even better features. In one-player mode, you can select one of ten fighters participating in a tournament, as well as a robot of your choice. Using them, your goal is to fight to the very end, defeating the final opponent which is Major Kerrisick with his hulking Nova. If you fight in tournament mode, you start out with a custom pilot and a Jaguar. From there, you have to fight all the way to the last tournament as well as claiming the title of world champion from the final adversary. Use cash won from your fights to upgrade both your reflexes and your robot. You might even meet unranked adversaries that wish to test your metal. Also, to add a touch of wackiness to the game, unranked adversaries include Jazz Jack Rabbit and his buddies from Epic's hit title. Despite its age, it also has limited multi-player capabilities. So, in short, even with all those cool three-dimensional games coming out in the market, its still goddam addictive! And the best part is, its now freeware! A warning though, you will have to download MoSlo to get it running at a manageable speed, or the match will be over before you can even say peekaboo!

Rob Elam, the creator of One Must Fall 2097, started off on OMF2 under Epic's wing. It was supposed to be a 640x480 parallax-scrolling fighting game for Windows 95, and it required a new engine. It was coming along nicely and had some cool features, but at the same time, 3D stuff was becoming increasingly popular and achievable on the PC and so Rob had to make a tough decision. He could either continue writing OMF2 as a 2D game and, after a year or so, make a fun but widely overlooked game, or he could scrap everything he’d worked on, and jump into the wild new world of 3D. Since he chose the later, and Epic was all for it, designs for OMF2 the 3D game began.

Unfortunately, Epic also had it's Unreal project started around then, an immersive first person shooter. Rob was concentrating more on the character-concentrated graphics at that time and was not giving much attention to the game enviroment. So he decided to trade: Unreal could get some cool character-related graphics, and Rob would get the cool environment enhancements. However, this was not to be. And so came the fateful day where Rob left Epic and continued working on OMF2 with Edgar, a local programmer. That effort is about to pay off with OMF: Battlegrounds, estimated to be released somewhere during the first quarter of 2002.

The story is similar to OMF 2097, where humans are still remotely controlling robots to settle their disputes. Confirmed robots are Jaguar, Pyros, Chronos, Katana, and Gargoyle from the original OMF, as well as Force and Warlord, two new mechs designed for the game. Now, if I only I had access to these babies back then... Anyway, the story will take part 20 years after the original OMF, so most of the characters will be more matured, except for Grandpa Ibrahim perhaps. Not to worry. The main focus of the game will still be the action, so die-hard fans have no reason to worry. Scrap and Destruction moves are also still included in the game. Players should be able to learn the controls with no great difficulty, only that the gameplay will be slightly different due to its new dimension. However, this has spawned different problems for Rob and his team. You remember all those globes that kept floating around the fire pit in OMF 2097? In order to trigger it, players had to kick it and activate a massive fireball to knock your opponent off his feet for a while. Well, in OMF: Battlegrounds, most of the obstacles will have to be player-triggered instead of happening randomly, except in the case of the Blade Arena. For example: The fighter jets in the new desert arena are player triggered hazards as well. When you grab a pickup and throw it at someone, it'll cause a group of fighter jets to be summoned and attack the selected target. When this happens, the leader of that squad will inform your victim of their attack, so even if you didn't notice someone throwing the pickup at you, the pilot will notify you of his attack. So in conclusion, the fighter jets will not attack randomly.

This is one game that is definitely worth waiting for. If these early indications are anything to judge by, this is going to be one heck of a game for both the fans and new players. Also, on another note, you can now download both the original One Must Fall 2097, MoSlo, as well as all the music from OMF : 2097 in MOD format. In the meantime, here are some screenshots to keep you happy. :)