Big Brother is a cancelled point and click adventure game based on the book 1984 by George Orwell. The project was in development by Media X around 1998, planned to be released on PC. We only know about this lost game thanks to a preview published in Next Generation magazine (Issue 48) in December 1998, but we cannot find anything else on Media X online: they seems vanished forever with no trace.
In the original preview we can read:
“LucasArts’ Hal Barwood has made the excellent point before that unless adventure games stay on the cusp of technology, they are doomed as a genre. Enter Media X. The company’s goal is nothing short of redefining the traditional adventure game.
To that end, the company has discarded the 2D point-and-click interface that has dominated the genre since the death of infocom. In its place is a realtime 3D engine and a combination of inventory, slider, and Mario-style environment puzzles. To reduce player confusion – a common problem for anyone who has played Myst or its descendants – text messages (for instance, “You unlock the steam vent”) appear on the screen at appropriate times.
Initially disconcerting, these messages quickly blend in and enable players to concentrate on the game without wondering what they are supposed to be doing. That’s good because the game should be exceptionally difficult on its own.
Set in George Orwell’s 1984 universe, players must rescue their fiancee from the Thought Police. It’s a simple goal, but one that requires traversing 12 levels and solving hundreds of puzzles (there were originally 60 levels, but since early play testing indicates that each level takes about five hours, the number was culled).
Graphically, the game should be very impressive. Media X has created an original first-person 3D engine for the game, and, notably, the textures are very, very high-resolution, with little or no blurry filtering noticeable (the game will require a 3D card to run), even when directly against objects. The art direction is equally good: The plot is slightly different from that of 1984, with a corrupt regime that’s crumbling even more than in the book. The disintegration has carried over well – think crumbling brick buildings and steam vents.
Sales of adventure games (and publisher support for them) is down, but if ambitious projects like Big Brother and GT’s Wheel of Time manage to become hits, this genre could quickly pick up momentum. Based on early looks. Big Brother has a better chance to help the flailing genre than anything else we’ve seen in years.”
Sounds promising? Maybe it could have been..
If you know someone who worked at Media X and could help us to preserve something more on their lost game, please let us know!
Images:
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
(7 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)
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I would love to know more about this one. Looks like an interesting attempt at adapting Orwell’s novel.
A very early build has apparently been found. There’s also been a fair amount of result into the various levels in the demo as well. More info on the Lost Media Wikia:
https://lostmediawiki.com/Big_Brother_(found_build_of_cancelled_PC_game_based_on_%22Nineteen_Eighty-Four%22_novel;_1998)
Thanks for the heads up. The screenshots make it look like an alternate reality early Half Life 2 build. Very cool something of this project was preserved.
Really interesting game actually. So here is what I did in Windows 10 to get the alpha running smoothly. I use smoothly loosely as the build is a bit janky and you can fall through the map quite a bit. I stay away from the walls, although, I did fall through the floor once as well. Woohoo!
The instructions on Shell_Troll’s Archive.org page are correct, but a few more steps for me made the magic happen.
1.) Installed the game from the mounted CD image (Windows 10). According to the Archive.org page, Windows 11 users may have to copy the files over rather than installing them. The trick there is just make sure the game’s “Brother” folder and the “Brender” folder are within the same parent folder together. To clarify, the “Brender” folder should not be within the “Brother” game folder. In my case both folders are just sitting at C: root.
2.) Only two files need to be copied to the game’s Brother folder from dgVoodoo. The “dgVoodooCpl.exe”, obviously, and the 32-bit Glide DLL file “Glide2x.dll” located in the …\dgVoodoo2_85\3Dfx\x86 folder. Yes, I’m using dgVoodoo v2.85.
3.) The only thing you need to adjust within dgVoodoo are two things. Set “Appearance” to “Windowed” and for purity 4:3 aspect ratio sake, set that windowed mode to “Stretched, 4:3 Aspect”. Nothing worse than a stretched out looking old game. Stretch marks are always unsightly (my lame attempt at humor).
4.) Engage a frame limiter and set it to 30 FPS. The game gets wacky beyond that for me. Luckily, NVidia has one built-in to their control panel under the “Max Frame Rate” setting. Just don’t forget to set that back to “Off” when you’re done or all your games will run at 30 FPS. LOL.
5.) This one is important: Set the “bro.exe” to Windows XP compatibility mode (doesn’t matter if it’s the SP2 or SP3 version).
6.) Double click “bro.exe” and let it load up. The menu will be in a small window. Do not full screen that. Click on “New Game” and watch the intro video or hit the ESC key to cancel it.
7.) The game will start in a small window and NOW you can ALT-ENTER to go to full screen mode.
Also, two very useful things I found.
1.) In the “Brother” game folder there is a “bro.kbd” file that has all the keyboard controls. Just look at it with a text editor.
2.) On the CD image there is “Walkthrough” folder with some useful text files to help you through the game.
Hope this helps and THANK YOU Shell_Troll for posting this. Really amazing this obscure title was preserved. I really am enjoying the atmosphere of the game and I would have purchased this if it had come out.
P.S. – When you first start the game you are going to immediately go up an elevator. Get off quick or it will take you right back down. LOL I was like WTF after going up and down that thing like four times. LOL I’m not the most skilled gamer in the world admittedly.
Correction. I meant to say/thank Shed_Troll and NOT Shell_Troll. Whoops! My bad.