Wow, thanks for playing that through and recording it - memories come flooding back, but I'm not sure I could bear to play the game again at that framerate. I actually wrote the walkthrough and drew those maps for the Amiga version back in the early 90s. Needless to say, I was utterly obsessed with this game at the time, and it always niggled me that I'd never figured out the secondary objective (lower the force wall). A decade later, the primary game author Ricardo Pinto had left the game industry and become a fantasy author. I emailed him about Cybercon, and he very kindly replied and essentially said: "Glad you loved the game, I was proud of it at the time, but I can't remember much about it now!".
I'd like to personally thank you for writing those walkthroughs. I was very determined to beat this game and your map came in very handy. This game is certainly an underrated achievement in game design and I hope putting up videos here on TH-cam will help persevere and expose it's brilliance. Unfortunately my upload got a little corrupted and the frame rate isn't quite right with some glitching and graphical tearing not present in the actual game play. Amiga of course has the best frame rate and although it's a prototype of the PC release it looks and sounds better on the Amiga chipset.
@@yopachi Well, you inspired me to fire up WinUAE and play through it again. Very glad I made those maps!! :) With AGA chipset, plenty of RAM and a 68020 emulation, the framerate was very smooth. Still a tough game, even with maps and quicksave savestates.
Hi Billius! I made a longplay for the Amiga, you can find it here: th-cam.com/video/YZxyDo9opd8/w-d-xo.html. I (partly) used your maps, so thank you very much; I followed a bit your walkthrough, although I did some parts in the way I remembered I did in the ol'good days!
What an absolute intravenous hit of nostalgia, every room and enemy brought it all back! Cybercon 3 was my #1 game from the moment it came out, I cant imagine the hours I spent playing this! I have wasted so many hours watching mundane TH-cam videos, that was the best (just over) 2 hours I have spent on here for years. Thanks you so much Yopachi, you are a legend. :)
Ah, thank you for the kind words! Try my other video "How To Play: Cybercon III". I put some passion into a vhs guide explaining as much of the game as I could in a historically accurate style. I even cooked up some retro animations to fill in some of the setting of the story. You can read a note from the games designer in the comments of that video.
That was great to watch. I remember buying this game for the Amiga 500 when it came out. At first I couldn't play it at all as I could not deceiver the abstract multi layerd control interface. My big brained friend figured it out for me and taught me though. I enjoyed struggling through it with a joystick and Amiga keys despite the low frame rate. Actually I thought the sluggish pace was intentional so I didn't think of it as slow. I just though the giant robot I was in was slow. At the time I was fascinated with anything 3D, especially internal game design like this one so I thought I was in some amazing virtual reality. Even today I'm amazed at some of the nuance and problem solving and I'm not entirely sure some of the solutions I used went emergent game play. I used the force generator to shield me from the big stationary turrets and would jump and fire over it at them. Also, in the huge room with the three very high pillars and the red and black giant sentinel, I figured that you could jump forward and change your flight path with your boosters so I was able to jump and curve my angle to get into the open dock area that had no pillar near it and at the time I thought I'd found a short cut that the gave designers didn't intend but not sure if others did that. lol, a couple of times I called the pay number to get some advice on a tricky part. No idea who was on the other end but they must have memorised the game. At the very end, I was totally stuck, I had the weapon/key to reveal the door to the AI but couldn't figure out how to use it and as I took a break my bloody friends little brother picked up the joystick and figured that you had to first unequipped a piece of gear then put that in its slot and he used it and revealed the secret door. I was so annoyed that I grabbed the joystick off him and finished the game by shooting the AI. I had to get closure after the trauma of the long hard play through to the end :) After playing that game I just knew that 3D would take over even though it was quite rare at the time. I still consider it one of the best games I ever played. Today I found a site where you can play it in a browser and I even found a site called 'oldgames dot sk' where they have a functioning on screen code wheel for the game. Amazing. I just download the documentation. For the Amiga version I think but it will be the same. Looking forward to playing it again.
I have a similar story about this game. I found it on a shareware collection cd. Even though the interface didn't make any sense the game drew me in because I wanted to see the next room and see how far I could get. I compared notes with my friend David and he eventually called me and told me it's how he beat the game. I was a teenager at the time. I still play Cybercon occasionally and I've gotten much better thought I still use a map. The combination wheel from oldgame'sk looks like the same one from my boxed amiga copy. The DOS version I recored here has some changed lines of code that let's you get past a few doors without the proper sonic key color. So I actually played the game out of order. The Amiga makes you take a longer path as intended by the designers. Thanks for sharing your nostalgic experience! Good Luck! Have Fun :)
I played the crap out of this game when I was younger, but could never solve it. This game was so far ahead of its time. I can't remember the name of the shading technique it used, but it wowed me at the time. This game and Dragon Hunt... I wish there were videos of someone beating them. Thx for the video BTW... such nostalgia. I would play this today if it were available on steam, and didn't need the (such love) black wheeled copy protection.
Think about that, years before Doom was still shooting on a horizontal plain only, in Cybecon 3 you had to angle the vertical aime also or your shot would go over the enemy or hit the ground if it wasn't aimed right. Amazing game.
Found this game in a book called "I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE: The ultimate guide to FPS 1992-2002". The original Game Director wanted it to be Tron-like, so this made me to watch it.
This game gets left out of a lot of lists when it should be more prominent. You should check out my other video "how to play: cybercon iii" If you are interested in the gameplay mechanics. It's all very interesting to me. :)
Loved this game back on my Amiga. I remember I made it quite a ways through it, but ran into a bug and got stuck. I just saw this game (in-box) for PC DOS on my software shelf, and thought, hey I wonder if there is a TH-cam video of it. And here I am! Looking forward to your video. I do have this working on DosBox on the PC. I have the copy-protection wheel in the box, but I was able to find the crack so I don't have to use the wheel. I did try to play this a year or so ago, but forgot how complicated it was. You actually have to read the manual unlike games today.
Kevin Crane just like Metroid for the Gameboy, cybercon 3 is a survival exploration without an in-game map. Someone made a walk through and put it online: www.trep4.com/amicheats/classics/cn/cybercon3.html my friend David beat this game in the 90s without instructions. We pressed every key on the keyboard till we figured it out.
Thanks -- I saved off the walkthrough! Reading comments below, it sounds like the cracked DOS version may not be the one I want to play after all. I have an Amiga emulator so I might play it on there instead. Or, if I put the original .exe back on the DOS version (and use my copy protection wheel), maybe it would be okay.
Kevin Crane I've got the copy protection wheel but it dosen't work across platforms. If you are playing the amiga adf find the one cracked by nomad. At the first door press fire followed by "nmd" and then press fire twice to open the door. The amiga version has a solid fps and uses the lovely amiga sound card. I have a problem where there is background noise that sounds like a glitch in the emulation. There's chirping and screeching and it doesn't sound intended. I've beaten it on the emulation for Amiga but I haven't made a Long play yet because I can't work out the background noise
check out my other video "how to play cybercon" it's long winded but mostly complete explanation of how to play the game. The game speed matches possessor so my suggestion is 386 or 286 machine speed. Dosbox suffers from screen tearing but one of the devs on vogons made a patch for the game if you google around. many abandonware versions of the game have been cracked, so any password-locked-doors will open with just any code. but this breaks the authentic flow of the game since you can kinda cheat by opening just whatever. Good luck!!!
Yopachi, you seem to have a deep knowledge of this incredible game! Have you ever discovered what the sonic consolle does at 1:09:00? Also, in that "three-pillars room", there is another bay (the one you access with the elevator) that has carved on a wall a sonic code sequence; I wasn't able to understand what it's supposed to do, or where it should be used (I've annotated it in the longplay of the Amiga version)...
@@richardhewit215 1984. Not too many games with this kind of detail at this point. Instead of a car or spaceship this perspective is from the ground walking about.
Someone hacked this version to bypass the "code wheel doors." The mod also broke some of the other doors. This is an unintended way to complete the game. I found out after playing through the amiga version as I see you have ;)
@@yopachi Ah, yes, I see that even in other sections you're granted access even if you haven't the right sonic codes! As an example, on the Amiga version it's simply impossible to get the green hourglass code the way you did: you HAD to discover that a chevron mark door was fake and enter it. That was probably the hardest thing in the game, I remember that I was able to solve that part only when a friend of mine suggested me that idea - otherwise I'd probably still wandering in that part of the complex without any clue on how to proceed... ;)
This game is really a masterpiece. Everybody knows Half Life, much less knows System Shock, and almost nobody knows Cybercon 3. It's a shame, because it's an absolutely unique hybrid of 3D-shooter and puzzler from 1991. And, it's not like "3D", it's a complete 3D with even platforming sections and jet-pack. Energy allocation mechanics works very well for the entire game. But. I will guess several reasons for such obscurity. 1) I could not find any single example of working Code Wheel for this game (for Amiga one). There are several examples on the net, but they don't work. Cracking this game on Amiga took 7+ years from first attempt to make it finally beatable. And, this particular game is not friendly in terms on "running it". I spend 5+ hours to make it works on A1200, including in-game save feature that requires disk formatted in certain way (not "any disk" as stated in manual). 2) Few years before the same team make another game ahead of time, that is even more obscure than Cybercon 3 🙂 This game is called Interphase. I beat it recently, i don't know any other man in the world who did it. And.. It's also a very interesting game, and also puzzle-action hybrid, but it has bigger difficulty level, which is unreachable for most. And it becomes difficult from the very first levels (from 3th or 4th idr). You must go from 1 level to 13 level, find some shit there scanning 15-20 stupid rooms and then go back. Saving only between levels. And levels can be 40+ minutes long. The game is not easy itself, but it was not enough 🙂 After level 12 and all way back it also starts to crash often. So, you can play the last 13 level for 40 minutes, and then crash.. Amazing. For me, Interphase is more of a good game, it has stupid memorizing and crash moments, but core mechanics works (instead of Alpha Waves :), and mostly it is about skill. It's a rare case. But I think, most of people didn't get it on the very first levels. And then Cybercon 3 comes. With same advs about 3D and "ahead of time". I think nobody believed it the second time. As for Cybercon versions.. Amiga version is not a "prototype for PC", it's just an Amiga version, the same game with slightly better sound effects. On Amiga 1200 framerate is pretty good, but the best framerate can be achieved on PC version. On Amigas with extra features it can be better also, but the enemies start to be annoyingly fast and bad-playable. From my experiments - standard A1200 is the best choice. As i see, you are interested in early 3D games. For me, the best european example is Trex Warrior. It's an amazing 3D arena shooter. It's not an easy game also, and it gives you only 10 saves for the entire game. But it's all about skill, and mechanics works. The best japanese example is Star Cruiser by far, especially remake on MD (PC-88 original version is also amazing, sharp x68k version is the worst).
So, Cybercon III is a special game to me. They hired a guy to do the custom sound effects for the atari and amiga version, and I really like the way it sounds however there is an annoying chirping in the background. The PC has sound for adlib, pc speaker, and MT-32 MIDI synthesizer. Combined with the other version that make 4 different ways to play sound for the game. There are no example videos for the MT-32 but I might make one soon because I started speed running the game. I did not notice that the enemies get faster when I played the Amiga version on emulation, but that is cool to know! I do like the screen shakes when you take hits in combat. The jump feature is broken in the amiga/st versions allowing you to spam jump in mid air to "fly". I've recreated the whole game and all the objects in blender. I want to make a high quality map and some other low effort ideas. Interphase is cool but I haven't gotten around to beating it. There is an enemy in one of the version of interphase that is a "frog on a unicycle" and it makes me think about the "here comes dat boi" meme. If you type the word "fenny" into the keyboard at the start of interphase you can see all the objects in the game. Another thing I like about Cybercon is the verticality of the maps. A lot of the early 3d games were flat and could be compared to top down shooters from a 1st person view. Cybercon and Alpha Waves let you travel up and down which make them stand out to me.
I already typed this, but youtube decided to just outright delete my comment. I am playing this wonderful game thanks to you, but I think I encountered a huge bug. Via Dos Box with the cc3wrfx file set to 1 A you aked for in the vogons forum with cycles set to 2000: I am not sure about the exact conditions, but sometimes you can get infinite fast refilling energy for what seems like an indefinite amount of time. Last time it happened when I got to close to a stationary tower sentry, got damaged, set repair mode to all while all energy tanks were active. What dos/cc3wrfx file settings are you using? It "might" be related to that. I will try the normal executable for now and see if it also happens with that. The game also seems to be prone to crashing when getting close to elevators. I am not sure what is up with that. Edit: It seems like the power generators you switch on (at least the one in the tower with the green Triangle) seems to give you infinite energy? The range of the thing does seem absurd though. It might be that the range for the generator wasnt properly set for that one so it covers everything. Looking at your video it shouldnt give any energy refill. Are they required for progressing?
Dang youtube! My current settings have changed. And I'll tell you what I know about the infinity refills and game crashes. I am running dosbox at 5000 cycles. I launch the game with CC3WFRX set on 4 (yay for no screen tearing!) The game can get bugged and crash. If you make a save state and the game crashes afterward you might have to start over. Whatever conditions are crashing the game may ruin a save file. It might have to do with a spawn limit, just a guess. I think the spawner makes more cleaning droids when there are too many items on the ground. If you block an elevator too long their will be a big traffic jam of robots; this can overwhelm the game. A common version of the Cybercon is cracked. This lets you open many locked doors with any sonic key. This version may have introduced more bugs. I if you turn on all 3 power rooms you get infinite battery power. This is harder to accomplish in the unmodified game.
Thank you for the reply! I didnt use any save states. Your explanation seems about right. Its odd how many robots just destroy themselves. Early infighting before doom? Where could I get an uncracked version? I kinda want to play the game proper so hearing that a lot of doors open with any key is kind of a bummer. I also dont want to make use of that power room feature. It totally removes any challenge with energy management from the game. Thank you again for making this and the tutorial video I never knew just how advanced and unique this game is.
@@tked9244 I don't think the amiga version has the full power secret. I don't care for it either because collecting the green cells is already a feature. Luckily there is a backup on internet Archive if you search for "Cybercon III IBM PC Floppy Image". My floppy is corrupted so it's a relief to see somebody is looking out for preservation. If you google for a code wheel you will find Alexis Beaumont's interactive recreation. The robots don't target each other but they do run over and hit allies with crossfire. Stupid droids :)
Thank you for the information. This is easily one of the most interesting games I have played, just by the fact how it handles 3d and how it has an entirely different approach to a 3d shooter. The low poly creative model use makes it this wonderful abstraction, kinda like the sentry(sentinel) where actually adding a story to it would take something away. (thats why I didnt read the backstory for it) Alpha waves also looks interesting, but it seems kinda intimidating with the time limit and the huge sets of rooms. I would recommend you to play Millennia: Altered Destinies.(If you havent) The gameplay is completely unique. The presentation is completely unique. It has probably the best and coolest interface interaction I have seen in a game. The game does have issues, but the good parts far outweight the bad.
@@tked9244 Millennia: Altered Destinies is near the top of my list of games that interest me. I have almost 300 games on my list. You are inspiring me to make more videos haha. heard of "robinson's requiem" gosh that game looks weird
It's sorta "metroidvania." You can explore freely but you will have to acquire "green keys" to get farther in the game. Check out my "how to play cybercon" video on the channel for more.
Wow, thanks for playing that through and recording it - memories come flooding back, but I'm not sure I could bear to play the game again at that framerate. I actually wrote the walkthrough and drew those maps for the Amiga version back in the early 90s. Needless to say, I was utterly obsessed with this game at the time, and it always niggled me that I'd never figured out the secondary objective (lower the force wall). A decade later, the primary game author Ricardo Pinto had left the game industry and become a fantasy author. I emailed him about Cybercon, and he very kindly replied and essentially said: "Glad you loved the game, I was proud of it at the time, but I can't remember much about it now!".
I'd like to personally thank you for writing those walkthroughs. I was very determined to beat this game and your map came in very handy. This game is certainly an underrated achievement in game design and I hope putting up videos here on TH-cam will help persevere and expose it's brilliance.
Unfortunately my upload got a little corrupted and the frame rate isn't quite right with some glitching and graphical tearing not present in the actual game play. Amiga of course has the best frame rate and although it's a prototype of the PC release it looks and sounds better on the Amiga chipset.
@@yopachi Well, you inspired me to fire up WinUAE and play through it again. Very glad I made those maps!! :) With AGA chipset, plenty of RAM and a 68020 emulation, the framerate was very smooth. Still a tough game, even with maps and quicksave savestates.
@@yopachi The Amiga had a better frame rate? I played it on an A500 back in the day and I'm not sure it could run this fast.
Hi Billius! I made a longplay for the Amiga, you can find it here: th-cam.com/video/YZxyDo9opd8/w-d-xo.html. I (partly) used your maps, so thank you very much; I followed a bit your walkthrough, although I did some parts in the way I remembered I did in the ol'good days!
Thanks for the video, I still have an A1200 and this game! It was pretty advanced for its time and maybe influenced games like System Shock.
I'd love to see how this time runs on the Amiga. I only have it on emulators
What an absolute intravenous hit of nostalgia, every room and enemy brought it all back! Cybercon 3 was my #1 game from the moment it came out, I cant imagine the hours I spent playing this! I have wasted so many hours watching mundane TH-cam videos, that was the best (just over) 2 hours I have spent on here for years. Thanks you so much Yopachi, you are a legend. :)
Ah, thank you for the kind words! Try my other video "How To Play: Cybercon III". I put some passion into a vhs guide explaining as much of the game as I could in a historically accurate style. I even cooked up some retro animations to fill in some of the setting of the story. You can read a note from the games designer in the comments of that video.
This is amazing footage, dude. Thanks for making this.
Thanks for the sub! Hope to put out some more vids in the future ;)
That was great to watch.
I remember buying this game for the Amiga 500 when it came out.
At first I couldn't play it at all as I could not deceiver the abstract multi layerd control interface. My big brained friend figured it out for me and taught me though.
I enjoyed struggling through it with a joystick and Amiga keys despite the low frame rate. Actually I thought the sluggish pace was intentional so I didn't think of it as slow. I just though the giant robot I was in was slow.
At the time I was fascinated with anything 3D, especially internal game design like this one so I thought I was in some amazing virtual reality.
Even today I'm amazed at some of the nuance and problem solving and I'm not entirely sure some of the solutions I used went emergent game play.
I used the force generator to shield me from the big stationary turrets and would jump and fire over it at them.
Also, in the huge room with the three very high pillars and the red and black giant sentinel, I figured that you could jump forward and change your flight path with your boosters so I was able to jump and curve my angle to get into the open dock area that had no pillar near it and at the time I thought I'd found a short cut that the gave designers didn't intend but not sure if others did that.
lol, a couple of times I called the pay number to get some advice on a tricky part. No idea who was on the other end but they must have memorised the game.
At the very end, I was totally stuck, I had the weapon/key to reveal the door to the AI but couldn't figure out how to use it and as I took a break my bloody friends little brother picked up the joystick and figured that you had to first unequipped a piece of gear then put that in its slot and he used it and revealed the secret door. I was so annoyed that I grabbed the joystick off him and finished the game by shooting the AI. I had to get closure after the trauma of the long hard play through to the end :)
After playing that game I just knew that 3D would take over even though it was quite rare at the time.
I still consider it one of the best games I ever played.
Today I found a site where you can play it in a browser and I even found a site called 'oldgames dot sk' where they have a functioning on screen code wheel for the game. Amazing.
I just download the documentation. For the Amiga version I think but it will be the same.
Looking forward to playing it again.
I have a similar story about this game. I found it on a shareware collection cd. Even though the interface didn't make any sense the game drew me in because I wanted to see the next room and see how far I could get. I compared notes with my friend David and he eventually called me and told me it's how he beat the game. I was a teenager at the time. I still play Cybercon occasionally and I've gotten much better thought I still use a map. The combination wheel from oldgame'sk looks like the same one from my boxed amiga copy. The DOS version I recored here has some changed lines of code that let's you get past a few doors without the proper sonic key color. So I actually played the game out of order. The Amiga makes you take a longer path as intended by the designers.
Thanks for sharing your nostalgic experience! Good Luck! Have Fun :)
I played the crap out of this game when I was younger, but could never solve it. This game was so far ahead of its time. I can't remember the name of the shading technique it used, but it wowed me at the time. This game and Dragon Hunt... I wish there were videos of someone beating them. Thx for the video BTW... such nostalgia. I would play this today if it were available on steam, and didn't need the (such love) black wheeled copy protection.
Thanks for the comment! I want to look up dragon hunt now!
Fun fact: If you play the red circle key while there are fuel cells on the ground they will explode and cause damage. Good way to set traps.
The force field pyramids take too much setup. Great idea!
Think about that, years before Doom was still shooting on a horizontal plain only, in Cybecon 3 you had to angle the vertical aime also or your shot would go over the enemy or hit the ground if it wasn't aimed right. Amazing game.
It's impressive that old 3d real engine.
Ahead of it's time and mostly forgotten. It would be interesting to know more about how it was made and if it was intended for VR
Found this game in a book called "I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE: The ultimate guide to FPS 1992-2002". The original Game Director wanted it to be Tron-like, so this made me to watch it.
This game gets left out of a lot of lists when it should be more prominent. You should check out my other video "how to play: cybercon iii" If you are interested in the gameplay mechanics. It's all very interesting to me. :)
Loved this game back on my Amiga. I remember I made it quite a ways through it, but ran into a bug and got stuck. I just saw this game (in-box) for PC DOS on my software shelf, and thought, hey I wonder if there is a TH-cam video of it. And here I am! Looking forward to your video. I do have this working on DosBox on the PC. I have the copy-protection wheel in the box, but I was able to find the crack so I don't have to use the wheel. I did try to play this a year or so ago, but forgot how complicated it was. You actually have to read the manual unlike games today.
Kevin Crane just like Metroid for the Gameboy, cybercon 3 is a survival exploration without an in-game map. Someone made a walk through and put it online: www.trep4.com/amicheats/classics/cn/cybercon3.html my friend David beat this game in the 90s without instructions. We pressed every key on the keyboard till we figured it out.
Thanks -- I saved off the walkthrough! Reading comments below, it sounds like the cracked DOS version may not be the one I want to play after all. I have an Amiga emulator so I might play it on there instead. Or, if I put the original .exe back on the DOS version (and use my copy protection wheel), maybe it would be okay.
Kevin Crane I've got the copy protection wheel but it dosen't work across platforms. If you are playing the amiga adf find the one cracked by nomad. At the first door press fire followed by "nmd" and then press fire twice to open the door. The amiga version has a solid fps and uses the lovely amiga sound card. I have a problem where there is background noise that sounds like a glitch in the emulation. There's chirping and screeching and it doesn't sound intended. I've beaten it on the emulation for Amiga but I haven't made a Long play yet because I can't work out the background noise
Wow what cool game!! I'd never heard of this one but I'm definitely going to have to give it a try now. :D
check out my other video "how to play cybercon" it's long winded but mostly complete explanation of how to play the game. The game speed matches possessor so my suggestion is 386 or 286 machine speed. Dosbox suffers from screen tearing but one of the devs on vogons made a patch for the game if you google around. many abandonware versions of the game have been cracked, so any password-locked-doors will open with just any code. but this breaks the authentic flow of the game since you can kinda cheat by opening just whatever.
Good luck!!!
If I remember it right I got stuck at a giant gap and a huge electrical ball took me out.
Yopachi, you seem to have a deep knowledge of this incredible game! Have you ever discovered what the sonic consolle does at 1:09:00? Also, in that "three-pillars room", there is another bay (the one you access with the elevator) that has carved on a wall a sonic code sequence; I wasn't able to understand what it's supposed to do, or where it should be used (I've annotated it in the longplay of the Amiga version)...
I'm thinking it was intended for the drawbridge in the next room. It might be bugged in this version. Just finished watching your amiga longplay!! :D
From a time long long gone when devs used something called imagination.
Making a first person game in 1990 would require some intense creative vision.
@@yopachi When was elite then ?
@@richardhewit215 1984. Not too many games with this kind of detail at this point. Instead of a car or spaceship this perspective is from the ground walking about.
@@yopachi I finished the game. What stops most people is a secret door.
at 5:19 is it a bug of the PC version? On the Amiga you need a green sonic key to open the door to the maintenance section!
Someone hacked this version to bypass the "code wheel doors." The mod also broke some of the other doors. This is an unintended way to complete the game. I found out after playing through the amiga version as I see you have ;)
@@yopachi Ah, yes, I see that even in other sections you're granted access even if you haven't the right sonic codes! As an example, on the Amiga version it's simply impossible to get the green hourglass code the way you did: you HAD to discover that a chevron mark door was fake and enter it. That was probably the hardest thing in the game, I remember that I was able to solve that part only when a friend of mine suggested me that idea - otherwise I'd probably still wandering in that part of the complex without any clue on how to proceed... ;)
This game is really a masterpiece. Everybody knows Half Life, much less knows System Shock, and almost nobody knows Cybercon 3. It's a shame, because it's an absolutely unique hybrid of 3D-shooter and puzzler from 1991. And, it's not like "3D", it's a complete 3D with even platforming sections and jet-pack. Energy allocation mechanics works very well for the entire game.
But. I will guess several reasons for such obscurity.
1) I could not find any single example of working Code Wheel for this game (for Amiga one). There are several examples on the net, but they don't work. Cracking this game on Amiga took 7+ years from first attempt to make it finally beatable. And, this particular game is not friendly in terms on "running it". I spend 5+ hours to make it works on A1200, including in-game save feature that requires disk formatted in certain way (not "any disk" as stated in manual).
2) Few years before the same team make another game ahead of time, that is even more obscure than Cybercon 3 🙂 This game is called Interphase. I beat it recently, i don't know any other man in the world who did it. And.. It's also a very interesting game, and also puzzle-action hybrid, but it has bigger difficulty level, which is unreachable for most. And it becomes difficult from the very first levels (from 3th or 4th idr). You must go from 1 level to 13 level, find some shit there scanning 15-20 stupid rooms and then go back. Saving only between levels. And levels can be 40+ minutes long. The game is not easy itself, but it was not enough 🙂 After level 12 and all way back it also starts to crash often. So, you can play the last 13 level for 40 minutes, and then crash.. Amazing. For me, Interphase is more of a good game, it has stupid memorizing and crash moments, but core mechanics works (instead of Alpha Waves :), and mostly it is about skill. It's a rare case. But I think, most of people didn't get it on the very first levels. And then Cybercon 3 comes. With same advs about 3D and "ahead of time". I think nobody believed it the second time.
As for Cybercon versions.. Amiga version is not a "prototype for PC", it's just an Amiga version, the same game with slightly better sound effects. On Amiga 1200 framerate is pretty good, but the best framerate can be achieved on PC version. On Amigas with extra features it can be better also, but the enemies start to be annoyingly fast and bad-playable. From my experiments - standard A1200 is the best choice.
As i see, you are interested in early 3D games. For me, the best european example is Trex Warrior. It's an amazing 3D arena shooter. It's not an easy game also, and it gives you only 10 saves for the entire game. But it's all about skill, and mechanics works. The best japanese example is Star Cruiser by far, especially remake on MD (PC-88 original version is also amazing, sharp x68k version is the worst).
So, Cybercon III is a special game to me. They hired a guy to do the custom sound effects for the atari and amiga version, and I really like the way it sounds however there is an annoying chirping in the background. The PC has sound for adlib, pc speaker, and MT-32 MIDI synthesizer. Combined with the other version that make 4 different ways to play sound for the game. There are no example videos for the MT-32 but I might make one soon because I started speed running the game.
I did not notice that the enemies get faster when I played the Amiga version on emulation, but that is cool to know! I do like the screen shakes when you take hits in combat. The jump feature is broken in the amiga/st versions allowing you to spam jump in mid air to "fly".
I've recreated the whole game and all the objects in blender. I want to make a high quality map and some other low effort ideas.
Interphase is cool but I haven't gotten around to beating it. There is an enemy in one of the version of interphase that is a "frog on a unicycle" and it makes me think about the "here comes dat boi" meme. If you type the word "fenny" into the keyboard at the start of interphase you can see all the objects in the game.
Another thing I like about Cybercon is the verticality of the maps. A lot of the early 3d games were flat and could be compared to top down shooters from a 1st person view. Cybercon and Alpha Waves let you travel up and down which make them stand out to me.
I already typed this, but youtube decided to just outright delete my comment.
I am playing this wonderful game thanks to you, but I think I encountered a huge bug.
Via Dos Box with the cc3wrfx file set to 1 A you aked for in the vogons forum with cycles set to 2000:
I am not sure about the exact conditions, but sometimes you can get infinite fast refilling energy for what seems like an indefinite amount of time.
Last time it happened when I got to close to a stationary tower sentry, got damaged, set repair mode to all while all energy tanks were active.
What dos/cc3wrfx file settings are you using?
It "might" be related to that.
I will try the normal executable for now and see if it also happens with that.
The game also seems to be prone to crashing when getting close to elevators.
I am not sure what is up with that.
Edit:
It seems like the power generators you switch on (at least the one in the tower with the green Triangle) seems to give you infinite energy?
The range of the thing does seem absurd though.
It might be that the range for the generator wasnt properly set for that one so it covers everything.
Looking at your video it shouldnt give any energy refill.
Are they required for progressing?
Dang youtube! My current settings have changed. And I'll tell you what I know about the infinity refills and game crashes.
I am running dosbox at 5000 cycles. I launch the game with CC3WFRX set on 4 (yay for no screen tearing!)
The game can get bugged and crash. If you make a save state and the game crashes afterward you might have to start over. Whatever conditions are crashing the game may ruin a save file. It might have to do with a spawn limit, just a guess. I think the spawner makes more cleaning droids when there are too many items on the ground. If you block an elevator too long their will be a big traffic jam of robots; this can overwhelm the game.
A common version of the Cybercon is cracked. This lets you open many locked doors with any sonic key. This version may have introduced more bugs.
I if you turn on all 3 power rooms you get infinite battery power. This is harder to accomplish in the unmodified game.
Thank you for the reply!
I didnt use any save states.
Your explanation seems about right.
Its odd how many robots just destroy themselves.
Early infighting before doom?
Where could I get an uncracked version?
I kinda want to play the game proper so hearing that a lot of doors open with any key is kind of a bummer.
I also dont want to make use of that power room feature.
It totally removes any challenge with energy management from the game.
Thank you again for making this and the tutorial video
I never knew just how advanced and unique this game is.
@@tked9244 I don't think the amiga version has the full power secret. I don't care for it either because collecting the green cells is already a feature. Luckily there is a backup on internet Archive if you search for "Cybercon III IBM PC Floppy Image". My floppy is corrupted so it's a relief to see somebody is looking out for preservation. If you google for a code wheel you will find Alexis Beaumont's interactive recreation.
The robots don't target each other but they do run over and hit allies with crossfire. Stupid droids :)
Thank you for the information.
This is easily one of the most interesting games I have played, just by the fact how it handles 3d and how it has an entirely different approach to a 3d shooter.
The low poly creative model use makes it this wonderful abstraction, kinda like the sentry(sentinel) where actually adding a story to it would take something away. (thats why I didnt read the backstory for it)
Alpha waves also looks interesting, but it seems kinda intimidating with the time limit and the huge sets of rooms.
I would recommend you to play Millennia: Altered Destinies.(If you havent)
The gameplay is completely unique.
The presentation is completely unique.
It has probably the best and coolest interface interaction I have seen in a game.
The game does have issues, but the good parts far outweight the bad.
@@tked9244 Millennia: Altered Destinies is near the top of my list of games that interest me. I have almost 300 games on my list. You are inspiring me to make more videos haha.
heard of "robinson's requiem" gosh that game looks weird
Is the game open world or partially non-linear?
It's sorta "metroidvania." You can explore freely but you will have to acquire "green keys" to get farther in the game. Check out my "how to play cybercon" video on the channel for more.