Description
You are a Space Marshall, investigating a distress call from the colony Delta 5-5.
As you approach the planet, your ship comes in contact with a gravity well, and crash-lands. The landing drained your ship of all but minimal power, stranding you.
After putting on your Power Armor, navigating the planet's surface and stepping into the Colony itself, you must uncover what has happened to the colonists, restore power to your ship, and, optionally, rescue the colonist's children.
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Trivia
Christmas
Setting your computer's date to December 25th causes all of the potted plants in the game to turn into Christmas trees.
Graphics
The Colony was programmed with a common graphics library of the time that was meant for business graphics -- it supported practically every single extended CGA, EGA, and early VGA boards for high-resolution and/or color support for the game. Well over 20 "SuperCGA" and "SuperEGA" video modes were supported. I personally played The Colony on an AT&T PC 6300, an Olivetti clone that had a CGA card capable of a 640x400x2 mode (it had 32K of display memory instead of the usual 16K). Such support was normally unheard of in 1988.
Influences
Plot elements in
The Colony were most noteably influenced by the movie
Aliens, and some areas and items in the game are based on the movies
2001: A Space Odyssey,
The Fly, and
Battlezone.
Legacy
The Colony could be considered the first 3D first-person shooter. The mouse controls were a precursor to what has become standard control for 3D games. The technology in
The Colony later was extended into Virtus Walkthrough, a variation of which was used to plot shots for the movie
The Abyss.
Information also contributed by
Scott Berfield and
Trixter
