Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

aka: Blake Stone 3-D, Secret Agent Game
Moby ID: 786
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Aliens of Gold, the first game in the Blake Stone series, pits the space-age British secret agent against Dr. Pyrus Goldfire; a madman bent on world domination. Using a mastery of genetic engineering and a tremendous reserve of wealth, Dr. Goldfire intends to unleash a mutant army upon the Earth.

The first chapter begins in Goldfire's S.T.A.R. Institute headquarters building. Each level has Blake fighting through guards to find an elevator keycard for the next level. Dr. Goldfire will personally appear along the way to fire shots at Blake, and his genetic creations also pose a tough challenge. Each chapter lasts 10 levels, and brings Blake closer to reaching Goldfire, only to have the mad doctor escape to a new installation in his network, and the start of a new chapter.

Blake Stone uses the Wolfenstein 3-D engine to render its levels. Basic gameplay and enemy AI is similar in most respects. Some of Blake's innovations include silent weapons that can kill guards without alerting others. Alerts are given to the player through text messages on the HUD. Health can be gained through use of wall-mounted vending machines, operated with tokens picked up off dead guards. An automap and stat-tracking are both available during gameplay. Finally, there are friendly AI characters who offer clues and powerups when you speak to them - provided Blake doesn't accidentally shoot them first!

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Credits (DOS version)

80 People (58 developers, 22 thanks) · View all

Engine Programmer
Engine Tools Programmer
Jam Productions
Contributing Artists
Music
Texture Mapping Engine
  • id Software
Cover and LINC Computer Illustration
Comic Book Illustration
Comic Book Storyline
Financing & Resources
  • Apogee Software
Special Thanks to [1]
Apogee Technical Support
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 10 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 65 ratings with 10 reviews)

One of my childhood memories right here

The Good
Don't know how I got to know about this game in the first place. I think my dad, who used to be huge fan of Duke Nukem, downloaded it from 3D Realms site and showed it to me one day back in the mid 90's. What I saw was awesome, and I still find it quite cool even to this day. Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold delievers everything you want from a game like this. Cool soundtrack, huge and many levels, badass weaponry and a score system. I dare even say that the graphics are cool too, being runned by an overhauled Wolfenstein 3D engine. Planet Strike!, the second instalment in the series even implemented bobbing for the weapons.

The Bad
Sadly however, me and other fans of the game were a few bunch. The others had already gotten into Hell, known as Doom, that recently came out shortly after Blake Stone, nearly killing it. Every level has a theme that reminds of a labyrinth, exactly like Wolf3D. And just with that game, some levels are really easy to get lost into and may take quite alot of time to navigate out of. There are many weapons in the game, but none really feel better than the other despite how awesome they look. You can easily "snipe" a guy across the map with one bullet with your starter gun, which also is silent. The keybindings in Blake Stone can't be bound the way you want, and there's no Y-axis for looking up and down with the mouse. (Luckily though, since DOSBox lets us rebind however we darn please, that problem now becomes a memory of the past, and there's a tool that disables the Y-axis, so you can play almost exactly with WASD keys like today).

The Bottom Line
I'd describe this game as a cool FPS from the past, that's sadly is hugely underrated. "Thanks" to Doom.

DOS · by CRYOSURGEON (15) · 2014

What can I say, this ain't Doom.

The Good
At the time I bought the game I really didn't have too much else to play so, I took it upon myself to beat the game. I actually felt ok about buying this one, at Sam Goody the day before they had all of their full version Apogee games on sale for $1 each (Note: I ended up buying Blake Stone, Duke Nukem II, and Alien Carnage). The music for the game was ok, although it lacked a punch that so many other Apogee games seem to have in them. Although I do understand that they didn't design the game, they still put their name on it. The controls are on par with Wolfenstein 3D, making the game easy to learn how to play.

The Bad
The graphics in Blake Stone were most decidedly sub-par. The textures were boring, the animation was choppy, and the pixelization made me want to squint and cry all at the same time. And then there are the laughable character models. Never before have I seen such creatures that made me want to shoot them just to put them out of their misery. The sound in the game made me want to shut it off. The "sounds" produced by this game are not much of an improvement over the use of the PC Speaker. Moving from worse to god awful, we have the computer AI. Very simply put, there is no computer AI. The monsters will consistently be stopped by shutting a door in their face. Will they dodge your shots? I don't think so, they will stand there and take the five shots it takes to bring them down.

The Bottom Line
Unless you happen to find this game on sale for a dollar, I wouldn't get it.

DOS · by Derrick 'Knight' Steele (2347) · 2000

Tragic.

The Good
I liked the gameplay! It is Wolfenstein 3D with a science fiction theme and makeover, and when I was a kid I sometimes got bored of Wolf3D - so therefore Blake Stone was a good option as if you know how to play one, you can play the other!

I liked the features such as Food Units and Informants (bad guys who actually help you) and also found the music really catchy. The HUD was also easy to use and understand and contained many advanced features such as attacking information and a dialogue box for communication. None of this was in Wolf 3D, which is why this was a breath of lovely new air!

The Bad
The AI was pretty poor, in my opinion, with enemies just pointing and firing instead of engaging any tactics. The graphics were also extremely pixelated and horrible! What the title is referring to as 'tragic' is in fact the timing of Blake Stone's release - a mere five days before Doom! Of course, this game was crushed by Doom and that was that - it is extremely frustrating though, because this game had potential and due to the daft timing of it's release, fell down into the pit of gaming blackness and never returned.

The Bottom Line
This game is fun to play, the last real milestone of the pre-Doom FPS era - after this, everything changed. So, like Wolfenstein 3D, regardless of the awful release time, Blake Stone is truly part of history.

DOS · by Quackbal (45) · 2007

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Before it's time ? GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) Mar 16, 2008

Trivia

Comic

The original documentation for the game included an 11 page comic book which introduced Blake and his arch-enemy, Doctor Goldstern.

Dr. Goldstern's name

The main antagonist of the game was originally named Dr. Goldstern, however, this had to be changed to Goldfire after Apogee received a complaint from a watchful customer, as Mike Maynard recounts:

Dr. Pyrus Goldfire was originally called Dr. Goldstern. One person sent an email to Apogee complaining about how the name "Goldstern" portrayed Jewish people as evil. So we had to change the name.

Were the name kept as it was, it would have served as a bilingual bonus of sorts, as Stern means 'star' in German, and Goldfire's research centre where the first episode of the game takes place is called The S.T.A.R. Institute.

This change had not prevented the developers from playing with words though: the new -fire part of the name is echoed by Goldfire's first name, Pyrus, which is obviously derived from Greek pyros, meaning 'fire'.

Screen shots from the beta of the game that show the original name of Dr. Goldfire can be found here.

Engine

While Blake Stone uses an updated version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine, it is not the significantly upgraded engine that appeared in Shadowcaster.

German index

On January 1, 1995, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS for being extreme violent. The game group offers more information about this topic.

Release

The programmers that developed Blake Stone (JAM Productions) were friends of id Software from when both teams worked at Softdisk Publishing as employees. JAM Productions was aware DOOM was going to be released and that it would kill all sales of Blake Stone, so the game was released early, 1 month before DOOM to hopefully see some sales. The first 30 days of sales brought in a good $100,000 for the development team. Once DOOM was released all income dropped to below $10,000 a month. The company struggled to release Blake Stone: Planet Strike then later the company broke up.

Information also contributed by Jim Row, Xoleras and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Omniscia.

Windows added by Cantillon. Linux added by Sciere. Macintosh added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Apogee IV, vedder, Patrick Bregger, MrFlibble, Kayburt.

Game added January 24, 2000. Last modified February 14, 2024.