Hardwar

Actors

Designer and producer Ade Carless actually appears in the game's videos as the Police Über-Clerk. The character Syd is played in the FMV clips by British television presenter Ben Shephard, early in his career.

Demo

The demo (while timed and limited to the Alpha crater) has a unique scenario.

Extras

Some US releases included a Fragile Allegiance CD (full version - just a CD in a slip case) inside the box.

Hardluck

The Software Refinery released a small utility called "Hardluck" that toggles a 'Misc' tab on the main launch menu. There are several options available from this tab; such as playing the videos from the game discs, enabling debug keys, or creating a text log file for each game played, which details all activity in the world.

Options

You can actually purchase buildings in each of the craters by locating the real estate agent's location. You can also call for a taxi, buy new "moths" (the crafts you fly), get new weapons and equipment, smuggle (illegal substances of course), be a vigilante (track down/kill wanted moth drivers for police) by visiting the police HQ and get the wanted list, salvage dropped merchandise (if you have a retriever drone), borrow money from loan shark(s), pay fines (to clear your record with the police), trade with various enclaves and shops, hire on as mercenary for one of the factions in the game, upgrade your computer systems in the moth by finding a software house, and much more...

References

Some of the AI Pilots are named after the hacker aliases from the film Hackers (1995) starring Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie - Acid Burn, Crash Override, Zero Cool, Lord Nikon.

Soundtrack

The radio station in this game, HardWarp FM, is based on Warp Records, an independent electronic music label who did provide the tracks. Both CDs have five full length tracks and eleven short tracks. Here are the names and artists of the full length tracks:

CD1:

Track 2: Black Dog - Raxmus 3:05

Track 3: Black Dog - Chase The Manhattan 5:45

Track 4: LFO - Tied Up 5:21

Track 5: LFO - Shut Down 4:50

Track 6: Autechre - Second Bad Vilbel 9:43

CD2:

Track 2: RAC - Nine 3:47

Track 3: Autechre - Second Scepe 6:41

Track 4: Autechre - Clipper 8:12

Track 5: Squarepusher - Chin Hippy 3:16

Track 6: LFO - Tied Up 5:21

The last track on CD 2 is a recording of a group of the game's creators singing along to the final cutscene There's also this comment: "Right, so it's like, 3 in the morning, and we've like, finally finished the final version, er, oh hang on there's that singing bit..."

Information also contributed by Jack Lightbeard, Kasey Chang, neotiger and Zamppa