Iron Helix

aka: Iron Helix: A deadly war game gone awry...

Released

1993 on Macintosh

Releases by Date (by platform)

Publishers

Developers

Drew Pictures

Moby Score

7.2

#9,489 of 155K

Critics

70% (22)

Players

(92)

Ranking

#38 on Windows 3.x
#74 on SEGA CD

Collected By

35 players

Genre: Action
Strategy
Perspective: 1st-person
Art: Full Motion Video (FMV)
Setting: Sci-fi / futuristic

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Description official description

A rogue navy ship, Jeremiah Obrian, threatens to start a war. A virus has wiped out its crew, but the threat of it firing its Iron Helix doomsday weapon is still there. You must remotely pilot an unarmed science robot to explore the ship and work out how to shut the weapon down.

The game uses interactive quarter-screen footage to display the ship's interiors. The main challenge is that an automated security device is chasing you down, and must be avoided and ultimately destroyed. A delay between your commands and the robot's receipt of them forces you to pay close attention to the security drone and plan several steps ahead.

As you explore the ship, you will find data ports, which can be jacked into to gain information or to open doorways. To access most of these, you will need to find and collect a DNA sample from a member of staff whose role gave him/her access.

Groups +

Setting: Space station / Spaceship

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows 3.x version)

101 People (43 developers, 58 thanks) · View all

Story and Concept	Drew Huffman
Interface Design	J. A. Nelson
Assistant Producer	Vincent Carrella
Interactive Programming (Windows Version)	Bill Zettler
Digital Microscopy	Vincent Carrella
Live-Action Video	Vincent Carrella
Creative Director	Rich Cohen
Art Direction	Rich Cohen
3D Modelling and Industrial Design	Drew Huffman
Color and Lighting, 3D Rendering	Rich Cohen
Interface Graphics	Rich Cohen
Animation	Drew Huffman Rich Cohen
Photoshop Mentor	Rich Cohen
Director of Engineering	Bill Zettler
Marketing/Public Relations	Vincent Carrella
Business Administration	Erin Manning
Manual Writing	Vincent Carrella
Producer/Director	Drew Huffman
Script Writing / Story	Vincent Carrella
Playtesting	Erin Manning
Original Music and Sound Design	Peter Stone
3D Rendering, Image Compositing and Animation	Charles Rose
Special Visual Effects and Pyrotechnics	Chris Green
Ship's Computer Screens and Microscopy Animation Processing	Lawrence Chandler
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Trivia

Installation

Iron Helix had one of the slowest install procedures known to the modern world. It took well over an hour to install the game, for no apparent reason except that the decompression library was not optimized at all. The machine in question was a 486/66 running Windows 3.1 with a double-speed (2X) CDROM drive and 32MB RAM -- well beyond the minimum requirements of the game.

To be fair, the game ran perfectly after it was installed.

Music

The song played at the game's main menu (samples of which are also heard in various other parts of the game) is a real song. It's appropriately called Iron Helix, performed by a band called Xorcist. The relationship between the game and the song is symbiotic: The game uses the song in its soundtrack, and the song uses some sound samples from the game.

Xorcist went on to contribute music to two other CD-ROM games: Bad Mojo and Space Bunnies Must Die!.

Information also contributed by Adam Luoranen