Future Wars: Adventures in Time

aka: Future Wars: Time Travellers, Future Wars: Toki no Bōkensha, Les Voyageurs du Temps: La Menace
Moby ID: 2205
Amiga Specs
Included in

Description official descriptions

In the year 1989, a simple window cleaner is working outside of a skyscraper. Intending to play a prank on his angry boss, the unlikely hero discovers a secret passage leading to a time machine along with mysterious alien documents. Operating the device transports the protagonist to the year 1304, where he is given a seemingly ordinary task of rescuing a lady in danger. However, he soon finds out about a much more serious threat of a global alien invasion. The hero has to travel to the remote future of the 44th century and eventually to the even more remote past of the Cretaceous period to foil their plans.

Future Wars is a graphic adventure game, and the first to use Delphine's proprietary Cinematique point-and-click interface. A right click brings up the verb menu. After choosing one of the six commands, the player points the mouse over the desired target and executes the action with a left click. Small objects are depicted by enlarged drawings once they have been discovered; however, many of them are well-hidden and often require precise positioning on the part of the player character to discover. The game has a linear story advancement, and it is possible to die or become irrevocably stuck by failing to locate a crucial item in one of the previous locations.

Spellings

  • フューチャーウォーズ 時の冒険者 - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Amiga version)

13 People (7 developers, 6 thanks)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 24 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 66 ratings with 2 reviews)

The first of many good Delphine Adventures

The Good
This is a classic. It is the first of its kind. It has a point and click interface and an exciting plot about time travel, and evil aliens. Before this game, most adventure games attracted a very narrow audience. They where extremely difficult to even understand how to operate. This game is simple to operate(however, whith some flaws and bugs) and it has nice graphics. The game is still difficult, though, as most adventure games. That might be one of the reasons for the lack of commercial success most adventure games suffer from. I love adventure games, but I have to admit that there are very few good ones. This is a pioneering game, and therefore it is very interesting. That the plot is okay and the graphics are nice just makes it an even greater game. This game could have been a mediocre failure, but it would still have received status as a groundbreaking game. This game is far from mediocre, however. It is not as good as some of the later masterpieces from Delphine, Lucasarts and Revolution (and to some extent Sierra, but their games are generally extremely overrated), but it is a good, stable adventure game.

The Bad
The point and click interface does not work as it should at all times. The character has a bad habit of refusing to do what you tell him to do, even when you know you are doing it the right way. The most common, and most annoying, fault is that the character constantly complains that he is too far away to pick up objects, push buttons and so on. This is annoying as hell. In more modern adventure games, the characters simply walks over to the item and picks it up, but not this guy, no you have to guide him all over to exactly the right spot and then tell him to pick the banana(or whatever) up. Also, the annoying action sequences that plagued many of the old adventure games, are a problem here too. It is just frustrating to have to shoot aliens with stupid controls. These sequences demands more luck than skill. Just close your eyes and click your brains out and hope to survive. Not very much fun at all.

The Bottom Line
As one of the first of its kind, this game made way for a lot of excellent Delphine adventures, such as "Operation Stealth" and "Cruise for a Corpse". This is a fine sci-fi adventure, with excellent graphics for its time, and a good plot. It has some obvious and annoying flaws, but despite this it is a good adventure and a must for everyone who loves a good adventure game.

DOS · by Joakim Kihlman (231) · 2004

Impressive debut for the Cinematique system

The Good
Future Wars is definitely a fine game. The story is gripping, the visuals are impressive. Jean Baudlot really outdid himself with his atmospheric background tracks, his music for the following Operation Stealth were no match to this.

It's just fun to play - the story slowly unfolds itself, and although it is not considerably sophisticated, it's still interesting enough to keep you going. And the ending sequence is just brilliant.

The Bad
Being the first generation of the Cinematique engine, the GUI was somewhat awkward at some points. The worst thing about the game however are certainly the two big no-no's of adventure games that have been generously planted all over the game:

For one thing, there are several locations that require pixel-hunting, i.e. you have to find objects on the screen which have a hotspot that is only 2 by 2 pixels large. What's even worse is the fact that there are many dead-end traps in the game: So if you fail to find one of those tiny objects (of which you don't even know that you'll need to find them), you'll be stuck much, much later in the game and have to go back.

The Bottom Line
Back in that time, Sierra and LucasArts dominated the adventure scene. The French Delphine Software team successfully got their foot in the door with this game, then followed up with equally wonderful games (Operation Stealth, Cruise for a corpse).

It's a refreshing mix between Sierra and LucasArts - it has an easy-to-use, mouse-driven interface, even less complicated than LucasArts at that time (but still not as simplified as today's adventure games); it however had the openness of the Sierra games - there was no overprotective Mommy that prevented you from dying when you did something wrong.

Plus, technically it excelled both Sierra and LucasArts at that time - sound and graphics were excellent, and the programming was very good - the Cinematique engine allowed for much better special effects.

So - get it and play it. If possible, take a walk-through and verify your position once in a while to see if you've forgot to pack an important item. And - as with most of the games in that time - I recommend going for the Amiga version.

DOS · by EboMike (3094) · 2005

Trivia

CD-ROM Version

The DOS CD-ROM version boasts an enhanced soundtrack, but otherwise appears to be identical with the floppy version.

Copy Protection

The requirements sticker for Future Wars: Adventures in Time also mentions "Color Monitor Required". This has nothing to do with the game, but is rather a requirement of the copy-protection, which refers the player to a color-coded picture on the back of the manual and asks them which color it is. This was an effective way of foiling pirates who photocopied the manual, as photocopies don't contain color.

EGA Graphics

In the DOS version of the game, when choosing EGA graphics, Lo' Ann's hair color will be black instead of brown as it is in VGA or the Amiga version.

Music

The PC speaker soundtrack programming utilized the technique of interleaving notes from more than one musical part. This ultra-fast switching of notes gives the impression of polyphony even though it was strictly monophonic. While many games did this, Future Wars: Adventures in Time was one of the most outrageous. Up to 4 separate musical parts can be heard simultaneously in the introductory track through the PC speaker.

Operate Command

The game introduced the command "Operate" for interaction with objects of all kinds. It is basically a substitute for the common "Use" command. "Use" is in the verb menu nevertheless, but it's for applying items only. Although "Operate" was used only twice, in Future Wars: Adventures in Time and the subsequent James Bond: The Stealth Affair, it has become a trademark of the early Delphine adventures.

References

The magnetic card found in the monastery has the words "Bio Challenge" written on it. Bio Challenge is the name of an earlier Delphine game.

Awards

  • Amiga Power
    • May 1991 (Issue #00) – #63 in the "All Time Top 100 Amiga Games"
  • EMAP Golden Joystick Rewards 1990
    • Winner Best 16-Bit Soundtrack.
  • ST Format
    • January 1990 (Issue #06) – Included in the list 50 Games of the Year
  • Enchanted Realms
    • March 1991 (issue #5) – Best Animated Adventure (Amiga version)

Information also contributed by Nigel Lina, o0pyromancer0o, Ricky Derocher, and Trixter.

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Related Sites +

  • Future Wars walkthrough
    Complete walkthrough at GameFAQs.
  • ScummVM
    supports all known versions of Future Wars under Windows, Linux, Macintosh and other platforms.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 2205
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by -Chris.

Amiga added by POMAH. Atari ST added by Martin Smith. Sharp X68000 added by Terok Nor. PC-98 added by Unicorn Lynx.

Additional contributors: xroox, Apogee IV, Игги Друге, Macs Black, Patrick Bregger, Narushima, Jo ST.

Game added August 20, 2000. Last modified February 4, 2024.