''Maximum Surge'' is a cancelled video game by

Digital Pictures Digital Pictures was an American video game developer founded in 1991 by Lode Coen, Mark Klein, Ken Melville, Anne Flaut-Reed, Kevin Welsh and Tom Zito. The company originated from an attempt to produce a game for the cancelled VHS-based NEMO ...

. Planned for release in 1996 for the

3DO 3DO is a video gaming hardware format developed by The 3DO Company and conceived by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins. The specifications were originally designed by Dave Needle and RJ Mical of New Technology Group, and were licensed by third ...

Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...

, PC and

Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it is the successor to the succes ...

, it was to feature full-motion video in the same way that many of Digital Pictures' releases of the time did. The game's 90 minutes of video footage starred

Walter Koenig Walter Marvin Koenig (; born September 14, 1936) is an American actor and screenwriter. He began acting professionally in the mid-1960s and quickly rose to prominence for his supporting role as Ensign Pavel Chekov in '' Star Trek: The Original ...

and

Yasmine Bleeth Yasmine Bleeth (born June 14, 1968) is an American actress and model. Her television roles include Caroline Holden on ''Baywatch'', Ryan Fenelli on '' Ryan's Hope'', Inspector Caitlin Cross on '' Nash Bridges'' and LeeAnn Demerest on ''One L ...

, was directed by William Mesa, and was written by J. Garrett Glover and Charlie Ogden. According to Flash Film Works, the studio responsible for the special effects used in the game, ''Maximum Surge'' was never released. However, the

ESRB The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The ESRB was established in 1994 by the Entertainment Softw ...

's website lists a rating for the game on multiple platforms, suggesting that the project made it at least to the late stages of development. A short playable demo of ''Maximum Surge'' was released as part of a Digital Pictures

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

demo disk.

Plot

The game is set in the 21st century. The player character, an unnamed soldier, is hired to protect the Brokaw Territory and stop Drexel (

), who is trying to replace humanity with evil cyborg beings which transfer information by means of umbilical data cords. It is up to the player character to destroy his bases and ultimately face him in the final battle. Alongside him in the fight are a mercenary named Jo (

), a computer hacker, and the resistance commander.

Production

''Maximum Surge'' differed from previous Digital Pictures games in that the gameplay graphics were not crafted from standalone

full motion video Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files (rather than Sprite (computer graphics), sprites, vector graphics, vectors, or 3D models) to display action in the game. While many games featur ...

, but from bits of full motion video superimposed upon traditional computer graphic backgrounds. This allowed the gameplay to break from the on-rails format typical of FMV-based games, giving the player the ability to look from left to right to a limited extent in order to shoot enemies who appear outside the player's initial range of vision. Digital Pictures president Tom Zito commented that "''Maximum Surge'' is really the first game in which we used the camera as a tool rather than as a recording device. Just as if you were going to create ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...

'', you would go to a SGI

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

and create all the pieces of ''Doom'' as computer graphics, in ''Maximum Surge'' we have taken a video camera and done exactly the same thing." The video footage was filmed in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

and

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

commented "''Maximum Surge'' was a completely new experience for me. It was great to get tough and gritty. The whole concept of CD-ROM is still mind-blowing to me." Footage from this and other

games was used by Insight Film and Video Production, Shavick Entertainment, and Avrio Filmworks to create a movie originally titled ''Maximum Surge Movie'', which was later rereleased on DVD by York Entertainment under the name ''

Game Over "Game over" is a message in video games which informs the player that their play session has ended, usually because the player has reached a loss condition. It also sometimes appears at the successful completion of a session, especially in ga ...

''. The game cost $3 million to develop.

References

External links

Flash Film Works' information page
* {{Digital Pictures Cancelled 3DO Interactive Multiplayer games Cancelled Sega Saturn games Cancelled classic Mac OS games Cancelled Windows games Full motion video based games Digital Pictures games