''Tegel's Mercenaries'' is a
real-time tactics
Real-time tactics (RTT)(Article at IGN discussing their perception of RTS and related genres as of 2006. RTT is discussed as a new and not yet established genre from the publisher's perspective, so currently all RTT possible titles are still con ...
strategy video game developed by
Mindcraft and released for PC
DOS
DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...
in 1992. It was led by ''Strike Squad'' in 1993.
Gameplay
The player controls a corporate military officer in the employ of the gruff General Tegel, and battles various criminal forces and alien threats. The player hires and equips a squad of soldiers, each of whom possesses distinct statistical combat specialties, and directs them in combat situations against various hostile humans, robots, and aliens.
The game was released without several features that were described in the game's manual and in screenshots, such as intra-squad conflict stemming from divided loyalties and cybernetic upgrades to the soldiers. Furthermore, the
game balance
Game balance is a branch of game design with the intention of improving gameplay and user experience by balancing difficulty and fairness. Game balance consists of adjusting rewards, challenges, and/or elements of a game to create the intended pl ...
was lopsided in favor of the player thanks to poor enemy
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI) and overpowered weapons. In particular, the flamethrower-type weapons would often deal five times as much damage as a conventional laser weapon, which would have a much higher degree of accuracy.
Plot
The game's plot follows the player's exposure of a human conspiracy that leads to a planned invasion by insectoid aliens. Ultimately, the player's squad travels to the aliens' homeworld, destroys their queen (whose design is lifted from ''
Alien''), and seemingly thwarts the invasion. Then, in the final
cutscene
A cutscene or event scene (sometimes in-game cinematic or in-game movie) is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, interrupting the gameplay. Such scenes are used to show conversations between characters, set the mood, reward the ...
, Tegel reveals himself as an alien in disguise. He was manipulating the player into assisting the aliens all along, and the final mission on their homeworld was supposed to have been a suicide mission.
Reception
While approving of ''Tegel's Mercenaries''s graphics ''Computer Gaming World'' criticized the user interface,
collision detection
Collision detection is the computational problem of detecting an intersection of two or more objects in virtual space. More precisely, it deals with the questions of ''if'', ''when'' and ''where'' two or more objects intersect. Collision detect ...
, and combat, calling the latter "the most frustrating aspect of the game".
The magazine stated of ''Strike Squad'' that "If you were a fan of ''Tegel''s, then consider your day made". It criticized the imbalanced combat and the two-player mode's "flawed implementation", concluding that "All the strengths of its predecessor are included in this un-sequel, but unfortunately most of the weaknesses also remain". A February 1994 survey of space war games gave both games a grade of C−, stating that ''Tegel's'' had no replay value and AI characters in both games only had "a rudimentary intelligence".
A May 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave ''Tegel's'' two stars out of five and ''Strike Squad'' one star, stating that "there are better games of this type out there".
Legacy
A sequel, ''Tegel's Mercenaries 2'', was advertised in the Mindscape in-house catalog that was packaged with several contemporary Mindscape games. In 1993, Mindcraft published ''
Strike Squad''. Although the publisher, advertisements, box art, and documentation did not mention any connection, ''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...
'' stated that "''Strike Squad'' is indeed the sequel to ''Tegel's Mercenaries'', completely and directly ... The story follows directly on the heels of development and revelations" in the earlier game.
References
1992 video games
DOS games
DOS-only games
Mindcraft games
Real-time tactics video games
Single-player video games
Video games developed in the United States
{{strategy-videogame-stub