Classic Game Intros - Battleship: Surface Thunder

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TWiSTEDmerc

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Nov 4, 2011
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The cheesy, high level CGI intro videos of the past come back for one more hurrah. Reserved for intro videos that looked glorious for the time and set a record level of appearing differently between what was presented in cutscenes and in-game.


 


Battleship: Surface Thunder was released as a $20 PC game in 2000 and may’ve been a pack-in with cereals (I believe that’s how I got it). The game is a 3rd person Arcade shooter with a classic Battleship multiplayer mode as well. It was published by Hasbro and developed by the defunct Meyer / Glass Interactive which reformed into Day 1 Studios.


 


It appears from the files that this game does not have a pre-rendered cutscene. From what I’ve gathered, I think (do not hold this on me, ask a professional programmer / file expert) the intro goes through a few render fields with customized animations. A separate audio file is overlaid while the intro plays (both of these suspected are .MGF files). The machine it needs to run on – Windows 95 / 98 and Direct X 7.02, is now largely out of use and wouldn’t capture the intro with software like Debut. Thus, the screen had to be captured using my webcam with Debut on (not easy). Compatibility modes with older versions may have worked but I decided against it given my un-savvy nature with those types of overly technical installation systems.


 


TWiSTEDmerc