Video Game of the Day is a daily show available on Amazon Alexa devices and here on this website. Each day, we briefly discuss the history of a single game, randomly chosen. If you would like to listen on your daily flash briefing, you can enable Video Game of the Day here: https://amzn.to/2CNx2NJ.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome! My name is Katosepe and I’ll be your host for today’s Video Game of the Day.
The video game market is vast. There are more games than a person could ever hope to play in a lifetime with more coming out all the time. Still, in the age of the internet, it’s rare to find a game, even one exclusive to a different language, that has almost no available information. I had to do some digging but today, I’d like to introduce you to a series that you likely have never heard of but one that you may want to look into. Today’s game is Neo ATLAS, developed by flip-flop and released on Windows in 1998.
Neo ATLAS is a simulation game where players take control of a trade company in Europe. While trading and gathering resources is important, the primary goal of Neo ATLAS is actually to complete a map of the entire world. This is primarily done by funding expeditions out into the unknown. Players will have to protect their vessels by fighting off pirates and sea monsters so that they can return with reports on the world.
When a vessel discovers something and returns to the homeland, they offer a report to the player. These reports can then be Believed or Not Believed. Depending on the player’s choice, the world will actually be reshaped in a variety of different ways. It may be as small as the player determining there is a canal where a report previously said there was not one. But the choices can also be as large as saying the Earth is actually flat. Based on your choices, the world map may look similar to the real-world Earth or could change to be quite different.
I’m unable to find any reviews or sales figures for the original Neo ATLAS but it was ported to the Sony Playstation a year later. The series received two more Japanese exclusive sequels for the Playstation and Playstation 2 and, in 2018, Neo ATLAS 1469 was released for the Nintendo Switch and PC. This would be the first game in the series to receive an English language release.
Thank you so much for listening! As always, follow me on Twitter @vg_oftheday for more trivia and gaming tidbits. Archives and transcripts are available on videogameoftheday.com. Don’t forget to check back here tomorrow for another Video Game of the Day!
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