Neuromancer (Interplay Productions) - 1988

This review is part of the “Let’s Adventure!” series. See all reviewed games sorted by rating here.

Neuromancer is an adventure video game developed by Interplay Productions and published by Mediagenic (a brand name of Activision). It was released in 1988 for the Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIGS, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS. It was loosely based on William Gibson’s 1984 novel of the same name and set within both the fictional “real world” and the extensively realized and detailed world of cyberspace.

In a grimy future, you play Case, a cyberspace cowboy who finds himself broke in Chiba City. Find yourself a laptop and the right software for it so you can hack into databases around the city to regain your access to cyberspace. Buy and upgrade brain implant chips to augment your computer skills, and sell your body parts to afford new technologies. When you get to cyberspace, you’ll take on the nasty AIs that guard the most important databases. Within all this information is the bizarre secret of this world of inbred corporations.¹

I played the Amiga version, which starts off with a Paradox cracktro

Though I haven’t re-read the source material in well over 20 years, I have very fond memories of Neuromancer. That book kicked off a lifelong love of the cyberpunk genre, so I’ve been looking forward to playing this game since I kicked off this series.

It doesn’t seem to follow the events of the book at all, but definitely exists in the same universe. You start off in a bar, where you apparently spent the night that you owe the bartender money for.

You’ll also have a chance to explore the limited interface, which includes a PAX button. PAX is sort of like a basic bulletin board system, that you can read news on or access your banking information. Since you start with no money in hand, you’ll need to access your bank account and transfer all your money.

From the initial PAX screen you’ll learn some link codes, and also that someone named Shin has your cyberdeck.

Since I played a cracked version I didn’t need to refer to the code wheel that you’d typically need to access the PAX.

Yes, that’s a door below you you’ll need to go through

Navigating the game world is done using the mouse. It’s not always obvious what/where the exit to a room is, especially when there’s door at the bottom of the screen. Once you get used to keeping an eye out for these tiny slivers of doorway though it’s not too difficult to navigate the game world.

The majority of the game is spent “online”. You’ll need to first get your deck back from Shin, then find a location that has jack you can use. The most convenient location for this is the Cheap Hotel, and you’ll spend a good portion of the game here navigating various online systems, then eventually cyberspace.

Gaining access to a system requires a link code and a password. These are scattered throughout various messages you can read online, and are fairly straightforward to find - just make sure you write them down.

Going online costs money, and the longer you spend online - the more money you’ll gradually lose. Gaining additional money in this game can be done in one of two ways. Either you find an account online you can transfer money out of (into your account), or you sell body parts.

At the Body Shop, you can incrementally sell off your body parts for cash. The more parts you sell, the lower your HP (constitution?) will drop. You’ll need this later in the game when you need to start attacking databases and ICE, but you can buy your body parts back as you get more money to regain your HP.

You piece the plot of the game and your objectives together slowly by reading through the various messages on each system you gain access to. There aren’t really that many actions you can take on these systems other than reading through the contents, but many will have software (“softwarez”) libraries you can access.

Your deck has limited storage, so you’ll need to be mindful of what software you’re carrying and how much space you have available. As you download better versions of your software, you can delete the older versions to make room.

There are a handful of characters and machines you can interact with as well using the conversation system. Typically these involve cycling through a pre-determined list of options you can ask them about, but some also have a free-form text field you can fill out.

This allows you to ask about specific topics, which you’ll either learn from other characters or from the messages you read on bulletin boards.

The more time you spend online, the lower your finances will fall. Thankfully there are a couple of opportunities to infiltrate banks and transfer (steal) fairly large balances of credits to your account.

You’ll need this money to purchase skills, upgrade your cyberdeck and buy various items. If you successfully complete these missions, remember to access your account via the PAX to download your credits so you can go shopping.

Though there aren’t that many items in the game you need to interact with, there are a couple of fetch quests you’ll need to undertake. These typically just involve going back and forth between characters and asking questions, or going online and changing some information about a character to get them arrested (so they’re not blocking a doorway).

For this playthrough I found myself leaning on the walkthrough pretty heavily for these sequences as it wasn’t always obvious what I was supposed to do.

Once you upgrade your deck to one that can access cyberspace, you’ll be able to jack into the matrix and access various databases. Similar to the sites you have access to via the comlink systems, once you enter a database you’ll be able to read messages and download software.

The difference though is you’ll need to defeat the ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) first.

Fighting ICE is done with ICE-breaking software. This software is classified loosely into 3 categories: Good, Better and Best - which you’ll learn from one of the message boards.

The manual sort of calls out that ICE-breaking requires a lot of trial and error, and the best way to gain access to a database is to just try various combinations to see what’s effective. As a result, make sure you save before each battle - just in case.

Death is not permanent - but it is expensive

If you fail to break the ICE and experience brain death, you’ll respawn in the Body Shop - minus all your money. This is VERY difficult to recover from, so you’re better off to just reload a previous save and try again.

Assuming you haven’t sold all your body parts, you could do this to gain a little extra cash, but honestly it’s not worth it … just reload.

Your objective will ultimately be to seek out and destroy all the AI in cyberspace. There are two competing AI - Greystroke and Neuromancer - that are trying to get the other to join them to dominate cyberspace. At least that’s what I think is happening …

Each AI is hidden behind an ICE you’ll need to break, and the later in the game you get, the harder they are. One aspect of this game that I didn’t realize was that you’ll need to jack out of cyberspace periodically to recover your HP.

After each ice confrontation if you try to access another database, it looks like your “health” is full - but it actually isn’t.

I think it was after I’d just barely gained access to the KGB system, I moved onto the next database and found no matter what I tried, I’d die in one shot. It must have taken me a few weeks of on-and-off messing around reading other reviews and blogs (like the Adventurer’s Guild review) before I finally realized this was what you needed to do.

Defeating AIs is done with “skills”, which you buy and upgrade throughout the game. When you finally beat Neuromancer, you’ll be thrown onto a beach - which is just an illusion that it has created to trap you.

Using some combination of skills allows you to escape, and once you do so you’ll have officially finished the game.

Overall, Neuromancer is a fun game. There are a handful of distinct gameplay mechanics that aren’t that hard to learn, but do take a while to master.

There is occasionally background music, which isn’t bad - though I think it plays more prominently in other versions (like the C64). The Amiga version I played was mostly quiet, save for the title screen and once in a while.

I’m fairly certain this was one of the first games I started playing for this series, but I did so using GSPLUS and had a number of issues that made the experience cumbersome. I really want to experience as many of these games on as many emulated systems as possible, so I stubbornly just kept trying to make the GSPLUS experience happen - and it wouldn’t - so I gave up on the game for a number of years.

I’m really glad I circled back to it, as it really is a lot of fun. Though the similarities are not obvious, playing Neuromancer actually sort of reminded me a bit of Uplink: Hacker Elite - which I LOVE! I think it’s just the whole “cruising cyberspace and hacking” simulation portion of the game, but I found both to be equally enjoyable so figured it was worth calling out.

There was an attempt to reverse engineer and reimplement this game for Windows called Reuromancer, however I’m not sure how playable this engine actually is. If you have Google Translate, the development blog (which is in Russian) is a great read.

I would highly recommend giving this game a chance. It can be extremely difficult and unforgiving, but if you like to read, the story is interesting and the gameplay is fairly accessible.

If you’re looking for something to read instead, go grab the book!

Game Information

Game	Neuromancer
Developer	Interplay Productions
Publisher	Mediagenic
Release Date	1993
Systems	Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIgs, Commodore 64, DOS
Game Engine

My Playthrough

How Long To Beat?	12 hours
Version Played	Amiga via vAmiga
Notes	Walkthrough, Manual

Score

See here for a refresher on how we’re scoring these games.

Graphics (15)	8
Sound (10)	6
Plot / Progression (25)	17
Characters / Development (15)	9
Gameplay / Experience (15)	12
Replayability (5)	3
Impact / Impression (10)	7
Bonus / Surprise (5)	2
	64%

Gallery

Footnotes

1. Description from Moby Games ↩