Battle of the Eras

a feature of Diskman Presents
www.diskman.com

In the 1990s, the shareware concept — downloading a limited demonstration version of a game to try for free before buying the full-featured version — was taking the PC game market by storm. Just about every publisher at the time was offering some sort of “teaser” to lure potential customers. Not only were established companies taking advantage of this business model, as many small bands of newcomers also appeared to offer a taste of their wares.

But while the shareware concept launched many a success story, countless games were also lost in the shuffle. One such title was Procryon's Battle of the Eras, a fighting game featuring digitized characters a la Midway's Mortal Kombat. Pitched in 1995, the game offered several unique gameplay modes including modem play — a trend that was just starting to catch on — which allowed two players in different locations to battle each other over a data connection sent through their telephone lines.

In spite of its features, Battle of the Eras went completely overlooked without a single copy sold. In the years that followed, even the freely downloadable demo version became difficult to find. Thankfully, its fate wouldn't be sealed so easily.

In June of 2013 I decided to contact Joseph Mocanu, de facto leader of the small team that developed Battle of the Eras. Thanks to him I was finally able to check out the complete game. Not only that, but he was nice enough to take time out of his busy schedule to share the interesting story of the game's development process. I am proud to share that interview with you now.

Interview with Joseph Mocanu of Procryon, by Brandon Cobb

How old were you when development began, and how long did the game take to complete?

14 years old, and it took about 18 months to finish (amidst school and summer vacations)

What sorts of challenges did you face?

Well, I was the only (good) programmer, and the only one who could make music, so it couldn't be as feature rich as I had hoped.

I had to mix and match 3rd party several libraries to make them together (e.g. had a custom library to access XMS memory, which I then had to make work with the sound/music library, which wasn't designed to use that memory)

The graphics side were brutal, as we had filmed in front of a green screen hoping to be able to remove the background automatically. However the crappy video digitizer we used created a lot of color noise, that prevented our (limited) paint program from removing the green. In hindsight I probably should have just made my own tool to 'intelligently' remove the background, based on average or smoothed color values, but I hardly had the technical sophistication back then.

The game's documentation highlights the fact that development was undertaken in Belleville, Ontario, and by a small, devoted team. How did you guys come together, and what were your hopes for the final product?

We all went to the same high school, were friends, and were on average less 'cool' than the other kids. We also liked computers and video games.. kind of an eventuality when you take all those factors together.

You must have had fun working on the game together. Do you have any memorable anecdotes to share?

Ah my memory is fuzzy. I do remember filming in Mark (Gatekeeper's) basement, taping up all the props, and babysitting Tom (XLX)'s little brother Rob (Shadowsnake) as we were doing all of this. I recall a lot of people were wondering what we were up to, and I'm sure Mark's parents thought we were pretty weird kids. Thankfully we never filmed outside or in public else in our small town, it would have drawn quite the odd stares.

Oh there is another one. The minotaur character that has a parasite burst out of it at the start of fighting was total improv. The clay we had used to model that character (we totally ripped of Mortal Kombat in the use of claymation for a fighter [they used it for Goro]) was not rigid enough to support complex articulation, so we had to make due with what we had and improvised on the spot with the 'worm' creature.

The storyline is very complicated, to the point of becoming confusing rather quickly. What was the inspiration behind the story, and why did you choose to go in that direction?

Your guess is as good as mine - sands of time and all. I think as a child I was interested in studying genetics (which I ended up doing and making a career out of for a little while), and watched a lot of science fiction. Specific influences, I can't quite recall.

What did you learn from the experience of producing this game? Did it help to better prepare you for your future career?

Well, it taught me that I can successfully complete a complicated project, and gave me the confidence of being able to lead a development team. It also taught me that I should probably seek a market opinion at some point early in development. I don't really think it directly contributed to preparing for my future career - perhaps in some intangible way.

Were you satisfied with the final product? Looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently?

Not really satisfied with the final product. Graphics could be better, collision detection too. The code was ugly like no tomorrow. Looking back however, I probably couldn't have done much differently with what I knew.

Why do you believe the game was not a commercial success?

Well, it was kind of ugly and buggy :). Also, we may have asked too high of a price to register.

The “Procryon FAQ” mentions that a second game, Omicron 7, was also in development. What became of it?

Nothing - we were planning on using this game's proceeds to fund it. That obviously didn't happen.

Are you still in touch with any of your former Procryon teammates?

Not really - generally fell out of touch with my high school friends, however do occasionally see updates on Facebook or LinkedIn. People grow apart with time, interest change, families happen, you know the drill.

DOWNLOAD BATTLE OF THE ERAS

For the first time, the full version of Battle of the Eras is available as a free download so you may try it for yourself. While it is fully playable, a few minor graphical glitches may appear due to the game having been stored on floppy disks for several years prior to retrieval.

Please note: This game was developed for MS-DOS. You will need to use DOSBox to play the game under Windows, Mac OS or Linux.

• Battle of the Eras - registered version 2.0ß

The shareware demo version of the game is also available for the sake of completion. This was the playable “teaser” that was uploaded to various bulletin board systems (BBS) in order to attract customers.

• Battle of the Eras - demo version 2.0D
• Bug fix patch for Battle of the Eras demo version
• Bug fix patch II for Battle of the Eras demo version

If you enjoy the game, please consider making a small donation to the developer.

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