I first submitted this article on Wikipedia but it wasn’t Notable enough unfortunately. So here it is, fully available for centuries to come.
- Name : Toxic Ravine
- Developer : Glenn Wichman
- Released : 1989
- Genre : Action
- Modes : Single player
- Platforms : Mac OS (OS 6 for version 1.1 and OS 7 for version 2.0)
Toxic Ravine (full title “Orlando Poon’s Toxic Ravine Clean-Up and Rescue Service”) is an action computer game created by Glenn Wichman[1], one of the author of the famous Rogue game. Version 1.1 was released in 1989[2] as shareware for the Macintosh. Version 2.0, adding color, came out the following year[3] in a shareware version and also a boxed version marketed by Pointware, Inc. The game is now abandonware, and neither version of it will run under Mac OS X.
Objective
The game feature two different phases in order to finish the game. In the first phase, the player control a blimp from which he needs to drop bombs on toxic waste to get rid of it. Different types of debris react differently to being bombed. Patience is the key to get the highest score and to survive. The player must not drop bombs on the little humanoid, called the PANG clones in the game which stands for Politeness And Niceness Gene, as they are friendly and gives bonus when rescued by using the magnet-shaped robot that can be deployed directly from the blimp. The player also must be cautious when dropping bombs, if it touches the floor, it will release toxic wraiths that can damage the blimp when it touches it. However, you need to get hit by the toxic wraiths a lot in order to die from them.
After the toxic waste is cleaned up completely, the player moves on to the second and last phase, which is to rescue more PANG clones which are escaping from the caves at the right and left of the screen. The player drop rocks and elevators to create a way for them to reach the top and also drops apples to feed them so that they have enough energy to continue their journey. Some bonus items are available to grab in this phase, one needs to build stairs with the elevators and rocks so that the PANG clones can grab the bonus items. When grabbed, the death skull above it will disappear, making it more easy to reach the top.
References
- [1] Journal for Computer Users in Speech and Hearing – Volumes 7-8 – Page 330
- [2] MacUser guide to shareware, 1992 by Ziff Davis, page 87, ISBN 1562760769
- [3] Tom Geller’s writings
External links
- Look out, it’s evil! – Toxic Ravine! – Complete guide to Toxic Ravine
- I suck at Toxic Ravine – Video of the game
- Toxic Ravine as a StuffIt archive in FUNET’s FTP archive of old Macintosh games
- Mini vMac – Macintosh emulator that can run System 6.0.8 which play Toxic Ravine 1.1 perfectly well with the sound.
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