Overview
Microsoft Fury3 (often stylized as Fury³) is a sci-fi flight combat game developed by Terminal Reality and published by Microsoft Home for Windows PCs on August 31, 1995.
A spiritual successor to Terminal Velocity (released earlier that year), Fury³ retains the same game engine and gameplay mechanics as the original while set in a new original universe (with new locations).
Set in far-future 2839, the game takes place during the "Bion Wars", an inter-galactic conflict between the Coalition of Independent Planets and the Bions (a genetically-engineered race of ruthless super-soldiers created by the Terrans to combat their enemies). Players take on the role of a pilot (a "Councilor") of the Terran Council of Peace, who is tasked with removing the remaining Bion forces from seven Coalition planets before taking on their final outpost: Fury.
The game is often used by Microsoft at the time to showcase both the gaming capability of their Windows 95 operating system and their SideWinder line of game controllers (namely the Microsoft SideWinder 3D Pro). It also received a sequel a year later, known as Hellbender.
Gameplay
You control the Councillor's ship, shooting down the Bions. All Bions are controlled by the Guardian of each of the eight planets, and upon defeating the Guardian all Bion forces are subdued, and the players moves to the next planet.
Each planet is open-world with the player using a mini-map to find their next target. The game also features the ability to destroy buildings with your guns.
Stages
The game includes eight stages, each with three missions each (for a total of 24 missions). Unlike Terminal Velocity, the game is not split into "episodes" and players instead progress through the eight stages linearly:
- Terran (Homeland) - Clear the remaining Bions from the temperate home planet.
- L24-D (Destroy!) - Prevent the Bions from mining carbonium from the barren planet for their weaponry, by destroying the volatile planet itself!
- Ares (Red Sheol) - Prevent the Bions from mining red sheol from the red planet for controlling wormholes, then use a wormhole to push towards Bion forces.
- New Kroy (City Shield) - Push the retreating Bions out of the "city planet" (which is formed by a organic-synthetic substance known as PolyKroy).
- Sebek (Death Ankh) - Prevent the Bions from seeking the "Death Ankh" on the desert planet, which ancient Sebekian scripture believe grants immortality. The third mission is used for the game's demo.
- Vestra (Asteroid) - Wipe out the Bions from the asteroid, which is used as their military training ground), and find a way to blow it up!
- Tiamat (P) - Destroy all Bion forces on the ocean floor so that they cannot mine the last remaining phosphorous to survive.
- Fury (Suffer!) - Disable the planet-wide force shield surrounding Bion's deep-space outpost, then descend onto the outpost and find a way to blow it up!
Powerups
There are several powerups, containing seven weapons, shields, invulnerability, invisibility, and turbo boosts.
Soundtrack
The game's soundtrack used a combination of Redbook audio and tracker music, making it possible to play many of the tracks in a regular CD player (if you skipped track 1, which was the data track). The music was composed by Kyle Richards, and was in style of the EBM genre that was popular at the time.
System Requirements:
Minimum System Requirements:
- Processor: Intel 486 DX 66 MHz or faster processor
- RAM: 8 MB of RAM
- Operating System: DOS 5.0 or Windows 3.1/95
- Hard Disk Install Requirement: 10 MB for Windows 95 or 14 MB + 10 MB for swap (If running less than 12 MB of RAM) for Windows 3.1
- Optical Drive: 2X CD-ROM or faster
- Graphics: SVGA compatible monitor with 256 color-mode
- Sound: A sound card with speakers or headphones for audio playback
Recommended System Requirements:
- Input peripherals: A joystick and a mouse or other pointing device
- Hard Disk Install Requirement: 55 MB for Windows 95 or 70 MB for Windows 3.1
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