Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller
Developer(s)Take-Two Interactive (DOS)
Tetragon (3DO)
Publisher(s)GameTek
Take-Two Publishing
  • JP: GAGA Communications Inc., Namco[3]
Producer(s)John Antinori
Designer(s)John Antinori
Laura Kampo
Programmer(s)Greg Brown
Frank Kern
Artist(s)Quinno Martin
Writer(s)John Antinori
Dennis Johnson
Laura Kampo
Composer(s)Michael Bross
Platform(s)DOS, 3DO, Macintosh (System 7), Windows
ReleaseDOS, 3DO
Macintosh
  • JP: February 29, 1996
Windows
  • JP: July 12, 1996
Genre(s)Point-and-click adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1994, developed by Take-Two Interactive Software and published by GameTek for the DOS. It was ported to 3DO, Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. The game was notable for being one of the first CD-ROM-only games to use speech with hi-res graphics, and was designed by the same team as BloodNet, the story of which is referenced to during one of Hell's subplots. Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones, Stephanie Seymour, and Geoffrey Holder are among the actors in the game. Seymour and Holder appear in live action footage, while the rest of the cast, including Hopper and Jones, lend their voices to computer-animated representations.

The story is told through a variety of partial screen full-motion video (FMV) movies in the PC version; the 3DO version uses the same movies, but runs entirely in full screen. The game is set in a dystopian 2095, and the United States of America is under the control of a fascist theocracy called the "Hand of God". Unlike theocracies of the past, this government can send criminals and insurgents to hell, and has even brought a few of them back to tell their tale. In this third-person perspective, dystopian environment, players control Gideon Eshanti and Rachel Braque, two loyal agents (and lovers) of a new law enforcement agency created by the theocracy: Artificial Reality Containment, or ARC, a Cultural Revolution-like organization that enforces a ban on cybernetic technology in general and virtual reality in particular.

Hell was commercially successful, with sales of 300,000 units within six months of its release. Hell is the first of the three Take-Two developed FMV adventure games, the other two being Ripper and Black Dahlia.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Histories was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "FORM 10-KSB". Take-Two Interactive. February 6, 1998. pp. 3–5. Retrieved October 21, 2022.
  3. ^ "GAGA Interactive: Hell". GAGA Communications, Inc. (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 24 July 1997. Retrieved 26 November 2020.