Deadly Tide

Deadly Tide
Developer(s)	Rainbow Studios
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Director(s)	Tony Stutterheim
Producer(s)	Tim Znamenacek
Designer(s)	Tony Stutterheim
Platforms	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)
Genre(s)	Rail shooter
Mode(s)	Single player

Deadly Tide is a rail shooter full motion video game developed by Rainbow Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Windows 95 in 1996.

Plot

In the year 2445, a race of hostile aquatic aliens arrives on Earth. One of their ships sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, raising sea levels continuously for 5 years until almost 88% of the surface is submerged. In order to effectively fight the aliens, the fictional Earth Ocean Alliance develops the "Hydras", one-man submarine fighter craft.

The player takes on the role of the last remaining fighter pilot. The objective is to travel through the alien-infested seas and fend off the targets long enough to complete the missions.

The game ends with the player character planting a bomb inside an alien ship and driving away the remaining aliens. However, the player is trapped inside one of the vessels, and his fate is uncertain as the game concludes.

Gameplay

As in Rainbow Studios' other rail shooters The Hive and Ravage D.C.X., the player shoots targets that appear as live sprites in front of a full-motion video background. Occasionally, the video will stop and switch to a still background, which the player can pan around 360 degrees. The weapons include unlimited standard lasers and a limited supply of bombs.

In some levels, the player moves on foot and not in a vehicle. The gameplay, however, remains essentially unchanged.

Film adaptation

Rainbow Studios planned to make a computer-animated feature film, Blue Planet, based on Deadly Tide. It was to be directed by Tony Stutterheim, executive producer, animator and level designer on Deadly Tide, and written by Toy Story cowriters Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow. A trailer was released for it on their website in 1998, and has since been uploaded on YouTube by a former employee of Rainbow. The trailer established that the film was not aiming at a children's audience the way that existing computer-animated features were at the time. Some photo stills were also published on the site.

However, Rainbow Studios pushed back the project as its sales fell due to the FMV industry's decline in the late 1990s. In June 2002, Rainbow confirmed in an e-mail exchange with movie-list.com that it was no longer working on the project.

External links

• GameSpot