Broken Sword GBA Preview

The adventure genre has undoubtedly had its ups and downs. After its heyday on the PC platform, which came about thanks to developers like LucasArts and Sierra, the genre steadily thinned out. Only a few projects have recently made a respectable profit, and one of them is Revolution Software's Broken Sword series--which is also, in fact, Europe's most successful adventure series. We recently spoke with Charles Cecil, managing director of Revolution Software, as well as Tony Warriner, lead programmer of the Game Boy Advance version of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, to bring you an in-depth look at the game.

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The first question that comes to anyone's mind when thinking about adventure games on the Game Boy Advance is whether they are really possible on the handheld system. "We see adventure-type games doing extremely well on the GBA," Warriner said. "We had a surprise hit with Broken Sword on the PlayStation, and we're confident the same will happen on the GBA. People enjoy stories, and they like games that are easy to play--younger players especially. So, there is every possibility that the genre will enjoy a revival with new gamers discovering the adventure gameplay style on the GBA." It might seem like a pretty crazy idea to port a game from a 650MB CD to a GBA cartridge, but considering that The Shadow of the Templars has sold more than 1 million copies on the PC and PlayStation combined, releasing a version on the GBA--if it's done right--could turn out to be a smart decision. "A version of Broken Sword for the Game Boy Advance started off as a mad suggestion a couple of months back," Cecil said. "We prototyped the graphics engine, got the basic gameplay working, and realized that it worked really, really well." It was then that the company decided to port the game to the Game Boy Advance. "A while ago, we wrote a demo of Broken Sword to run using Java in a browser window," Warriner explained. "We also have an iPAQ Broken Sword running very nicely. This got us thinking about how easy it would be to approach other platforms such as the GBA."

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The game puts you in the role of George Stobbard, a tourist visiting Paris. A man disguised as a clown storms into a café where George is having a drink. The clown quickly leaves, and a bomb explodes few seconds after his departure. The bomb, as it happens, kills a character who is central to Broken Sword's storyline. Amidst the confusion following the explosion, the clown escapes via a canal, but not without a trace--George finds a few items that the clown left behind, be it accidentally or on purpose. George also meets a charming female reporter named Nicole Collard, and the duo then begins to examine the case, which takes the story as far back as the medieval age and weaves a mysterious order named the Knights of the Templar into the tale (hence the subtitle).