Space Hulk is a 1993 real-time tactical video game for MS-DOS, Amiga and PC-98. The game was based on Games Workshop's 1989 board game of the same name. Set in the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, the player directs squads of Space Marines, genetically enhanced armoured soldiers, in their missions to protect the human race from deadly aliens. Space Hulk was developed and published by Electronic Arts, with support from Games Workshop.
The game takes place aboard huge derelicts known as space hulks. Drifting in and out of the Warp—an alternate dimension used to cross interstellar distances—these vessels are infested with the four-armed Genestealers. Using overhead maps, the player orders the Marine squads, and controls individual Marines via first-person shooter interfaces. The game features a time-limited option to pause the action while enabling the player to continue issuing commands.
Space Hulks theme of pitting slow and heavily armed Marines against fast, deadly Genestealers produced moments of frantic gameplay and a scary atmosphere for its reviewers, earning positive ratings for the game. A few reviewers, however, felt the game was too difficult and proved to be too frustrating. Space Hulk was followed up by Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels in 1996.
Gameplay
The game features 51 missions that involve exterminations, retrieval of objects, and rearguard actions. The remaining missions are tutorials designed to help players learn the game and standalone missions. In the campaign, Marines who survive a mission gain experience, improving their combat abilities and chances of survival for future missions. The secondary monitors show the views of other squad members. Although the player cannot control the movements of these Marines through these interfaces, he or she can click them to shoot the Marines' weapons at the centre of their views. However, the player can take full control of a Marine by switching the character's view to the primary monitor.
Although the action unfolds in real-time, the player can pause the game by clicking the "Freeze" button and entering "Freeze Time". During this mode, all units stop moving while a timer runs down; the player can freely issue and modify orders to the Marines. Once the timer is depleted or the Freeze button is clicked again, every unit resumes its movement. The timer for Freeze Time slowly replenishes, as long as the game stays in real-time.
Plot
right|thumbnail|alt=The Terminator View Screen has a small top-down map at the bottom left, and compass and a gauge on the bottom right. Occupying a large space in the bottom centre is the screen for the marine that the player is currently controlling; it shows the scene as if the player is looking from the marine's eyes. Four other screens are arrayed in the top half, showing the view from the other marines' eyes.|Overwhelmingly quick Genestealer attacks in narrow spaces led reviewers to proclaim this game as very difficult and frightening. Oft-remarked is the aliens' likeness to H. R. Giger's [[Alien (Alien franchise)|creations.]]
Space Hulks campaign is mostly exposited through pre-mission briefings.
Development
The original Space Hulk board game was published by Games Workshop. It was the company's third board game that was adapted as a video game; the previous two board games were HeroQuest and Space Crusade, whose video game adaptations were both published by Gremlin Graphics. The board game version of Space Hulk is played between two players, who assume the roles of the Marines and Genestealers. The players take turns moving their pieces to accomplish their objectives; the Marines' player, however, is given a certain amount of time to finish each of their turns.
Conversion of Space Hulk into a video game was initiated in 1991 by Electronic Arts, who also managed the project's development. Instead of following Gremlin's approach and creating exact copies of the board games in digital form, Electronic Arts and Games Workshop opted to develop a video game, based on Space Hulk, with features that took advantage of the personal computer's technological advancements. The interior walls of the space hulks were rendered by ray tracing, passing much of the graphical work to computers. This method reduced the time needed to introduce new sets of walls into the game from two weeks to twelve hours. Although digital speech was a relatively new technology at the time, Games Workshop helped Electronic Arts keep the game true to its Warhammer 40,000 roots by providing the writers with materials and answers on the fictional universe. The development team created the tutorial missions, but adapted the other missions straight from the board game and the Deathwing Campaign expansion set. Unlike the versions that ran on DOS, the Amiga version (published in Autumn 1993) In 1996, Electronic Arts produced a sequel, Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels, to Space Hulk.