Gravity Force
| Industry | Video games |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1989 |
| Founder | Stephen Wenzler |
| Products | Gravity Force, Gravity Force 2, Gravity Power |
Gravity Force is a video game franchise developed for the Amiga platform. The initial installment was commercially launched by Kingsoft GmbH in 1989 as a Thrust-inspired clone. Players control a spaceship navigating through underground caverns, dodging hostile fire while balancing gravitational forces and momentum; any collision with the environment results in the ship's destruction.
Gravity Force 2 and Gravity Power
In 1994, enthusiasts Jens Andersson and Jan Kronquist obtained authorization from original creator Stephen Wenzler at Kingsoft to produce Gravity Force 2, a fully rewritten game with entirely new code. Working alongside Christer Masmanidis, Niklas Ivarsson, and Jan Warner—members of the Amiga demoscene collective Nexus—they initially distributed the title through the Blekinge Institute of Technology's student-operated BBS located at Soft Center business park in Ronneby. Subsequently, it was shared via the Datormagazin BBS and offered as shareware. Community involvement included a level editor designed by Richard Franks as well as a variety of unofficial custom levels.
The sequel introduced gameplay enhancements such as destructible walls, dedicated single-player campaigns, and multiplayer modes supporting two players both through split-screen and null modem cable connections. Sound effects were crafted from inventive homemade recordings, including striking a cord against a radiator and dropping fruit into water.
The title earned acclaim from British computing magazine Amiga Power, which featured it on the coverdisk of their 1994 issue 39. In 1995, Amiga Power ranked it as the second greatest Amiga game ever made, trailing only Sensible Soccer. That same year, they commissioned an upgraded edition named Gravity Power, released on issue 50’s coverdisk. Although a four-player mode was requested by Amiga Power, it was ultimately omitted due to the extensive code modifications required.
Reception
Upon its original release in 1989, Gravity Force garnered ratings of 75/100 from German publication ASM and 72/100 from Power Play.
By 1995, Amiga Format commended Gravity Force 2, emphasizing that its non-commercial status contributed significantly to its success by freeing developers from publisher-imposed limitations and deadlines.
Gravity Power was featured in the 2011 compendium 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. Later interviews with Andersson and Kronquist appeared in the 2016 volume Swedish video game development from the 50s to the 90s and the 2017 publication Generation 500, where the game was described as "one of the Amiga platform's most beloved titles".
Legacy
An intended follow-up to Gravity Force 2, called gf2k, was discontinued early in 2001. Nevertheless, a cross-platform successor titled Gravity Force 20, built using the Unity engine, was released in 2015.
In September 2008, the creators published the Amiga Motorola 680x0 assembly language source code for nostalgic purposes without attaching a formal license. This was clarified in April 2017 when they designated both the game and its source code under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Since then, numerous freeware adaptations have surfaced, presenting themselves as direct successors to Gravity Force and Gravity Power, rather than to Thrust. Examples include Gravity Jam, Gravity Power 2, Gravity Fight, Gravastar, Galaxy Forces, and Complex Gravity.
See also
- Gravitar (1982)
- Space Taxi (1984)
- Thrust (1986)
- XPilot (1992)
External links
- Gravity Force
- Gravity Force 2