The Chaos Engine
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| The Chaos Engine/Soldiers of Fortune |
|---|
| System(s): Amiga, Atari ST, Amiga CD32, MS-DOS, RISC OS, Sega Mega Drive, Super NES, Mobile Phone |
| Publisher: Spectrum HoloByte (Genesis), Microprose (EU Mega Drive) |
| Developer: The Bitmap Brothers, Renegade |
| Genre: Action |
The Chaos Engine is a 1993 top-down run-and-gun game developed by The Bitmap Brothers for the Commodore Amiga and subsequently ported to a variety of platforms, including the SNES and Sega Mega Drive, ported by Renegade and published by Microprose in Europe and Spectrum HoloByte in the US, where the game was renamed Soldiers of Fortune and a character changed slightly.
Baron Fortesque, a brilliant scientist, invents The Chaos Engine, a primitive computer which goes mad and overtakes its creator to take over the world by altering humans and animals into beasts, among other terrors. Six mercenaries — heroes who are paid to fight — appear to save the day. You control two of the six heroes (who have to be hired by paying for them beforehand from a character select screen) as they try to get through the wasteland Earth has become and destroy The Chaos Engine. The game can be played either with one player and a CPU or two players simultaneously; in either case you must choose characters for both players.
The only button that appears to do anything is 
, which you hold to fire. You cannot move as you fire; instead you use the D-pad to aim your shots, allowing you to hit targets in eight directions. There are four worlds, each with four levels. To get through each level, you must activate Nodes by shooting at them several times. A Node appears as a white tower with an orange blob on it; shooting it will turn into an electrified golden tower, activating it. You will also find gold, keys to activate passageways, and yin-yang signs which act as checkpoints, among other items; walk into them to take them. Once all the Nodes have been activated, an exit will be activated, allowing you to leave the level. After every two levels, you are taken to a shop where you can spend gold to upgrade your characters.