#seventh cross evolution

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[randomisedgaming]

Adverts for Sengoku Turb and Seventh Cross from the Japanese Dreamcast Magazine in 1998. There are a couple of these adverts and they all parody one another.

Both games were by NEC Home Electronics & Atypical Alchemists Associate. Only Seventh Cross got an English release and that was North America only.

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blasts you with DEATH CURSE

seventh cross evolution. more of it. 'nuff said. come watch.

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Seventh Cross Evolution - Evolution Monolith

[sceshrine]

Seventh Cross: Evolution is a 1998 Dreamcast game, and was a launch title for the system in Japan. It's an evolution sim: one member of that tiny little genre where you are a creature, and your only goal is survival. To survive, you must feed on other creatures in the world around you and avoid getting eaten yourself. And, as you grow more powerful, you can change your very form, adapting to different environments and prey. Some other games in the genre include E.V.O.: Search for Eden, Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest, and parts of Spore.

It had pretty realistic graphics for a 1998 Dreamcast game, which is to say that these days they can most charitably be described as charmingly low-poly. The gameplay loop is exploring fairly drab environments, hunting other creatures and battling a few bosses, then using the nutrients you gain from feeding to morph the nameless protagonist into a multitude of different forms. And to get access to those forms, you draw pictures in a 10 x 10 grid using points you gain from slaying other creatures. Again, speaking very charitably, Seventh Cross: Evolution is... mostly very chill. Some would say boring. I say chill. (And that's a large "mostly.")

The English box description says it's an endless game, and that's a lie. There is a coherent progression through different phases of the game, and when the story finally comes in about 90% of the way through, it zooms off somewhere very strange yet poignant, and in the direction of three distinct endings.

There isn't a whole lot of documentation of the game online, and, like... I understand why. It's weird, it's clunky, it was nothing revolutionary in its day and it hasn't aged well. It's so niche that the odds of it ever being ported to something besides the Dreamcast are exceptionally small, especially since the company that made it went under. It's abandonware that very few people would be interested in.

But there's just something about it that I keep coming back to. Maybe it's the designs of both the protagonist and the various creatures he hunts. Maybe it's that it's in a tiny genre that very few people care about but I love. Maybe it's the fact that it is not only the only game I've ever played that has one of those "this is a work of fiction" disclaimers that films and books tend to have, but also the only game I know of that, in one ending, goes out on a (probably misattributed) Albert Einstein quote.

Maybe it's just that I played it at a particular moment in my life and it lucked out to be something formative for me.

Whatever the reason, I would like to preserve some of it on the Internet. I would like everyone to know that once, there was an odd Dreamcast game, and it had some really neat creature designs. It was made by good people doing good work, and if they perhaps overshot their budget and the technology available at the time, they had something to say with their offbeat Dreamcast launch title. And in some ways, they said it beautifully.

Sit down for a while, and let me tell you about Seventh Cross: Evolution.

[sparkylurkdragon]

Today I beat Seventh Cross: Evolution! 

So, do you want to know how this game ends? (Heads up for stylised male frontal nudity!)

There’s actually three endings. I might need to do some experimenting, but I think getting the four Man parts may lock you into the golden/human ending. Let’s begin...

When we last left our nameless protagonist, who I always call Zobio, he was in an area dominated by mammals, with a strange force field of some kind outside it. There’s a lush area, a desert area, and an... abandoned area with no creature spawns. After checking the abandoned area, the bosses for this area come forth.

After beating them, you go back to the abandoned area...

...to find it’s not so abandoned after all.

In fact, it’s really not abandoned.

UH-OH.

Yes, the angel that’s been killing creatures that don’t belong has at last set its sights on you, after taking a few potshots at the cavewoman. But Zobio is ridiculously overpowered at this point and makes short work of it.

It falls to the ground, and the explosion where it dies exposes a small cave. But before you can go into it...

The strange flying thing speaks. It basically asks what you’re doing here, tells you that the project was not permitted to proceed, and seems puzzled by your (implied) confusion. Coming to a realisation, it says, “You must be their guinea pig!” and leaves.

Strap in, folks.

So, you enter the cave...

...and, as if the spaceship wasn’t a clue, find out that this game doesn’t take place in Earth’s prehistory after all.

There are a lot of data files on the computer that explain everything, and I’ll transcribe them at some point, but here’s the Cliff Notes version:

In 2006 (this was a 1998 game, mind), a virus called DPX-a was released in a plume of red smoke when an Antarctic ice shelf collapsed. 

Remember this from the intro? It was Earth the whole time!

Anyway, this virus caused a pandemic that ripped through the world’s population, killing over a billion people within weeks. It was at first mistaken for a similar virus that had been created in 2002 as a bioweapon, and in retaliation the world’s governments attacked each other with nuclear weapons. Between the war and DPX-a, the human population was reduced to about 600,000 worldwide, who were mostly construction workers who had already been building bunkers when the virus hit.

A world government was established by 2030, and they set about deciding the future of humankind. Time was running out: the bunkers would only last maybe 200 years, and the surface was still riddled with DPX-a and radiation from WWIII, and the population was still dwindling. Two different ways of ensuring the future survival of the human race were proposed and voted on by the roughly 22,000 survivors in 2045.

The Earth Revive Project was by far the more popular proposal. The gist of it would be to have the rest of humanity load up onto an orbiting spaceship, go into cryogenic suspension, and wait out the time it would take for Earth to become habitable again on its own - about 300 years - while leaving a Neo Bionoid and a small monitoring vessel behind to cull species too badly mutated by the disaster.

Yep, the “angel” was a robot the whole time. (Though... if the whole point was to let Earth recover naturally, wouldn’t this be counterproductive? Oh well.)

The other project was... wait for it... the Seventh Cross Project.

The Seventh Cross team thought that waiting out the Earth’s restoration to habitability was too risky. Their proposal was to instead create protohumans and release enough of them that at least one would adapt to the changed Earth, then use that DNA to uplift the descendants of the original human survivors and make them capable of surviving on the changed Earth.

A splinter group of about 1,100 people stayed on Earth to work on this project in secret. The first protohumans were released into the environment in 2100, and it seems to be about 2113 now. Zobio, or whatever you name him, was the crowning achievement of the project.

Seventh Cross: Evolution is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic game with environmentalist overtones.

At this point, the final monolith appears. Teleporting here is truly the point of no return.

You wake up in a lab, where the Seventh Cross scientists exposit to you in charmingly awkward 2000′s voice-acting. Basically, they praise your genetic adaptability, but proclaim that they’re going to take your adaptations and destroy you: you are too dangerous and may be unpredictable.

But then...

Whoops!

There’s another explosion in Antarctica.

Followed shortly by the Seventh Cross team’s lab.

Your character is reduced to Origin form and sent back to the original tidepool, just like if you died. (I think the lab exploding outright may be where this ending diverges from the others, but I’ll need to check.)

Still... undaunted, Zobio teleports back to the mammal area, though without enough nutrients to completely return to his powered up body. And he finds...

...that he wasn’t the only survivor.

However, the woman flees from him. And so...

...the only thing to do...

...is to mutate...

...one last time.

And so we have fulfilled the purpose of the Seventh Cross project. A human able to live in the ravaged, radioactive, virus-plagued surface of the Earth after WWIII.

Note his eyes here, too, from before he finished his final change.

Once you lock yourself into Man, the cavewoman starts following you around, and she eats a couple of the animals you kill. Then...

This is actually the final change. She gives Zobio a loincloth.

Saving at this point confirms you’re locked into the Man ending.

It also takes away your magic and replaces it with tools. I believe you can get a few others, but I wanted to wrap this up and couldn't remember the points of no return, so the humble Stone was my only tool.

Getting the loincloth also makes Zobio’s eyes a lovely green.

Anyway, you kill a mammoth, ‘cause that’s just what you do.

Your new friend presumably shows you how to make fire.

Roll credits.

And so Zobio and the other Seventh Cross transhuman had long and happy lives together, and helped found a village of their kind...

Until...

One day...

SEVENTH. FUCKING. CROSS.

[nawba]

Seventh Cross: Evolution Soundtrack - Color Assignment Screen

Maybe composer is Yayoi Okumura? I am not sure