Transarctica



"...And the sun continued to shine its benevolent rays across the top of the opaque cloud layer, hidden from human eyes. The sun continued to shine."

Transarctica is a 1993 strategy adventure game developed by the French software company Silmarils. It was released for the Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, and Macintosh. This game has a poor English translation, but that doesn't stop the game from being enjoyable.

In the year 2022, the world was plagued by Global Warming. In order to cool down the Earth, Professor John Merrick decides that nuclear weapons are the solution. By detonating nukes at each pole, a huge cloud of dust and steam would form thick clouds that will block out the sun and cool the Earth. And that's exactly what happened, except the clouds were bigger than they calculated and the Earth cooled down so much it brought about a new Ice Age. With the world in a deep freeze, civilization came to an end, nice job breaking it Merrick. By the year 2714, the world is still frozen, humanity is barely hanging in there, and the sun becomes a thing of myth. Oh, and woolly mammoths are no longer extinct. The only way to travel safely across the frozen wastes is by train, and only the Viking Union controls the worldwide railroad. A cult of sun believers, known as the Ambivalents, are convinced that there is a heavenly ball of light beyond the clouds, and will do anything to prove it. The leader of the fanatical sun cult, you, has managed to take over a Cool Train, the titular Transarctica, and now nothing can stop the Ambivalents from realizing their dream. Except for the other cool trains still owned by the evil corporation.

This video game provides examples of the following:
""It was a splendid explosion. Debris spread over hundreds of meters. How could you be so incompetent as to let the pressure build up so high?""
 * After the End : The whole world is in the grip of a new ice age caused by thick clouds, with the sun (and possibly the moon and stars too) becoming all but legendary.
 * An Entrepreneur Is You: Trading is a significant part of the game, and a good way to make money.
 * Apocalypse How : Class 2.
 * Base on Wheels : See Cool Train below.
 * Broken Bridge : Unless you have the wood, the steel, manpower, or mammothpower, you're going to have to go all the way around.
 * Church Militant: You play as the leader of one. Played with a little in that their crazy beliefs are actually right.
 * Cool Train : Where the majority of the game takes place. In addition to normal train cars, it can pull barracks, gardens, prisons, workshops, guns mounted on wagons, and a rocket launch pad.
 * Covers Always Lie: The box image you see at the top of the page isn't what the Transarctica looks like in the game, but it does look appropriately cool. What it is is the image that inspired the whole game in the first place.
 * Diesel Punk : The aesthetic is definitely there, along with hues of Used Future.
 * Energy Economy : Coal is the Global Currency, because heating is a premium in the new ice age. Tedious people constantly talked about their fortunes going "up in smoke." Until they were thrown out in the cold and froze to death.
 * Explosive Overclocking : A train's boiler can only take so much pressure. It isn't worth the risk.


 * Genre Busting: Even to this day, 18 years after its release, Transarctica remains a unique fusion of several different genres.
 * Gone Horribly Right : They wanted to cool the Earth down, and they did.
 * Gone Horribly Wrong : Nuclear Winter to stop Global Warming? Did they think this plan through?
 * Have a Nice Death : There's a different Game Over message for each different game ending situation, but all messages end with the text at the top of this page.
 * Lamarck Was Right : Woolly Mammoths came back because the elephants adapted to the cold.
 * The Many Deaths of You : There are many ways to lose the game, you could run out of coal, overload the engine's boiler (making it explode), lose an essential rail car in battle, or you could just shoot yourself to end it all.
 * Mega Corp : The Viking Union owns all trains and monopolizes on rail trade. They aren't particularly happy about the Ambivalents controlling one of their trains.
 * Nonstandard Game Over : The button for 'Quit Game' is a revolver, and when you press it your character shoots himself in the head.
 * Real Time Strategy: During battles the game switches to a mode that is essentially this - especially notable because this game came out several years before Trope Codifier Command & Conquer, although it is substantially different than that game.
 * Traintop Battle : will happen during train to train combat.
 * The War Room : One of the essential rail cars, complete with Mission Control radio (for dispatched spies), map table, and a guy who's in charge of sending self-powered handcars ahead of the train (for scouting purposes).