Ludography
Nether Earth cover

1987 · Real-time strategy · Strategy

Nether Earth

Nether Earth is a realtime strategy game that takes place in the distant future. A war is being waged between humans and ancient race of aliens called Insignian. On their mysterious planet there are four bases to capture - Kerberus, Tarras, Faretra and Diolkos. Use factories to build giant battle robots, similar to Mech units in other games. Commanding robots, capturing factories and defeating enemies in realtime are the player's primary goals.

Released
1987
Platforms
Amstrad CPCCommodore 64Commodore C64/128/MAXZX Spectrum
Genres
Real-time strategyStrategy
Developers
—
Publishers
Argus Press
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Third personBird view / Isometric
Themes
Science fiction
Country
United Kingdom

About

Nether Earth is a real-time strategy video game released for the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64 in 1987. It was published in the United Kingdom by Argus Press Software and re-released in Spain by Mind Games Espana S.A.

Keywords

  • mecha

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player controls a flying machine which can fly over any part of the play-area and is used to command the player's bases and robots. In essence it replaces a mouse cursor, but it can hinder the robots' movement. The player must build robots and give them orders to seek out and attack Insignian robots and capture neutral or enemy factories to increase production and thus aid the war effort. Once a robot is issued an order it will keep being active until all its targets have been conquered or destroyed, the robot itself is destroyed, or other orders are received.

The ultimate objective is to capture or destroy all the enemy bases and thus win the war. Everything takes place in real-time with the action being ongoing rather than turn-based. Because the player's view of the battlefield is limited to where their flying-machine is, much of the front-line fighting is left to the machines whilst the player concentrates on building more robots. However the player can choose to take direct control over one of his/her robots and effectively use it in a commando style to capture factories and bases and to destroy enemy robots.

Story

The player takes the control of the human side in a war against the mysterious Insignian race. All of the warfare is carried out by enormous military robots.

Legacy

An open-source remake of Nether Earth was completed in 2004 and is available for Windows, Linux and OS X. Another remake is available for iOS.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
ZX Spectrum31 December 1987Europe
Amstrad CPC31 December 1987Europe
Commodore C64/128/MAX31 December 1987Europe

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.