1996-1999 MediaX
Platform: PC
A short entry for a recently uncovered Big Brother game that was being developed by MediaX between 1996 and 1999. Thanks to Werta Best for highlighting its recovery. The game was a pseudo-sequel to George Orwell’s 1984 and was officially endorsed by Orwell’s estate. Development unfortunately stalled in late 1999, and MediaX was eventually shut down in 2005.
The recovered build is an alpha demo from January 4th 1999. Whilst it is an incomplete demo, additional levels and game logic from the planned full game are still present in the files. The game also runs using the BRender engine, but lacks NPCs at this stage – however, the player can walk around, interact with objects, and pick up items and weapons – though weapon functionality was not implemented in this version.
The game was ultimately cancelled, and was likely due to development issues and the eventual closure of MediaX. Thankfully Archive.org and Shed_Troll managed to recover a build which you can check out for yourself.
To play the game today, users need dgVoodoo 2 for compatibility with modern systems. Installation differs slightly between Windows 10, 11, and Mac (via Wine and a glide wrapper), but the game can be made to run with adjustments.
Werta mentions that after install you need to copy files from dgVoodoo150b2 or later near the bro.exe file. In dgVoodooSetup.exe you need to set up Screen mode=”window mode” also. Werta has also produced a video showcasing the demo if you get any issues running:
Once we have more information, we’ll continue to add to this page. If you have any more information about the development, please do get in touch (we haven’t yet done much further digging at this stage). More details about the project can be read about at Unseen64, Old Games and Lost Media Wiki (see links below).
With thanks to Werta Best for highlighting, screenshots + video and to Shed_Troll + Archive.org for the recovery.
Further reading
Download
- Original Archive.org page
- Preview_BigBrother (GTW hosted)
Gallery
Thanks for the info about installation! I got it running on Windows 10 without the need for limiting the frame rate. I also got six of the other levels to load via file swapping, but making any progress on many of these is very difficult for varying reasons. Saving doesn’t seem to work without save tokens, which I found on only one of the levels.
Cool man. Yeah, I’ve got a NVidia 4000 series GPU based laptop and the game is almost unplayable without a frame limiter for me. LOL At least this old thing runs on a modern system with a little help. Glad you got it running.
Hi Frank,
Heard about the recovered alpha build in the Unseen64 game comments section and tried it out. Really interesting game actually. I’m enjoying it so far. Anyhoo… you’ll notice Werta’s video only has the audio for the intro video. There’s an actual video in there. So here is what I did in Windows 10 to get the alpha running smoothly. I use smoothly loosely as the build is a bit janky and you can fall through the map quite a bit. I stay away from the walls, although, I did fall through the floor once as well. Woohoo!
The instructions on Shell_Troll’s Archive.org page are correct, but a few more steps for me made the magic happen.
1.) Installed the game from the mounted CD image (Windows 10). According to the Archive.org page, Windows 11 users may have to copy the files over rather than installing them. The trick there is just make sure the game’s “Brother” folder and the “Brender” folder are within the same parent folder together. To clarify, the “Brender” folder should not be within the “Brother” game folder. In my case both folders are just sitting at C: root.
2.) Only two files need to be copied to the game’s Brother folder from dgVoodoo. The “dgVoodooCpl.exe”, obviously, and the 32-bit Glide DLL file “Glide2x.dll” located in the …\dgVoodoo2_85\3Dfx\x86 folder. Yes, I’m using dgVoodoo v2.85.
3.) The only thing you need to adjust within dgVoodoo are two things. Set “Appearance” to “Windowed” and for purity 4:3 aspect ratio sake, set that windowed mode to “Stretched, 4:3 Aspect”. Nothing worse than a stretched out looking old game. Stretch marks are always unsightly (my lame attempt at humor).
4.) Engage a frame limiter and set it to 30 FPS. The game gets wacky beyond that for me. Luckily, NVidia has one built-in to their control panel under the “Max Frame Rate” setting. Just don’t forget to set that back to “Off” when you’re done or all your games will run at 30 FPS. LOL.
5.) This one is important: Set the “bro.exe” to Windows XP compatibility mode (doesn’t matter if it’s the SP2 or SP3 version).
6.) Double click “bro.exe” and let it load up. The menu will be in a small window. Do not full screen that. Click on “New Game” and watch the intro video or hit the ESC key to cancel it.
7.) The game will start in a small window and NOW you can ALT-ENTER to go to full screen mode.
Also, two very useful things I found.
1.) In the “Brother” game folder there is a “bro.kbd” file that has all the keyboard controls. Just look at it with a text editor.
2.) On the CD image there is “Walkthrough” folder with some useful text files to help you through the game.
Hope this helps and THANK YOU Shell_Troll for posting this. Really amazing this obscure title was preserved. I really am enjoying the atmosphere of the game and I would have purchased this if it had come out.
P.S.- When you first start the game you are going to immediately go up an elevator. Get off quick or it will take you right back down. LOL I was like WTF after going up and down that thing like four times. LOL I’m not the most skilled gamer in the world admittedly.
That’s awesome, thank you LiqMatrix for sharing! I’ll also add links to Unseen64’s page and also Lost Media Wiki too, as they’re covering the history already about the development.
Correction. I meant to say/thank Shed_Troll and NOT Shell_Troll. Whoops! My bad.