How Fury 3 Sold Windows 95 as a Gaming Platform | Terminal Reality's Old PC Space Shooter Review
520Fury 3 PC game review. Microsoft's Fury 3 is PC abandonware now but in 1995, Fury3 was probably the most significant PC game on the planet.
Microsoft were planning for Windows 95 to be this shiny all-singing gaming platform. PC games for Windows were to be developed to a set of standards called DirectX. All Microsoft needed was some killer apps to package in with Windows 95.
This is the story of how Microsoft's Fury3 sold Windows 95 as a gaming platform.
Fury 3 is an arcade-style space shooter. These were big news in the early 90s. TIE Fighter, Descent, Wing Commander had all been mega popular on DOS so of course Microsoft's Fury 3 would be the perfect genre for a Windows 95 launch game.
The evil Bions have annexed nine planets which you’ll need to liberate. Each planet has its own unique look and also its own unique enemy types. Your spaceship has seven different weapons in Fury 3.
If Microsoft were going to sell Windows 95 as a good gaming platform, Fury 3 needed to work without any mucking about. Terminal Reality’s job wasn’t just making a good game, Fury 3 had to sell the Windows experience.
PC Zone specifically mentioned in their 1995 preview of Fury3 about how the game just worked out of the box. It can't be overstated how important Fury 3 was for selling Windows 95. If people wanted to play 3D games they could go get an inexpensive Playstation and just fire it up with no worries. If Microsoft could just make the Windows PC a bit more friendly then they'd be on to something.
Microsoft’s Fury 3 launched to retail in August 1995 in the USA alongside Windows 95. A bundled demo was included with Windows 95, Fury 3 being essentially a launch title for Windows 95. As well as being given away with new PCs, Fury 3 was also bundled with Microsoft Sidewinder joysticks.
Fury 3 was released here in the UK around Christmas ‘95 but I can’t find reviews in the mags until early 1996. The few reviews I have dug up praised Windows 95! With the focus squarely on launching and selling Windows 95, Microsoft did no favours to Terminal Reality. The bottom line is Microsoft's Fury 3 is a good game. I love old PC space shooters and whenever I think of this genre I always think of Fury 3.
Fury 3 paved the way for Windows 95 and Windows games. The idea of buying a game that was guaranteed to work really can’t be understated in terms of market confidence.
Fury 3 doesn’t exactly contain a ton of content. If you’ve played the classic old PC space shooters and want something more, it would be hard to recommend Microsoft's Fury3 on the basis of its content alone. But as a legacy game. The game which sold Windows 95 as a gaming platform. Fury 3 is a must-play.
#fury3 #oldpcgaming #windows95
HOW TO GET FURY 3 RUNNING ON MODERN WINDOWS:
https://www.play-old-pc-games.com/2014/02/27/fury-3/
SOURCES:
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Fury3
https://gamicus.gamepedia.com/Fury3
https://www.oldpcgaming.net/fury-3/
https://archive.org/details/MSFURY3
https://archive.org/details/PCPowerplay-024-1998-05/page/n33
https://archive.org/details/PC_Zone_32_November_1995/page/n87
https://archive.org/details/PC_Zone_31_October_1995/page/n95
https://www.nvidia.fr/object/nzone_terminalreality_trenches.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fury3
MUSIC:
"Premonition", "Waves", "Sandstorm" and "Mission Briefing" by Kyle Richards all appear on the Fury 3 OST. All music is from my own CD-ROM copy of the game.
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