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Comment by westcoast49 | Hacker News Reader

Here's the answer that ChatGPT gives to this riddle; it thinks that it must be the 1991 game Metal Mutant by French developer Silmarils:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOl_fBWIuac

The video seems to match your description quite well!

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Wow, that's it! But I still think that I played a leaked prototype of that game, because it didn't have any other details like the vegetation, and the rotating cube didn't transform into the game's title. Great to see they actually finished it! lol

So, Metal Mutant (1990-1991) came before Flashback and Legend of Kyrandia (both 1992). I can't recall a previous game that has such impressive artwork. It seems they modified the gradient from blue-orange (sky-desert reflections) to colors that match the environments, which makes it kind of monochromatic. So the prototype looked even better as I recall.

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Metal_Mutant_1991

Yes, I don't recall the game myself. But I recall Flashback. I had an Amiga at the time, but not a PC until a few years later. 1991 probably was about the time when the PC started to catch up to the Amiga in terms of graphics.

I like how ChatGPT can be used to to do fuzzy "queries" like this and come up with the right answer:

https://chatgpt.com/share/4cfcffdc-48e3-4780-a55a-091836c79c...

It guesses wrong to begin with, but then I give it the additional information that the game is French, and it gives me the right answer.

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