Fans of the classic Blade Runner point-and-click adventure game will be happy to know the game is now on CD Projekt Red’s online game store, GOG.
The 1997 game was set parallel to the original 1982 film and told a unique detective story with some existing characters voiced by Blade Runner actors Sean Young and James Hong. It also featured new characters, including a Los Angeles Police Department blade runner named Ray McCoy. The Blade Runner game earned praise for successfully capturing the film’s cinematic atmosphere.
Blade Runner came from development studio Westwood, which was behind the Command & Conquer series. Westwood created a complex and branching narrative that was able to randomize which characters were replicants, changing the game on each playthrough.
The Verge notes that Blade Runner almost didn’t get a digital rerelease. Westwood lost the game’s source code in 2003, which meant players had to find one of the game’s rare hard copies, or an unofficial cracked version, to play it. Of course, there was also a tremendous amount of work involved to get Blade Runner to work on a modern PC.
However, thanks to the addition of ScummVM emulator support, the game became playable in October — if you could find the content online. That last step is easy now thanks to GOG. On its website, the game store notes that some passionate programmers spent eight years dissecting Blade Runner’s code from original CDs and putting it back together to make the digital version.
Further, the programmers worked with film studio Alcon Interactive Group to legally release Blade Runner through GOG.
If you’re interested in trying out the old game, you can purchase it on GOG for $13.29 CAD. At the time of writing, there was a 10 percent discount available, bringing the price down to just $11.99. You can also learn more about how the digital version of Blade Runner came to be here.
