The Ocean of Origins (1995) (part 7/8)
Channel: Concavenator
Date: 2022-03-15

In 1995, the French videogame company Microfolie produced "L'Océan des Origines", a virtual encyclopedia on CD-ROM about the evolution of life in prehistoric oceans, from the Cambrian Explosion of animal life to the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. As far as I know, all versions of this game have been out of commerce for at least 20 years. What you see here is footage of the Italian edition of the game, to which I have added English subtitles and translations.

The encyclopedia is structured as a virtual submarine palace or museum, in which each room is dedicated to a particular sub-discipline -- compared anatomy, paleontology, systematics, and so on. Much of the enyclopedia presents its information in the form of virtual books, cinematics, and slideshows, with a few fully interactive sequences, such as the paleobiological game at the end of this video.

The entire footage is going to be split in eight videos. This is the seventh, the first set in the Epoch room, dedicated to the geological periods of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras in which the game is set.

Look at part 1 of the series to see how the rooms are assigned to the different parts, and part 2 to see the full version of the archive of which we see a part here.

00:00 Cambrian
01:34 Ordovician and Early Silurian
02:35 Late Silurian and Early Devonian
03:40 Late Devonian
04:42 Carboniferous
05:42 Permian
06:49 Triassic
07:48 Jurassic
08:40 Cretaceous
09:45 Paleobiological game

PART 1 (intro, Precambrian, anatomical pathways, etymological game): https://youtu.be/58xfxYsrrrE
PART 2 (archive of species): https://youtu.be/-s6ZHLk2qRE
PART 3 (Proteion or hall of paleontologists, continental drift and fossilization, fossil restoration game): https://youtu.be/oPqjf73C--4
PART 4 (Genealogical room, genealogical game): https://youtu.be/VDgBzosG0ek
PART 5 (Projection room, compared anatomy): https://youtu.be/aMi8q2jc4g8
PART 6 (the Aquarium):  https://youtu.be/B8w4h2BSq7Y
PART 8 (time travel, end credits): https://youtu.be/i19z5hKVtAg
In the next part: we travel through time.

-- DISCLAIMER: this game is almost 30 years old, and what you see is the translation of a translation. Be careful before using it as a scientific source for any particular claim. --