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VZ
History: Club Caribe, Habitat
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Believe
it or not, VZones has been around for much longer
than you might think. Before VZones it was called
Worldsaway and even before that, it was
called Habitat: The ClubCaribe.
This
world was for C64 users and was availible on an internet
service called Q-Link (which we all know now as AOL!).
Habitat was far more primative than the VZones we
know today and the graphics were simple too (well
they were on a C64). This world was created by none
other than Lucasfilm Entertainment, the company responsible
for bringing us brilliant movies such as Star Wars
and Indiana Jones. So, what was so different about
this world compared to ours? Hardly anything actually
apart from the turfs which featured as actual buildings
each avatar could own.
Yup,
you could rent a house in Habitat. Also there were
other things, such as fighting. Evidence of that
appears in WA/VZ on your status menu. "How healthy
am I?"
These
were updated and enhanced versions of Habitat too.
Just like the Monkey Island games (also developed
by Lucasfilm Games), a standard version (for low-end
machines) and an enhanced version (for later machines)
of Habitat was released.
Basicly
you had weapons (like a gun) and if you defeated the
other avatar, they'd drop their weapon and all the
contents of their pocket and be teleported to a turf
with their head in their hands.
Unfortunately,
the world was not as popular as it was hoped to be...
this was either because the internet was not utilized
by many people at the time, or because of the poor
software format chosen by Lucasarts. Either way, the
world eventually closed down and the project was left
alone for a while.
Luckily, in 1993, Fujitsu bought the rights to the
technology from Lucasarts and relaunched it as Habitat
II, the amazing software we know and love this very
day... but it was in japanese!
