Forever Young
Ultimate Newcomer started development in Hungary just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s still not finished. We go inside one of videogame’s greatest, untold tragedies.
Hungary in the late ’80s was one of the most volatile places on Earth. The Soviet Union was on the verge of crumbling, and with it, the Eastern Bloc. The Iron Curtain did not fall without a fight. There were scenes of revolt. In 1989, more than 75,000 protesters flooded the streets of Budapest. A year later, the Hungarian republic was formed. With it came democracy and, as they say, freedom.
What does someone do with newfound freedom? Perhaps, swept up in the spirit of change, they go into politics. Welled over with nationalistic pride, they enlist in the armed services. They see the world. The way to the West, which had been cut off by 150 miles of barbed-wire fence along the Hungarian-Austrian border, was opened. The last thing you would expect someone to do is lock themselves indoors and develop a videogame. Yet that is exactly what a group of young Hungarian men did. They started working on a computer game called Newcomer, an adventure about a man in search of—what else—freedom.
