What is it?
Hidden & Dangerous is a tactical shooter, similar to the Tom Clancy games (Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon) and America's Army. That's not my type of game, I won't pretend I've played it or anything. I'm interested in it for historical reasons. It kick-started Illusion Softworks, became the first Czech game that gained international success, and played an important role in the renaissance of European game development.
Illusion Softworks
This company, which was to become the most successful Central European game developer, was founded in 1997 by Petr Vochozka, who was only 22 at the time, with an investment company. Petr Vochozka had been programming since he got his first Atari 800 XL at the age of thirteen. At sixteen, he sold his first game for a profit of CKZ 2000. In 1993, he founded Vochozka Trading, originally as a publisher for Amiga games. In 1994, he published the first commercial Czech PC game, Donkey Island, a Monkey Island parody featuring a hero named Gaybrush Nosehair. German and English translations were later distributed by Epic Megagames.
With Hidden & Dangerous, the young company got a good start. The game got a lot of international recognition, more than any other continental European game had in the past years, and it sold well. That's how it should be seen: as a good start. Later, Illusion Softworks would top its success on all counts with the far more remarkable Mafia.
Petr Vochozka is credited as the producer of Hidden & Dangerous, but seems not to have partaken in any way in the development. Lead programmer and co-designer was Michal Bačík, who had been writing Commodore 64 games since at least 1988, including Decent Strip Poker, one of the most popular downloads on this site. Of the other members of the team, I found none credited for an earlier game, but then the Czech 8-bit games are not very well documented yet. I could not, for example, locate Petr Vochozka's old Atari games.
Deluxe
2002 an updated version was released, called Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe. The update was merely technical, gameplay stayed the same. I guess the dependency on 3Dfx Voodoo cards has been fixed, the original game was reported not to perform well with anything else. When Hidden & Dangerous 2 was released, this updated version of the original game was released as freeware for publicity.
