Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (video game)

teammates moving into position during a mission|left Rainbow Six is a tactical shooter, in which characters are affected by realistic factors and can be killed with a single bullet; therefore, wise tactics and planning are encouraged to complete missions over sheer force and firepower. The game follows a campaign of several missions, with the plot being advanced in the mission briefing of each. the Nintendo 64 port has 12 missions, the PlayStation port has 14 missions and the Dreamcast port has 21 missions. Objectives in missions include defeating enemies, rescuing hostages, defusing bombs, gathering intelligence, and planting surveillance devices. Players are encouraged to find their own ways to complete objectives using a variety of tactics and methods, ranging from stealthy infiltration to a frontal assault (except in missions where stealth is mandatory). Operatives are categorized into five classes based on their skill specializations: Assault, Demolitions, Electronics, Recon, and Sniper. The vast majority of operatives are named characters with their own backstories and skillsets, but generic "reserves" are also available for each class should players wish to avoid risking named operatives, although they have greatly reduced skills. In the planning stage, the player is shown a map of the area of operations to set team orders, such as AI pathing, team "go" codes to hold until ordered, where AI operatives will deploy equipment such as flashbangs or door breaching charges, and rules of engagement; alternatively, the player can skip this by choosing to follow a preset plan instead. During gameplay, the player directly controls a team leader, and can use their weapons and equipment, manually lead their team, and see stats for the controlled operative and their team on the HUD. The player can take control of any alive team leader at will. Operatives and teams not under player control follow the orders given to them in the planning stage. Injured or fatigued operatives require time off after a mission to recover (they can still be used, just with lower health or reduced skills), while deceased operatives are permanently lost and cannot be used for the rest of the campaign playthrough, forcing players to plan carefully to avoid casualties. Most versions of Rainbow Six have considerable differences. The PlayStation port was developed by Rebellion and features visible weapons in first person, entirely new mission layouts, and a smaller team size (4, opposed to 8 in other versions). The Nintendo 64 port has a simpler HUD design and completely reorganized missions, including some from Eagle Watch. The Game Boy Color port is the most notable example, having radically different gameplay and presentation due to the platform's technical limitations: gameplay is slowed and simplified, crossfire is removed, and the 3D graphics from other releases are replaced by a 2.5D top-down perspective. ==Plot==

In 1999, in response to a post-Cold War rise in terrorism, the world's special forces units, police tactical units, and intelligence agencies form "Rainbow", a covert international counterterrorist organization led by John Clark. In 2000, Rainbow responds to a series of terrorist attacks linked to the Phoenix Group eco-terrorist organization. Rainbow's operations against Phoenix are assisted by John Brightling, chairman of the powerful biotechnology corporation Horizon Inc., whose facilities are frequently targeted by Phoenix; Anne Lang, the Science Advisor to the President of the United States and an acquaintance of Brightling; and Catherine Winston, a biological expert working with Horizon who is rescued by Rainbow following an attack in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After a raid on a Phoenix compound in Idaho that reveals unethical human experimentation, Rainbow learns the Phoenix Group is a front for Horizon. Viewing humanity as an environmentally destructive "disease", Brightling plans to exterminate most of humanity using a highly contagious manmade strain of the Ebola virus called "Brahma", sparing only his chosen few (including Lang), who will rebuild Earth into a scientific environmental utopia. To achieve this, Brightling has engineered terrorist attacks to exploit heightened terrorism concerns and secure a contract for his private security firm Global Security at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Global Security's personnel, led by William Hendrickson, will then release Brahma at the Olympics through Stadium Australia's cooling system, spreading the virus worldwide when the athletes and spectators return home. After gathering intelligence and rescuing Winston from a last-ditch attempt to silence her, Rainbow apprehends Lang and Hendrickson and prevents Brahma's release at the Olympic Village, foiling Brightling's plans. Brightling and his collaborators flee to their Horizon Ark facility in the Amazon rainforest, where they planned to weather out the Brahma pandemic. Rainbow assaults the Ark, neutralizes Brightling's collaborators, and takes Brightling into custody. ==Development==

The idea of the game that would become Rainbow Six originated from early concepts Red Storm Entertainment had conceived following the company's formation in 1996. Selected from around 100 other ideas, the original concept, titled HRT, followed the FBI Hostage Rescue Team rescuing hostages from criminals and terrorists. HRT was gradually expanded in scope with the addition of covert operations and an international setting, and the game was rechristened Black Ops. Lead game designer Brian Upton, recalling Rainbow Six's development process in the May 1999 issue of Game Developer, described the game's design philosophy from the initial concept:We knew from the start that we wanted to capture the excitement of movies such as Mission: Impossible and The Dirty Dozen — the thrill of watching a team of skilled specialists pull off an operation with clockwork precision. We also knew that we wanted it to be an action game with a strong strategic component — a realistic shooter that would be fun to play even without a Quake player's twitch reflexes. By 1997, the game was very behind on schedule, and the developers began to crunch. Many developers slept in a spare room of the office, Upton's mental health deteriorated to the point that he had a nervous breakdown that prompted company restructuring to reduce his workload, and network programmer Dave Weinstein (hired as part of the aforementioned company restructuring) was once stopped by police on suspicion of driving under the influence due to his severe exhaustion from crunch. Rebellion Developments for the PS1, Crawfish opted to give the Game Boy Color port a unique game style, as they felt other game styles would not suit Rainbow Six's gameplay and features on the platform. The release of Pipe Dream's Dreamcast port was delayed by eight months. The game's box art, featuring a Rainbow operative armed with a Heckler & Koch USP, was not created for the game and is actually a modified 1992 photograph of Heckler & Koch USA sales executive John T. Meyer. The original image was used to promote the American launch of the USP in 1993. Heckler & Koch permitted the use of the image for the game and sent firearms instructors to assist with motion capture. ==Release==

''Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six'' was released for Windows on August 21, 1998, in North America and on October 23, 1998, in Europe. In North America, the game was released by Red Storm Entertainment, with SouthPeak Games handling distribution duties. Take-Two Interactive published the game in Europe. The Nintendo 64 port was released in North America on November 17, 1999, and in the United Kingdom one month later on December 10. The PlayStation conversion was released in the United Kingdom on November 19, and in North America on November 23. A port for Mac OS was released on December 1, 1999. A distinct version of the game was released for Game Boy Color in North America April 12, 2000, and in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2000. The Dreamcast port was delayed several times before being released. Initially expected to be released on September 9, 1999, as a launch title for the system, it was delayed due to the difficulties of working with Windows CE during development. The port was initially delayed to October 19, 1999, before being postponed a month again. It then went gold on November 30, 1999, with an expected release date of December 9, and was released five months later on May 3, 2000, in North America by Majesco Sales' publishing label Pipe Dream Interactive, and on February 2, 2001, in the United Kingdom by German publisher Swing! Entertainment. After the release of the game, Tom Clancy offered to sign copies of the game for Red Storm employees, despite being relatively uninvolved in development, annoying several developers; as Upton opined, "Even though it had his name on the box, it wasn't his game. It was our game. He should have been asking us to sign a copy for him!" Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch ''Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mission Pack: Eagle Watch is an expansion pack of the original game, released exclusively for Windows in North America on January 26, 1999, and in Europe in February 1999. It adds five new missions, four new operatives from the Rainbow Six'' novel, three new weapons, and new multiplayer modes. The new missions, unrelated to each other or the original campaign, take place in 2001 and follow Rainbow's high-profile operations in landmark locations around the world, namely the Buran spaceplane in Russia, the Taj Mahal in India, the Forbidden City in China, the Palace of Westminster in the United Kingdom, and the Capitol in the United States. The Nintendo 64 port includes some of the missions from Eagle Watch, and the Dreamcast port contains all of them. ==Reception==

''Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was met with mostly positive reviews on PC, though the console ports received relatively lower ratings. Review aggregator Metacritic displays a score of 85 out of 100 for the PC version. Jeremy Dunham of IGN'', reviewing the Dreamcast port, praised the game's change in pace, saying, "Long exposed to mindless romps and pointless first-person gore-fest clones, the ability to actually think and THEN destroy puts a big ol' smile on my face." Multiplayer was singled out for praise, especially for the PC version. Ward praised the multiplayer functionality and its addictiveness, adding that "[f]or weeks now, the offices here have literally shut down as teams from IGN-PC, PC Gamer and PC Accelerator stop what they're doing to take each other on in a team deathmatch, or to cooperate on a difficult mission." Olafson singled out the lack of variation in AI behavior, with enemies idling and teammates only moving in single-file lines. In a 2018 retrospective, N64 Today said the port still stood up 20 years after its release, but noted noticeable graphical issues, especially if not played on a CRT display. IGN's Matt White criticized its unusually poor graphics, and called it "a mighty fine example for impressionable young developers of how not to handle a port." The Dreamcast port was very well-received. Garrett Kenyon of Next Generation gave it four stars out of five, calling it "[a]n impressive PC translation that Dreamcast owners should certainly consider owning." Erik Wolpaw, reviewing the Dreamcast port for GameSpot, stated it was a faithful port of the PC game and "as deep and challenging as action games get", though he criticized its long loading times, lack of multiplayer, and unusually complex method of issuing commands—over 35 exist, but require specific combinations of joystick and button inputs. Accolades The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Rainbow Six for "PC Action Game of the Year" during the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, but it lost to Half-Life. Rainbow Six was a finalist for Computer Gaming Worlds 1998 "Best Action" award, which ultimately went to Battlezone. The editors wrote that Rainbow Six "deftly mixed strategic planning with nail-biting action as it brought the world of counterterrorist operations to life." PC Gamer US named Rainbow Six the best action game of 1998. CNN, in partnership with Games.net, named Rainbow Six one of the "top 25 game downloads of 1998". Sales In the United States, Rainbow Six Windows release sold 218,183 copies during 1998, accounting for $8.86 million in revenue that year. According to Gamasutra, Rainbow Six and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear together sold 450,000 copies "during the first half of the 2001/2002 fiscal year". ==Notes==