Icarus: Alien Vanguard

Icarus: Alien Vanguard (ICARUS.WAD) is a 32-level megawad released in 1996 by TeamTNT. It was developed as the collective's first freeware release, after TNT: Evilution was picked up for publishing by id Software for what would become Final Doom. The first level sees the player commandeering a shuttle and flying it to the infested exploration cruiser, the Icarus. From there, the player must fight through the ship, regions of the neighboring planet, and unsafe simulations to cleanse the demonic threat. A sequel, Daedalus: Alien Defense, was released in 2003.

The megawad's soundtrack was composed by a team called MusIcarus, consisting of the following: Brian Kidby (coordinator), Jeremy Doyle, Jonathan El-Bizri, Charles Li, David Shaw and Tom Mustaine. Many tracks feature a distinct, based on the text screen music in the WAD.

Story
The story of Icarus: Alien Vanguard was written by Brian Kidby, and is available only on the official TeamTNT website for the WAD. Like official Doom story materials, it is written in the second person.

The story takes place twelve years after the events of Doom II, characterized as "total global war" between humanity and an invading race that "attacked with a fury that seemed the spawn of Hell itself". After the human race evacuated Earth, it was decided to bomb the entry points of the invasion from space. Following this, "special military teams" were sent to take out the surviving forces. Nearly a year later, the human race returned to their now devastated planet and began to rebuild, amidst occasional but ongoing battle with the remnants of the enemy.

In the wake of the invasion, the newly arisen United Nations established the Earth Defense Council (EDC), which would protect the planet from future invasions. Fulfilling this is the Earth Defense Force (EDF), their active arm, consisting of every military force in the world, which also explores nearby planetary systems for life forms hostile or not.

The exploration has been going on for one year prior to the beginning of the story via short-range cruisers, equipped with Personnel Transport (PT) systems developed by the UAC for direct travel between ships and planets. Two have reached their destinations and have sent back preliminary scans suggesting no signs of intelligent life, with more data expected as the exploration teams are planned to do surface scans soon.

When the story begins, Doom's protagonist is woken up at 2:00 AM by a call from his commander, General Bill Robinson, for an emergency, which sends him on a flight to the Northern United States EDF base near. There, he receives the news: it seems the EDF has lost contact with the Icarus, the last exploration cruiser to be launched, headed for the system. It was exploring and scanning the five planets of Beta Pictoris as planned when, according to its logs, scanners detected intelligent life on the third. Analysis revealed Beta Pictoris 3 to have Earth-like conditions, and a recon team was sent to the surface. Unfortunately, the team encountered hostile life forms six hours after landing, resulting in an almost half-hour firefight in which the hostiles were apparently killed along with several members of the recon team. The bodies were brought in for analysis by the Science branch of the Icarus. The last log entry, around five hours later, reveals the hostiles were playing dead, and subsequently took over the ship using the PT systems to increase their numbers. The entire crew of the Icarus was seemingly killed.

Asked by the protagonist when he is scheduled for takeoff, the General informs him that the EDF has nothing capable of reaching the Icarus or Beta Pictoris 3. What it does have is the location of a storage depot in Florida once owned by the, which included a fully functional hyper-shuttle among other spacecraft and armaments. However, it was overrun by the invasion forces early in the conflict, and EDF has not taken it back since. One soldier (or a small team) is to sneak into the depot, reclaim the shuttle, fly it to the Icarus and eliminate all hostiles aboard. The protagonist is the one assigned to this mission, which he accepts gladly. He has a "jump-jet" prepared for him, scheduled to launch at 11:00 AM.

Before dismissing him, however, the General informs the protagonist of two things. Firstly, the jump-jet only has enough fuel to make it to the Icarus and not the return trip, unless the protagonist can refuel from the Icarus. Secondly, the Icarus must be returned with none of the hostiles alive. If it appears this is impossible, the protagonist is to activate the self-destruct and escape.

With both of those points understood, the protagonist leaves to prepare for takeoff.

The Icarus log entries are dated to 2024, suggesting that the events of Doom II took place in 2012. In real life (as of this writing), the Beta Pictoris system has only one confirmed planet,.

Levels
Each level ends the same way, with a barrier that requires a red key to open and a sign stating where the next level will take place. The locations of each level are given in parentheses.

Secret levels:
 * by Christopher Buteau
 * by John Minadeo (Ship)
 * by Ty Halderman (Planet)
 * by Jim Lowell (Ship)
 * by Mark Snell (Simulation)
 * by Gary Gosson (Planet)
 * by Tom Grieve (Ship)
 * by David "Mentzer" Hill (Planet)
 * by David "Mentzer" Hill (Simulation)
 * by Ty Halderman (Ship)
 * by Gregg Anderson (Planet)
 * by Gary Gosson (Ship)
 * by Robert Taylor (Simulation)
 * by Robin Patenall (Planet)
 * by Ken Simpson and Jim Kennedy (Ship)
 * by Mike Marcotte (Simulation)
 * by Mike Marcotte (Planet)
 * by Andrew Dowswell (Ship)
 * by Rand Phares (Planet)
 * by Rand Phares (Simulation)
 * by Dean Johnson (Ship)
 * by Gary Gosson (Simulation)
 * by Brian Kidby (Planet)
 * by Gary Gosson (Ship)
 * by Michael Bristol (Planet)
 * by Jim Dethlefsen (Ship)
 * by Ty Halderman (Planet)
 * by Steven Phares (Simulation)
 * by Mike Ruete (Planet)
 * by Ty Halderman, Brian Kidby, and Jim Lowell (Ship)
 * by Jim Lowell (Simulation)
 * by Ty Halderman (Simulation)

Built-in demos
This WAD features a full set of built-in demos. All three end with the player's death, and DEMO3 shows how to fight the ghost monsters in (i.e. the player must use the rocket launcher's splash damage to hurt them). It is not known who in TeamTNT recorded them. All demos require Doom II v1.9 for viewing. The demo levels are:

Official links

 * TeamTNT Home Page
 * Icarus: Alien Vanguard website
 * &mdash; Official no monsters mode help demos
 * Secrets for Icarus: Alien Vanguard, compiled by Jim Kennedy
 * Secrets for Icarus: Alien Vanguard, compiled by Jim Kennedy

Demo links

 * &mdash; UV max demos recorded by George Bell
 * &mdash; UV -fast demos recorded by Roger Moraga and Michael Reid (prower)

Reviews

 * Icarus: Alien Vanguard review at Visions of Doom
 * Icarus: Alien Vanguard review at Doomed: Doom WAD Reviews