More to the point, he had no more than $5,000 to his name. He had no business background, and none of the acumen required to understand contracts or negotiate licensing fees. Up until that point, Kick had dedicated his life to creative pursuits.

Instead, it was asked of Stephen Kick - at the time, a recently unemployed videogame artist holidaying in a Guatemalan hostel.

It’s a question you could imagine being posed to Ken Levine, or Warren Spector, or several other notable designers who could reasonably lay claim to the legacy of Looking Glass and Irrational’s legendary immersive sims. “What do you want to do with it? Do you want to make a sequel?” Cyberspace was a killer (2 min 30 seconds to start with) but livable though running all the way through on the lengthier c-space sectors could be impossible.“Oh yeah, we’ve got the System Shock IP,” said the insurance company. When I play SS1 on all-3 setting, I also make it a point to avoid restoration, just to have the ego boost of knowing I can do it with 0 restore. I don't bother moving away cos Shodan doesn't damage you in any manner, except when I totally lost track of where it is then I stumble into another corner before turning around. Most of us who fought Shodan simply knew to keep turning around and keep firing. I am currently cranking out an absolutely pure OSA on Impossible last count at Rec. I never said it was impossible I mere said it was a different piece of cake. If you choose an appropriate upgrade path, it's actually not that hard once you get past engineering, which is too early in the game to have gotten good at anything. Lots of people here have beaten it at impossible, me for one. It's something every die-hard Shockling should do! But IMO the game is more fun with Plot set to 2 (full plot, no time limit). That said, it's a thrill to try, as a challenge, when you haven't done it before. You don't explore, you don't listen to the logs, you don't savor the plot, you ignore SHODAN's taunting. The problem is that the speed run kills all the fun. Could have been faster but I slacked off after I got the Groves shot off in about 2 hours and knew I'd make it. I played SS1 over and over again for a while, learnt everything cold, and used the knowledge to play as fast as possible. I've gone it a few times my best time at all difficulty levels maxed out is around 4.5 hours but it was a 'stunt' in terms of playing the game.

As noted, the key to finishing under the time limit is knowing where to go to get stuff, what to skip, and what to get.

System shock 2 normal difficulty