Play Soldiers of Fortune Online

Summary

Soldiers of Fortune, the SNES version of The Chaos Engine, swaps the Preacher for a Scientist and strips away the clerical collar, giving the roster a slightly more tech‑savvy vibe. You pick two adventurers from six distinct classes, each priced differently and equipped with unique weapons and abilities, then dive into four worlds of four levels each, where bridges, rivers and hidden nodes pepper the open‑air maps. The game’s audio is a clever feat: composer Richard Joseph crammed the soundtrack into the console’s tiny audio memory by compressing note data and drivers into main RAM, reserving the remaining space for crisp samples. In single‑player mode the second character is handled by an AI that can open doors, snag power‑ups and even draw enemy fire away from you, while two‑player mode lets a friend join the chaos side‑by‑side. The result feels like a retro‑style Gauntlet with a metallic‑blue aesthetic and a solid 6.8/10 rating from Electronic Gaming Monthly.

Storyline

In Soldiers of Fortune, the story unfolds in a steampunk‑infused Victorian England. A time‑traveller from a far‑future era crashes into the past, and his advanced technology falls into the hands of the Royal Society, led by the eccentric inventor Baron Fortesque.

Fortesque reverse‑engineers the alien devices and builds the Chaos Engine, a sentient machine that devours its creator and releases hordes of monsters, resurrected prehistoric beasts, and relentless automata across the British Isles.

The resulting chaos shatters the British Empire, prompting a band of mercenaries to breach the quarantined nation, track the source of the disturbance, and put an end to the Engine’s rampage.

The climax takes place in the Hall of Machines, where the player finally destroys the Chaos Engine and learns that the game’s narrator is none other than Baron Fortesque himself, now trapped inside the very machine he built.