ARC wants to destroy the Net, while a rival company, Arunmor, wants to stop them. If you act on the information in the message, you get to take part in the storyline and even can choose the fate of the Internet.
Fortunately, Uplink has a “corporate store” where agents can buy needed software like password breakers, security bypassers, decyphering and decryption tools, and hardware upgrades for their gateways.Ĭhoose your missions, and hack your way to the elite ranks.Ī STORY BEHIND THE HACKING: About mid-March, you receive a message from the now-deceased top agent that the Andromeda Research Corporation, or ARC, is working on a project called Revelation. There are banking systems, LANs, a Social Security database, a Global Academic database, and a Global Criminal database to hack. At the highest levels, you get to swipe entire databases off high-security LANs and frame innocent people for cybercrimes. Then, you get to crash mainframes, commit identity fraud, and make secret bank transfers. The missions range from simply breaking into systems to steal or delete a file. After registering as an agent, you need to prove your skills with a test mission, then you can pick from different missions with different difficulties, and work your way up the agent ranks to become a Terminal hacker. After hearing rumors and searching the Internet, you finally found a public access server for the secretive Uplink Corporation, whose “agents” are hackers hired to break into systems to accomplish different goals. OK, the hacking is more reminiscent of Hollywood’s idea of hacking from WarGames and such, but the hacking is what Uplink is all about No lame pretext to “save the world.” Uplink, on the other hand, is all hacking. Activision’s Hacker can be called one, but the “hacking” there is only a pretext for the real game within. THE FIRST TRUE HACKING SIM: Some might argue that hacking simulations have been around long before Uplink.