First, a big thanks to Oyn who found this game for me. I was looking for it for many years. I used to play this game at Intermediate school on the class computer, because we were there earlier than school started. After all these years I could only remember a game set in the middle ages, and that there was arm wrestling, archery and galloping a horse between towns. So I described this dream game to Oyn and he went hunting, and sure enough he found it – he finds everything. Thanks Oyn! (k)

This game was way before it’s time. It was enthralling, stunning, fun and adventurous. I have always had a fascination with all things medieval.

So, where to start? You are a knight who has returned from afar, only to find that your uncle has an army approaching to conquer your lands and your home has been ravaged. Your castle is a ruin and you need to amass an army to defend the lands. A bit like the Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner? The problem is that you’ve been gone so long that nobody really cares who you are, so you need to go around doing archery and arm wrestling and other things to gather enough respect and money to get the army together.

So you get on your faithful steed and face the county map. You ride your horse from town to town and other inhibited areas and do all that is required to save your land from the oncoming slaughter.

The first town you’ll come across is Chatany Malabry, where you spend most of the game trying to conquer the annual archery contest. I totally sucked at the archery. You have to gauge the angle up, down, side-to-side, force etc. You get 6 rounds. It was quite difficult! I also managed to pick up some supplies from the store to aid me in my quest.

The town of Lorando is to the west, where there is a used-car salesman and an optimistic barman. It’s a quaint town, where people are friendly and they have a lot of… shrubbery.

Knights Templar Abbey isn’t a town, but it’s another area you can visit. I was confuddled here, seemed a good place to just purchase things. I thought it was awesome that there were Knights Templar, very medieval. Shame they weren’t ready to rally to my cause just yet.

The best place to visit though is Torantek, the restless city of scoundrels and people without morals or faith. Wow, careful not to be mugged I say. People tend to stare at me and don’t like me. I did find some mercenaries but they didn’t like me either. It was a very interesting place to be. Some nice shady characters for you to take your moods out on.

But that’s not all, there are many other places to visit and see, other challenges, people to meet and talk to, buy things from etc.

I really recommend this game, it’s just brilliant. So popular it was ported to nearly any platform you can think of!

The game all starts with a game of baseball. Brad and his sister Jenny are playing a game of baseball, Brad goes to hit the homer and *zap*… wakes up hanging upside down in a cold, damp dungeon. A long way from the modern time he lives in. The reason? Well, a land full of wicked greedy witches who want to cast a rejuvination spell to make them eternally young and hot. The thing though is that the spell needs a male to complete it, and there are no boys in their dimension, hence the bewitched baseball field.

So I’m sure we agree, a very unique plot to base a game upon.

Anyhoo, where were we? Yes, hanging from a dungeon wall, upside down. This is where it all starts. It’s your job Brad to find your way out of the dungeon, and to the edge of the world and beyond. Battle with fiersome beasts like electric eels, vampires and the evil witch.

Like I said, the controls are hard to use. It takes a while to get used to them, as you need to do a combination of about four controls to get Brad to just give someone a worm. And sometimes you need to do the most bizarre things (I won’t give anything away or I’ll spoil it), which you would never consider doing – so you end up sitting there stuck for a while thinking of what to do next. Oh right, we WEAR the suntan lotion *rolleyes*.

But I did enjoy this game. The sounds were most excellent. Brad yelling for help was superb. The graphics are really good for an oldschool classic adventure game. All the attention to detail has really paid off, it’s just stunning. Right up there at LucasArts quality

Play this game in DOSBox as you’re going to need sound.

This game is quite unique if you ask me, you play as a dolphin, not a dolphin that has a gun, not a dolphin that can fly or walk on land, just a dolphin that happens to be in the right place at the right time.

You are Ecco (yes that’s Ecco not Echo) and you lose the rest of your pod in a freak storm, you must literally travel the world and time and space to get them back. Yes I know this sounds a little cheesy but it is done in such as way as to grab you in and you get engrossed in this game.

The controls can be a little hard to get used to as you are a dolphin swimming in water, and thus you do have a small turning circle, but once you get it sorted you can be as elegant as the dolphins themselves .

This game is beautifully done, from the opening sequence to the amazing music that flows through the game almost seamlessly, if your looking for a game that isn’t just another action game, and will take you in for days if not weeks then this is the game for you.

Personally I enjoy Ecco the Dolphin 2: the Tides of Time, but that was rather large in size and I’m sure you can get it from many other places. Nether the less you should play the first in the series first, if just to get acquainted with the amazing storyline and the characters that are involved with this game if I gave out rankings to the games I reviews for this place I would give it 10/10 but alas I don’t so I’ll just give it a cookie

Story :

In the year 2077, the planet Venus was the new frontier for an overcrowded, exhausted, and nearly desperate Earth. Named for the roman goddess of love and beauty, this hostile world was no paradise. Colonists and explorers had to adapt to average temperatures of 900 degrees, a surface pressure of 94 atmospheres and a dense planetwide cloud cover made up of sulphuric acid. The real reason for mankind’s interest in Venus lay beneath the howling windstorms and acid clouds, under the planets jagged, parched and hellishly hot surface; a buried secret that held seemingly infinite promise.

Someone had come and gone before humans set foot on Venus. The planet was criss-crossed with tunnels carved out of the crust 500,000 years ago by a long vanished high technology society. The vanished aliens were a source of intense curiosity and hope for the twenty billion inhabitants of Earth. Wave after wave of explorers descended into the alien tunnels in search of advanced technology that might have been left behind by the so-called “Heechee”. Most of the artifacts discovered on Venus had no practical use and were little more than curiosities. The Heechee had cleaned out most of their useful technology – or so it seemed until a crotchety old tunnel explorer named Sylvester Macklin found a fully functional spacecraft in a sealed-off tunnel. Instead of reporting his find to the authorities, Macklin decided to try and figure out how to make the strange ship work. He climbed inside and began to fiddle with the controls.

Eventually Macklin found the right button. Rocket engines ignited and the ancient ship climbed out of the atmosphere of Venus on a plume of white fire. As soon as the ship was clear of the planet, the thrusters stopped and the ship disappeared into what is now known as Tau space.

When the ship returned to normal space, Macklin was delighted to find that he was still in Earth’s solar system. He was even more delighted to find himself docking with an immense Heechee artifact, a huge space station circling the sun between Venus and Mercury. Macklin’s ship parked itself inside a hangar filled with other ships of similar construction. Macklin left his ship to explore his sensational new find with a sense of awe and anticipation.

The bad news was that Macklin could not reset the guidance system of his ship and get it to go anywhere. He was stuck without food or water. He wrestled desperately with the controls as he became more hungry and thirsty. Towards the end Macklin knew that he wasn’t going home. He redirected his efforts toward a new goal…
Macklin decided that if he couldn’t go back, he could at least signal his discovery to humanity. His death would not be in vain. Macklin figured out how to detonate the fuel cells in his ship. The resulting flash was sighted by NASA and a mission was sent out to explore. The NASA mission arrived at the Heechee artifact and found hundreds of working faster-than-light Heechee starships, a priceless treasure that made the Heechee station mankind’s gateway to the stars. Thus the alien starship-parking garage earned its name: Gateway.

After a series of military confrontations and a narrowly averted war, the governments of the Major powers on Earth realized that Gateway was too valuable to be given you any one government. The governments agreed to establish a multinational corporation called Gateway Enterprises (often referred to as “The Corporation”) that would occupy Gateway and exploit the technology of the Heechee.

The FTL starships on Gateway are now used for a new form of high tech prospecting: human volunteers ride the alien ships in the hope that they will visit other worlds and bring back Heechee machines, tools and other potentially useful items. Because human scientists still don’t know how the ships guidance systems work, the destinations of these prospecting missions are unknown. For obvious reasons these missions carry an extraordinary degree of risk: 15% of prospector missions don’t come back and 80% return with little or nothing. The remaining 5% make the risks worthwhile, and can turn ordinary people into instant millionaires.

You won the local lottery on December 23. 2101. The prize was a one way ticket to gateway worth $238,575, including a limited partnership in Gateway Enterprises, transportation to gateway itself, a class in Heechee ship handling, and an invitation to go on the first available ship after graduation.

A week after you turned in your winning lottery ticket, you boarded an interplanetary ship travelling from Earth to Gateway.

It is now Wed, May 17, 2102, and you have been aboard Gateway for less than a day. You have been assigned living quarters and a proctor to show you around and get you settled in. Your first ship handling class starts later today.

You are about to become a gateway prospector.

There is something about Legend Entertainment adventures that I just really like. I first cut my teeth on the Spellcasting series (101,201,301) and had a whale of a time (although that was probably due to the *ahem* mature subject matter.)

Anyway, for those who have never seen a Legend adventure before I should probably start by saying that this is a text adventure (cue the sound of browsers being closed and Quake 3 being loaded up.) Yes a text adventure, you type in commands such as “Go west”, “Pick up gun” or “shoot reviewer in the face for making me read this crap”. IMHO this is the perfect medium for an adaptation of Pohl’s books, as it allows the story to be presented in such a way that you cannot help but be immersed.

The story? Well for those who didn’t take the time to read what I generously provided above (it only took me an hour to extract and type that, damnit) Gateway sees you cast in the role of a “Prospector”, one of the brave souls who pilots alien starships to unknown destinations in the hope of finding valuable artifacts to loot. A successful mission means fame and, more importantly, fortune, while an unsuccessful mission can mean anything form simple disappointment to agonizing death at the hands (hands?) of a huge alien insect. From this simple premise of exploring the unknown, the plot soon expands into a tale of a vastly powerful alien race hell-bent on the destruction of all sentient life (bit of a plot spoiler there.)

For the most part the puzzles in the game are excellent (especially the virtual reality ones), but I did find that on the whole they were a bit too easy. Which brings me to the game major failing, that fact that it only took me a few hours to complete it. Usually it takes a dumbass like me several days to get through a game like this (even with walkthrough in hand) so I can only conclude that the game’s difficulty level has been set WAY too low.

Apart from that it’s hard to find much wrong with the game; logical (easy) puzzles and a very good story add up to a very enjoyable game. AND the best thing of all is that the game is freeware, so you needn’t have any guilt about downloading it

Coming a close second to Zork for the position of Infocom’s moast famous title, THHGTTG (hehe) is the adaption of Douglas Adam’s story of the same name. You play Arthur Dent, and your home (and planet) has been destroyed by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyper space by-pass. Rescued by your friend (who, unknown to you, is an alien) you will travel to alien worlds and into the past and future to discover the true nature of your, and mankinds, existance.

Most of the plot elements and great characters from the book have been transposed into the game, and it is this that is the game major shortcoming. Fans of the series will find little challenge in the game at all, everyone else will find some of the puzzles to be HIGHLY obscure and difficult.

This is a hard thing to disregard but if you can you will find THHGTTG to be a interesting game, utterly faithful to the original story.

Not one of my favourites, but I recommend it anyway.

From The Tolkien Games Archive:

This is one of the most classic text adventures of all time; at least in Europe. The original game had a large vocabulary and very good character interaction for its time. It was probably the first time ever that such traits had been paired with graphics in any text adventure. In 1985 it was selected #1 in the magazine Sinclair User’s Top 50 Spectrum Software Classics (but it only made 42 in a later Top 100 List in Your Sinclair). The game was also released as part of The Tolkien Trilogy.

The game was first developed for the TRS-80, but when the ZX Spectrum was released, it was decided to continue development on that system, because of the Spectrum’s superior graphics and other capabilities. The first Spectrum version was called 1.1 to make it look more finished. A version 1.2 was later released with several bugs fixed.

A rumour that Tansoft created the Oric-1 versions is not true. Tansoft only distributed that version.

In the United States, it was published a few years after its original appearance as The Hobbit Software Adventure, a much extended and improved version. This version is the first part of The Tolkien Software Adventure Series. In Europe, this version was only distributed for the C64 and still under the title The Hobbit.

Across all platforms, the game sold in excess of one million copies.

The popularity of the game has inspired many parodies of it. So far, I know about The Boggit, An Everyday Tale of a Seeker of Gold, The Tebbit and Hobbit – The True Story. In addition, there is a German simplified BASIC version of the game called Der kleine Hobbit.

There are also references to The Hobbit in many other games. The Tunnel Like Hall picture is reproduced in Bored of the Rings, Gandalf and Bilbo appear in Werners Quest, there is a grave-stone with the text “R.I.P. The Hobbit” in the Commodore 64 version of The Quest for the Holy Grail and Quest for the Golden etc… has so many references that it is almost a complete parody of the game in itself.

The game was rewritten in PL/I for an MVS mainframe by an employee at IBM.

Personal Opinion: to be honest I found that the game moved a bit too fast for my liking, especialy at the beginning. THe game is based on a classic piece of literature and so I expected to be gently introduced to the plot, not thrust straight into things. The NPC’s too were slightly annoying, seemingly wandering around at random.

But what the hell, it’s a classic game and I love Tolkien, so I had to add it and you have to download it.

You know it makes sense

Movie tie-ins for the most part suck arsehole. They are little more than rushed, buggy attempts to cash in on a successful franchise. Hook is a movie tie-in, and while I wouldn’t go as far to say that the game is terrible, it is certainly not a true classic.

So why have I put it on the site you may ask, well

1) It was one of the few games that I bought for the Atari ST ( I got this and The Secret of Monkey Island at the same time, guess which game I prefer )
2) I worked damn hard to complete it, god knows why but I did. Now i’m going to push others to do the same.

If you’ve never seen the movie then you are going to be at a loss as to what is going on. You play Peter Banning who doesn’t know that he is (or was) Peter Pan. Your children have been kidnapped by the evil Captain Hook and it is up to you to journey to Nevernever land to rescue them.

My biggest probelm with Hook is that it could have been a damn good game, but it tries to follow the movie too closely. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but Hook fails badly at it. I can’t help but feel if the game had either done more to follow the movie (there were some pretty emotional bits in it… not that I cried or anything.. nu uh!) or had gone in a completely different direction with the story it could have been a decent adventure. Instead, on completing the game I was left feeling.. well, nothing. I had no desire to play it again, no feeling of accomplishment, nothing at all.

OK, i’ve panned the game enough, is there anything good i can say about it? Well, some of the earlier puzzles are quite fun to solve (especialy one involving an anchor and some rope), the game looks very nice and at least Robin Williams doesn’t have body hair to rival a cro-magnon primate (if you haven’t seen the movie then accept that what I just said was funny and move on. who cares if it make no sense to you).

It’s a shame because part of me really wants to reccomend the game, but the serious adventure gamer part of me just wants to dump on it. I think that newbies to point ‘n’ click adventures or young kids might get a kick out of it, and maybe everyone else should try it just so they can form their own opinion.

Just keep your expectations low.

When I started the game, the credits started rolling. When the credits stopped you just started playing. It isn’t before you can speak to King Edward that you know what your mission is (Getting a chest, a mirror and a shield). The story in the game is quite short and it only contains on page of text, making it very short.

You start as Sir Graham, just outside the castle and when you met King Edward, he tells you that you must go on a quest, because King Edward is dying and if you manage to complete this quest you will inherit the throne and also because your kingdom is weak and poor and if you get these 3 things, your kingdom will become strong and wealthy. You have to get a magic mirror which can tell the future, a magic shield which protects the bearer from any mortal harm and a magic treasure chest that is always filled with gold coins. There isn’t much more of a story in this game. A part the makers could have spent a lot more time on.

The graphics are like the regular Sierra game graphics at that time (like in Space Quest 1, Leisure suit Larry 1 and Police Quest 1). The graphics isn’t that bad even though they dent to interfere with the game play.

The game play was okay, with some nice puzzles, but like in so many Sierra games, it can become quite annoying. You can die and if you die and haven’t saved for a long time and die, you have to go back to the old save and do all the things you just done all over. This can be very annoying. Also there are things that try and kill you if you enter the map where they are, and there the witch is by far most annoying.She got me probably a dozen times. I also noticed that if you enter another screen and there is a tree where you entered, you will get stuck in the tree and that is quite annoying.

There isn’t much sound in the game, some music when you die and when you accomplish great achievements. There isn’t much more sound or music in it.

This game could have been far worse than this but also a lot better. There wasn’t really a story and you had to figure out most times what to do on yourself and there wasn’t a real story that helped you do it. The game play was sometimes annoying, but not at all as annoying as in games like Space Quest 1, and it was a lot easier to avoid dieing. This is a great classic though and if you do want a classic then you should get it.

2.5 out of 5

You start off with some cash, to buy supplies for your adventure to find the Lost Dutchman Mine. Looking for information on this game, I was rather surprised that there was such a place around the state of Arizona. Go figure? So where was I? Yes, you start off in town, and you have to buy supplies, such as mining equipment, weapons, food etc. You can make more money panning for gold in the rivers, being a bounty hunter etc.

Apparently there are donkeys to help you carry stuff, as you are only one mere man remember. This enables you to take more food. You can also find more food by going fishing in rivers and stuff.

There are always dangers when on a journey to find a goldmine, mark my words! Well, actually I lie, because I’ve never actually been on an adventure such as this, but I did once pan for gold in the South Island of New Zealand, and I did find some but my sister flushed it down the toilet – but that’s a whole other story. Back to the review! I was talking about threats, such as snakebites (you’re gonna need a doctor), Indians, and other people with big guns that want to kill you dead.

This is a pretty unheard of game, and you can’t really find any information on it! It rates pretty well as an adventure game, you should play it just to get it a bit more well known

Yeah! Horror stories – I love ‘em. I was weened on Lovecraft, clothed by King, taken to school by Koontz… erm… pushed over in the playground by Rice… yeaaaah.
Anyway, back to my point – I love horror stories (and before you start, yes I wear lots of black, no I am not a Goth.. so eat me!)

The Lurking Horror was Infocom’s only attempt at a game with a horror setting. The game itself is not too hard (though it does have some very obscure puzzles) and IMO has a great plot. You are a student at GUE tech (a name that will be familiar to fans of Zork) and one night you have an irrestible urge to explore the universities basement. Well, the actual story is much more interesting and well thought out, but to learn more you will have to play the game and not rely on the description of someone who has the writing skills of a mental patient.

The pace of the game works very well and the puzzles and plot blend together perfectly, the many memorable characters and twists in the game also add to the experience.

I enjoyed The Lurking Horror, it might not appeal to everyone but for a desensitised horror fanatic like me it was great.

Two um.. clawed, bleeding thumbs up!

(god I suck!)

An obscure adventure game that was at the time of its release something of an innovation because it offers digitised speech through the PC speakers (although, it has to be said that the quality isn’t that great, it sounds like something akin to Welsh*).

In Metropolis you play a security agent assigned to investigate crimes in a futuristic city. Gameplay is parser driven (you type in commands) and most crimes are solved by asking question of the city’s inhabitants.

The graphics are functional and the less said about the PC speaker speech the better (damn that hurts my ears) but neither detracts from what is a highly original and charming game.

I like it, if you have any taste then you will too.

*Marrsy apologises to the nation of Wales and acknowledges that the Welsh language is a beautiful thing – if you like your face drenched in another persons phlegm that is.

Based on the William Gibson story of the same name, Neuromancer is set in a dark, dystopian future world where high technology is valued above human life. You play Case – a hacker* and mercenary who wants to do one last big job and get his life back on track, but why have so many of your fellow hackers been disapearing lately, and what’s going on in the “Matrix”.

If you’ve ever read the book then it WILL give you a head start in the game (if you havn’t then look at the links at the bottom of the screen.) Many characters and concepts are exactly the same, others have been left out completely. Plus the actual plot itself is more of an adaption of the book than a carbon copy, so there are still suprises in store for you.

*William Gibson was the first to coin the term, although in an earlier story.

This is no standard adventure game. Yes, the same elements are there: travel from location to location acquiring the various clues and information needed to progress further, but once you get into the various “hacking* elements then you will understand why this is such a classic. A good example re the various skills that you can acquire in the game. These come in the form of computer chips that are inserted into a port in your head (no, really) and boost your abilities. The Cryptology skill chip will allow you to decode encrypted data and passwords, while “coptalk” gives you the ability to talk like a policeman – which does come in handy at one point. Each skillchip comes in different versions, so a v3.0 skill chip will be more useful than a v2.0, but obviously more expensive.

Then there is cyberspace (or the “Matrix” as it is called in the game.) At various locations there are terminals that allow you to read bulletin boards, or contact your bank and download some much-needed funds. Each of these terminals only has a limited range in cyberspace though, and you need to get your hands on a “deck” before you do anything really fun – and most likely illegal. For instance if your funds are running short then you can just hack your way into a corporations system and add your name to the employee list. Now you get a weekly paycheck for 10000 credits. However, there are obstacles that must be overcome in cyberspace. Besides having to decrypt passwords to enter systems you may encounter “ICE”, which stands for Intruder Countermeasure Electronics, these are tailor made artificial intelligence’s which act as guard dogs in the matrix. You can buy ICE breaker programs and computer viruses from dealerships in the game, but you must make sure that you have the right tools for the job or you could end up brain dead.

The game does have one big failing – the sub standard parser that is used to interrogate characters in the game. Unless you ask EXACTLY the right question then it is possible to be thrown completely off track, abandoning a line of questioning which would have been successful if you had just phrased things differently. Apart from that small thing the game is excellent, thoroughly engrossing and very enjoyable (just make sure you have a notepad ready while playing – you’ll need it.)

Ah… Space Quest in the days when you could call your character whatever you liked – before you were always “Roger Wilco”. Space Quest back in the days where the emphasis was on the tricky puzzles and not the humour. Space Quest in the days of the “typical” Sierra RPG. It comes as no surprise that Space Quest is, very much, a typical Sierra RPG of the time.

For those of you who’ve seen Police Quest or Kings Quest, you’ll know what I mean. You walk a character around the platform-style level using the arrow keys (pressing the direction you’re already going in if you want to stop). If you’re not close enough to things, you can’t interact with them. That’s the graphical element of the game. The rest of the game is all conducted in text entries you make in the form of commands to your character (e.g. Pick up rock, kill dwarf, etc.).

Some people like the old-style text-RPGs and I often find them entertaining, except for those irritating moments when there’s something you’re SURE you can do, but you’ve got to find the right way to express it first. Especially when you have a blinkered writer who only puts in the entry “Look at console” rather than “Use console, use computer, use keyboard, type, etc. etc.” assuming that everyone will intimately know the working’s of the programmer’s mind. If they don’t, hey – why are they playing the game?

During Space Quest, I found myself stuck for 10 minutes at one computer screen trying to work out what I was supposed to do. “Push button, press button, use button, look at button”. I tried “press switch, turn knob, use thing” everything that I could think of to describe the action of pushing a button. My friend suggested that since the button is labelled “Open Door”, why not type “Push open door button”. He was right. Then again, he failed dismally at using any of the vital computers because he didn’t think of “look at console”.

Space Quest, I am convinced, was play-tested only by the people who wrote the game. They tested whether it was physically possible to go from start to finish – not whether it was actually possible for someone who’d never seen the game before to complete it. Sierra also love to make their puzzles complicated, which really doesn’t help. Nowhere is there a handy syntax list of available commands, or any indication of what you’re actually supposed to be doing. You just keep on trying until you go insane, get forced to resort to a walkthrough or burst a blood vessel after dying yet again after doing the slightest thing wrong.

Did I mention the start of the game? You’re on a ship invaded by aliens (who walk around randomly and kill you on-sight, your only warning being that you hear footsteps, which doesn’t tell you from which direction) which is about to blow up (you have about 10 minutes to escape)…but you don’t know it’s about to blow up – and the only way you can get out is to wait in a room for at least half a minute for a wounded scientist to appear. You don’t know he’s coming, so what would possess you to wait in a room doing nothing for half a minute if the ship is counting down to explode?

Sadly, Space Quest did actually have all the ingredients for a really great game. Sure, the interface was bad (and they didn’t get that sorted out until Space Quest 5) and it was exceptionally complicated and difficult, but the ideas were there…and once Sierra realised that the humour was what made the game great, not the difficulty of the puzzles, they were onto a winner.

Graphics: 5/10: Typical Sierra RPG graphics of the time. Blocky, expressionless, slow-moving sprites. Difficult sometimes to tell what objects are in a room.
Sound: 3/10: Even though digital sound was around in other games, Space Quest uses the internal sound card. There’s nothing special at all about the sounds, but because it has the Space Quest theme, it gets a 3.
Gameplay: 0/10: Honestly, give me the monkey who wrote the interface and I’ll introduce him to a queue of people who want to shoot him for making the game almost unplayable.
Originality: 9/10: A very original idea, which later went on to the comic mastery which was Roger Wilco – rivalling Monkey Island.
Long-Term Interest: 1/10: After you’ve completed it, you’ll never want to go back. Most likely, unless you’re really determined, you’ll never get past the second (or even the first) section of the game.
Overall: 3/10: Typically difficult Sierra RPG which really ruins a great idea.

Note: This game was originally made in 1986, the VGA version was released in 1990.

Space Quest 2 was released as quickly as possible following the success of Space Quest 1, which has been something which has always surprised me. I never got on well with the first in the series, cursing the unresponsive text-based interface and general feeling of “what AM I supposed to be doing?”. Nevertheless, I began playing Space Quest 2 with an open mind. Which lasted for about the first 5 minutes.

The introduction is more impressive than in SQ1, and sees you (still not Roger Wilco, yet…) sweeping a hangar and, when disturbed, letting your broom fly into space (okay, the graphics of that weren’t great, but it made me laugh. What’s that, 3rd time this week?). My heart soon sank, however, when I saw that the same interface was back. The graphical-movement, text-interaction interface which Sierra never quite managed to master. The game is, in layout, just like the first – only with a different storyline and slightly more thought-out graphics.

So, I thought, I’ve got to leave the hangar. First thing I did was step onto what looks like a platform to the right…and fall off the spacecraft to my death. Dying is usually the thing I do most frequently in Sierra games, and it never fails to annoy me. Reload the game, this time making sure I step EXACTLY onto the platform. Down I go into oblivion once again. Three tries later, I’m now convinced there has to be another way. That thing on the roof looks promising…but how do I get there? Accidentally, I find out that I’m wearing magnetic boots and can walk up the wall (as if walking up the wall is the first thing you’d try). My initial hope that Sierra might at least give you an idea of what you’re supposed to do vanishes.

Still, I’m at the thing on the roof and I walk across it. Nothing. I walk back across it. Nothing. I wait on it for a few seconds. Nothing. Cursing, I consider whether or not to call up my friend (as two heads are better than one) when I suddenly end up in the next room. Sierra always value large amounts of patience, despite never giving you any indication if what you’re doing is right or wrong.

After that shaky start, I continue through the game without much of a hitch. A mysterious kidnapping from an old enemy in SQ1 ends me up on a strange planet, where I’ve managed to escape and people are looking for me. I start to remember the horrors of SQ1’s first level and, yes, here we are again. Killed if you get seen and left with no idea of where you’re supposed to go or what you’re supposed to do. Oh, by the way, there’s a concealed pit in the landing area for you to fall into and die. Why is it there? No reason…just another thing to kill you, as if the game wasn’t hard enough already.

Cursing, I eventually shut the game down and proceeded once more, this time armed with my friend at my side (who had the walkthrough, in case we got drastically stuck). After completing the game, getting utterly foxed by the interface or incredibly obscure puzzles no less than five times, I was left with the same feeling as SQ1. What a great idea – if only Sierra had put more time into getting people who’d never seen the game before to play it, and then look at where they got terminally stuck and why.

On the plus side, SQ2 has a fair amount of humour and there are moments when you have the great feeling of the game being challenging enough to make you think, but not so hard that you can’t puzzle it out at all…ever. It has its moments of that feeling far more often, but real die-hard Space Quest fans or, for that matter, RPG players who grew up on text-based games and know all about how to say “press the button” in a hundred different ways until they find the right one will probably enjoy the game a lot. If you don’t fall into the above categories, don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed.

Graphics: 6/10: Sierra sorted the problem of clarity and it’s now easier to tell what objects are. Other than that, the graphics are a bit of a let down in their blocky and blobby nature.
Sound: 3/10: Marginally better than the first, but still utilising the internal sound card when there were games out there making use of wave and midi formats. Weird.
Gameplay: 2/10: Far too many frequent moments of “what am I supposed to be doing?” and the interface just doesn’t make the game easy or rewarding to play.
Originality: 7/10: Nothing much different from the first in the series, which was disappointing, although the Space Quest idea itself still had a lot of aces up its sleeve.
Long-Term Interest: 3/10: The funny moments might make you want to play the game more than once to see them again, but since completing the game itself is such an uphill struggle you may never even get that far.
Overall: 4/10: Some improvements on the first, but a real let-down to the other games in the series.

I guess before I get started I should say i’m prejudiced against Sierra adventures, in fact I have a natural dislike of any point and click adventure games in which it is possible to die (gimme Lucasarts all the way baybee!)

With that said, Space Quest 3 isn’t too bad at all.

The game carries on from SQ 2. Having escaped in a cryo pod from Vohaul’s asteroid he is picked up by an automatic garbage ship.. and so our next adventure begins.

SQ 3 was the first in the series to use Sierra’s AGI system, which among other things added mouse control to the game. It makes playing quite a bit easier now that you dont have to rely solely on cursor keys and the parser (which is still present BTW).

This is the first Space Quest game that I enjoyed playing, and although it retains many of the previous games flaws (such as an annoying habit of killing you with little or no warning) it improves on them in many areas.

I remember I helped my sister buy a computer for the business that her and her husband ran. It was a top of the line 486 with 16mb ram, and a CD player… yes can you believe it, it had a CD player.. and this was no wimpy sx system but a dx. That system rocked. At the same time they bought that computer I got my very first CD-ROM game. Space quest 4.

This game was not only sweet on the graphics, but the thing would talk to you. It had voice I kid you not, real life voice on it. I remember playing this game for hours. It was funny, it was neat to look at, and did I mention it talked to you? Well about a month ago my granddad in-law gave me the full collection of space quest games he found in a bargain bin. First game I went to on that was space quest 4, and would I be disappointed after all these years, and after all this advancement in games? No way. The game is still very cartoon like, and still very funny. There are easy puzzles in it, there are hard puzzles in it. If you are a space quest fan you will especially like the little sequence where you travel back to space quest one and play on the old EGA graphics.

The point and click is easy to use, and the only draw back with the voice is that the narrator does get a little annoying after telling you for the tenth time that you can’t click there. The death sequences are fun to go through, and the story is up to space quest standards.

I have played all space quest games many times now and this one is still my favorite of all of them. You will not be disappointed on this. And though this download may not have the voice (don’t know if it does or not) you will still laugh at this game. And another thing that makes it great is that any one of any age can play it. Nothing crude nothing obscene just good clean fun.

I give this game a four out of five on the paully scale.

After his adventures through time in SQ4, Roger Wilco is back as a cadet in StarFleet Academy (Star Trek spoof alert eh?).

This is by far my favourite game in the series, the graphics are great, the humour is not too subtle, but not too in your face (for the most part anyway) and I loved piloting the star ship – a great idea IMO.

I do have a few gripes though, the humour can be a little groan inducing at times (Captain Quirk… riiiight) and some of the arcade sequences are tiresome.

A great adventure game IMO, but suffering from the same flaws that I associate with most Sierra adventure games.

Get it.

Trinity is truly an epic story, starkly serious and mature throughout and, it must be said, beautiful and moving in places.

You play an American tourist in London when World War 3 erupts. Through a series of events you find yourself stepping through a magical portal into a world where the real and unreal combined. You will be transported through time and space to such locations as the New Mexico desert (the plot as a whole is about nuclear weapons).

The game wont appeal to everyone, some wont understand the story and its more metaphorical parts, some will be daunted by the difficulty of the puzzles in the game, but for everyone else Trinity will be a very rewarding experience.

An adult game in the sense that it has a more mature and complicated plot than most games, but one that is worth investing your time in if you are up to it.

Zork 2 is a continuation of the story from.. yes, you guessed it, Zork 1. I should point out here that although the series should be played in order, each part is independant of the rest, so you no experience of the first 2 games is needed to play Zork 3 for example.

The story : arrying on from the first game, you are exploring a region of the underground empire ruled by the powerfull (and senile) Wizard of Frobozz. Your goal? To deftat the wizard and gain control of his powers.

Almost everything that I wrote about parser and appearance for Zork 1 applies to Zork 2. Of the game’s faults I think the review on The Adventure Collective says it best :

Zork II has long been regarded as one of the most difficult game in the Zork series. The puzzles are devious, and clues are too scarce. The game also suffers two fundamental flaws in adventure game design–the “resurrection” fallacy and the “dead-end” fallacy. The resurrection fallacy states that an adventure game must never require the player to die or fail in the game in order to gain information that is subsequently required during the replay to complete it. Many puzzles, such as the ones involving the “dehydration” cakes, the brick, and the “shrinking” candy, are examples in which the solutions must either be guessed or deduced only after the player makes an incorrect choice and fail to complete the game.

In contrast, the dead-end fallacy refers to any situation whereby the player cannot finish a game because a puzzle or an item has been missed which the player now no longer can access. This leads the player down the long path of a dead-end. The player must then restore to an older saved game to replay the key sequences. Puzzles, such as the ones involving the red sphere, the “dehydration” cakes, the “shrinking” candy, and the matches, are such examples.

Personaly I prefer the first game in the trilogy to this one, but it’s still worth the 10 seconds that it’ll take for you to download it.

Zork 3 continues on directly from where Zork 2 left off. You find yourself in a heap at the bottom of some stairs where you recieve a vision of an old man who tells you to seek him out. See it’s back in to underground empire to find the man, and learn your fate.

Zork 3 differs from the first 2 games in that it has something of an underlining story, apart from that it is very familiar. Once again the game is parser driven/text only and once again it suffers from the same annoying flaws.

A decent enough game, and a worthy addition to the series (if you’ve played the first two then you know you are going to get this – so go for it )

It’s very hard to review a text only game over 20 years after it’s creation. With todays uber-mammy-jammy 3D graphics and superduper interactive digital surround sound doodahs (no, I have no clue what I’m on about) giving an opinion on such a game with an open mind is hard to say the least, so to begin I want to quote a short review from 1983:

The Zork trilogy, which chronicles happenings in a vast realm known as the Underground Empire, is the most famous of the all-text adventure games. Fantastic creatures, magic spells, and diabolical traps abound at every turn, and each room or area is described in long paragraphs of rich detail, helping the player visualize the setting.

In the first saga, titled The Great Underground Empire, the player begins outside a strange house that holds the hidden portal to the underground. Once below, the adventurer will rarely see daylight again until he finishes Zork III. Inside the house may be found a lamp and an ancient elfin sword. Whenever the computer tells you the sword is emitting a blue light, watch out: Dangerous creatures are around.

The intermediate level Zork II: The Wizard of Frozzbozz [sic] goes ever deeper into the underground realm, and the adventurer must now deal with dragons, unicorns, and a carousel of spinning death. Randomly appearing throughout the dungeon is the Wizard of Frozzbozz himself, who casts spells that all begin with the letter F (freeze, float, fluoresce, etc.). In the third game, The Dungeon Master, which is geared for the expert level, the player is faced with very complicated riddles to solve and finally must duel with the dungeon master of the title.

Though interconnected, each part of the trilogy is solvable separately. Zork I, the simplest, is a great game for first-time adventurers. The second and third installments become progressively more difficult.

Created by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling, the Zork trilogy has set a national standard for excellence in puzzle design. It will delight the game player with many months of adventures.

Right, read that have you?
Mind sufficiently opened?
Then I shall begin.

A little bit of the games story to begin with I think. In Zork you play an adventurer/treasure hunter in the ruins of a great empire (and underground empire no less), equip yourself, find treasure (and bring it back to your trophy case), kill monsters, solve puzzles – all standard stuff nowadays really (damnit! didn’t want to say anything like that).

Ok, what you need to keep in mind is that Zork was released in 1982 – 20 years ago as I write this review. At the time the text parser was considered something of a revolution, and it does still hold up well compared to more recent IF (interactive fiction) games. The parser can handle complex strings of commands and prepositions (get the apple and the sword of pointy death). Visually the game is nothing to look at, just a scrolling screen of text – HOWEVER, this can be considered a bonus as it allows us to concentrate on the task at hand and allow your mind to form the visuals itself (hey it’s just like reading a book! … you know… book… one of those leafy paper things you retarded child).

Gameplay is mostly comprised of “use the correct object in the correct place” type puzzles, with a few needing to be solved in a certain order or at the correct time. There are one or two annoying mazes in the game and because there is no automapping feature this spoiled things a little for me, the game also has a tendency to kill you almost randomly – another of my pet hates.

Guess I should wrap this up eh? (watch and see how trite I can make this)

Well what can I say; it’s a classic, the first game of its type. PLUS, it has been released as freeware so you really have no excuse for not owning the game.

Thumbs up, highly recommended and all that jazz.

Just download it, ok?

Zork Quest 1 and 2 were part if Infocom’s interactive comicbook range (Infocomics) and neither have much to do with the Zork universe as it is told in the original games.

Zork Quest 1 revolves around you hunting for treasure in the ruins of a castle – somewhat like the original Zork except for the additions of graphics, sound and animation.

Of these new additions it is hard to say anything positive, if anything they detract from the story telling process, which is what makes Infocom adventures so good in the first place. The story itself is quite good, and it’s probably best if you see this as an Infocom adventure lite

Play this, then go and play some of the other Infocom games on the site, you’ll see what I mean.

Zork Quest 1 and 2 were part if Infocom’s interactive comicbook range (Infocomics) and neither have much to do with the Zork universe as it is told in the original games.

Zork Quest 2 carries on from where the first game left off. The land of Quendor is at last at peace, but a sorceress has stolen a powerful spellbook with which she intends to wreak havoc on the land. It is upto you and your band of brave heroes to stop her.

Of the graphics and sounds it is hard to say anything positive If anything they detract from the story telling process, which is what makes Infocom adventures so good in the first place. The story itself is quite good (much more interesting and longer than Zork Quest 1), and it’s probably best if you see this as an Infocom adventure lite

Play this, then go and play some of the other Infocom games on the site, you’ll see what I mean.

Quote: “Colorado 1801 – On the search of the legendary Cheyenne’s gold mine.”

Apparently there are over 100 different scenes in this game, I wouldn’t be at all surprised, and I got severely lost . This is an adventure game in which you journey all over looking for the Cheyenne goldmine. You can collect all kinds of strange objects and have an adventure and half trying to remember where you are.

You get to fight with some Indians, and the elements. You get cool weapons like axes, knives and guns. The game even ends with some coolies white water rafting

I didn’t get to hear any sound, but the graphics are actually really good. The game is not that old when compared to others I’ve played nonetheless I was still pleasantly surprised.

It’s your typical adventure game! Definitely give it a shot.

The story
In a nutshell -

You play Bob Morlok, AKA Captain Blood, a games designer who after an encounter with Charles Darwin (Aren’t you supposed to be dead? Let’s just say i’m living incognito at the moment!) Is transported into one of his own creations. Unfortunately in the process of this his was also cloned several times, and this triggered “gradual cellular degeneration”. Fortunately this can be slowed by turning over many of Bloods bodily functions to the Ark (your ship in the game). But to stop the process totally you must find each of the clones, or “numbers” as they are called in the game, and drain them of the fluids you need to survive. This task isn’t helped by the fact that each Number is hiding on a different planet somewhere in the galaxy, and you have no idea where to look.

—

If ever a game was to be described as “unique” then surely this is it. Captain Blood is a non-linear game that combines adventure, strategy and action elements with an interesting storyline.

As I said in the section above, your task in the game is to find 5 clones of yourself, unfortunately this is no easy task, considering how big the universe is that the game is set in. To get anywhere in the game you have to work out how to deal with the varied and interesting characters in the game – and this is where the game really shines.

Here’s a little guide to your first alien encounter in the game -

When you start you will be presented with an orbital view of a planet (the Blood universe is randomly generated so it’s impossible to tell you exactly which planet you will start at.) A quick press of the icon takes you to a view of the planet surface. Follow the on screen indicator to find a canyon somewhere on the planet – for some reason the aliens in the game all live at the end of canyons?

When you finally reach your destination the screen will pause and which ever alien inhabits that planet will appear, as will the UPCOM interface. This is a panel of icons which is used for communication in the game, each icon represents a word or concept, so for example if you were to press these icons – you would have just threatened to kill whoever you are speaking to. The UPCOM does take quite a while to get used to, with many long pauses in conversations as you try to find a certain word, but many of the icons are quite descriptive so with a little practice you’ll soon get the hang of it.

Some of these encounters can have very interesting, and amusing results. For instance if a certain character isn’t being very helpfull then you can trick him into allowing you to teleport him abord your ship, and then strand him on some remote planet, its amazing how fast he’ll open up to you =)

Now I should really mention the games bad points – i.e. the graphics and sound. If you have no intention of playing the game on other formats then you wont mind this so much, but I have tried three other versions of the game and the PC version is by far the worst – even the ZX spectrum version is superior. The game is missing many of the best features from other versions, such as the 2001-esque hyperdrive sequence and the spoken bluddian language (although to be fair this was only included in the original Atari ST version.)

Like I said if you are only playing the PC version then your not gonna miss anything, but it’s hard for me to recommend it after playing the others.

Anyway, the PC version is less than a megabyte to download so give it a try; maybe you’ll think more of it than I do.

Two points before I get cracking

1) Douglas Adams 0wnz j00, your entire family and everyone that you have ever met.

2) See point 1

(sorry for the little lapse into l33t there, but it’s true damnit!)

More famous for Hichhikers Guide to the Galaxy (see review on this site) he is also responsible for writing this overly easy but thoroughly entertaining text adventure. The whole game is based around your attempt to have your change of address acknowledged by the local authorities – I kid you not.

The style of the game compliments the title (that probably should be the other way around, but just who the hell is writing this review anyway?) and involves lots of pointless, and often humurous, form filling and tasks (the game includes a blood pressure gauge to show your level of stress. If this gets to high then you die and it’s game over). It is a perfect satirical look at the kind of petty mindedness that is inherent to local government (believe me, i’ve been there =/).

If you want something that’s different from any game that you have played before then Bureaucracy is your best bet. Die hard text adventure fanatics may find the game a little too easy, but you can’t help but warm to the unique nature of it.

A worthy addition to this site and a game that you should check out, even if it is only for half an hour.

Based on the popular (french ) comic book series of the same game, you play the super-strong Asterix – saviour of the Gauls and scourge of the Roman Empire.

Asterix owes his super strength to a special drink brewed by the tribe’s druid Getafix (get it?) who has unfortuantely developed amnesia resulting from a freak giant-friggin-rock-hits-druid-in-the-head-and-causes- him-to-lose-his-memory accident. It is up to you to seek out and gather various ingredients in the hope of finding a cure for Getafix.

The game itself is a sort of action-adventure mix… ok, more action than adventure but there is still some adventure style probelm solving involved here. The game controls are slightly ropey and not as repsonsive as i’d like them to be at times but this doesn’t detract from the game too much. One thing that did always bring a smile to my face while playing this game were the animations. From the rather amusing intro to what happens when Getafix tries out another potion – they are all very nicely done

Overall a chraming and fun game, maybe one to let the young ‘uns play.

This game is sweet! Great graphics, excellent story line and funny as! I had a lot of fun playing this game; it kept me entertained for ages. I love games where I can run around and collect things, and to have it looking really good when I play it is a bonus, especially for a game that is made a long time ago.

You are a nine-year-old boy named Willy Beamish. Willy wants to compete in the Nintari Championship (hehe, Nintari), but his parents have taken away his Nintari privileges due to his low grades in school! You start out the game in detention on the last day of school. You got a detention because you let your pet frog out and it stole the principal’s toupee. Willy’s pet frog is called Horny and it’s his best friend .

There are tons of tasks and things to do in this game that are all really fun, such as throwing plungers at people and scaring the crap out of your sisters. There are lots of other characters you have to interact with also. Basically the first task is to get out of detention early, you can go around the room collecting items etc.

The look of this game is awesome, with its classic cartoon style animations. Everything is really well drawn and it makes the game so much more fun to play. Kind of like the Lucas Arts games are because they are so well drawn. There are lots of cool animations such as people screaming etc. You can probably tell from the screenshots just how cool this game looks.

Sound is great also. The song is funny and suits the game, and the sound effects all fit really well too. Great scream sounds etc. Would be cool if there was talking, but if you’re on a 56k modem then you’re gonna be grateful when it comes to downloading this game!

I have to say play this game. It’s so much fun! Most people who play it love it, and it’s a definite must have for your adventure games collection.

My first experience with text adventures (I refuse to say “interactive fiction” damnit!) was with a game called The Boggit on the ZX Spectrum (no not Hobbit, Boggit!) It was the standard “find the sword of sharp pointy death and defeat the dragon of burning arses” fare and this was the yardstick with which I judged all text adventures from then on. I naturaly assumed that they would all be goblins and orcs and beardy senile wizards – ie slightly mundane.

A Mind Forever Voyaging has destroyed any preconceptions that I had.

Written by one of the text adventure industry’s best authors, Steve Meretsky, AMFV casts you as a sentient computer in the 21st century. In a troubled age of economic ruin and widespread decay, it is your job to enter a simulation baed around a test plan aimed towards a more properous future. The first two-thirds of the game involve exploring this simulated world and interacting with it to gather information, and features some of the most detailed and involving writing that you will ever find in a text adventure. Ultimately you will be encouraged to question not only the world around you, but also the very nature of your existance. It is not until the end of the game that you will encounter any puzzles per se, but you will be too swept up in the exploration parts and the underlining story to care.

Featuring one of the most amazing endings to a game that I have ever encountered and some truly astonishing writing, AMFV will captivate you in way that few computer games can.

A fantastic game, heartily recommended.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. Undeniably the most famous detective ever (fictional of course)! His pipe and hat are the first thing that comes to mind when I think of him. I loved the books along with many other mystery novels. There is something about that era in history where mystery fits in perfectly. The quiet dim dark misty London streets are the perfect setting for a crime, and a supercool detective to solve them.

This game was great for its time. It bought together 30 cases for a super-sleuth such as yourself to solve, with the cases being fun and offering a variety of challenges. You make your way around the city stopping in at various locations, questioning people and finding clues. I guess it’s a bit like Cluedo, you have to figure out suspects, motives and weapons etc.

The locations in London are pretty cool, and fit the theme nicely. There are the shipyards, museum, pawnbrokers and pub to name a few. When you enter the buildings, you go into a bigger room where you can do your detective work.

Then when you think you are ready to solve the crime you venture back to 221B Baker Street and take a test. But, there is much more to the game then merely wandering around solving crime. You have to get your Scotland Yard badge before you can take the test at 221B Baker Street. If you fail the test, then shame on you! You probably did not take enough time and interrogate enough people

You can encrypt clues to make the game harder, but I guess that once you have played it about 10x through encryption just won’t do you much good. But it does make the game a lot harder.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I got a bit bored as the characters and the board never really changed, but it was still a lot of fun While nowadays they could probably make a really cool version of this game, this was a classic and I would play it again. * Gives a thumbs up *