Saturday Crapshoot: Maniac Mansion (TV)
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, it’s the TV show even many adventurers thought was only a joke – the Lucasarts classic that went from the smallest screen to… a slightly bigger one.
One of the many puzzles in Day of the Tentacle, the 1993 sequel to the 1987 adventure Maniac Mansion, is fixing a broken down time machine by getting enough money to replace the diamond at its core. The hero, geeky teenager Bernard, blinks at this, asking the mansion’s owner, crotchety mad scientist Dr. Fred Edison, why he needs to bother. The guy owns a mansion. Isn’t he already rich enough to just order one? Sadly, it turns out not. Not only is Dr. Fred broke, he’s never even seen a penny from a big TV show that was made about his family, due to him forgetting to return the contract.
Fixing that problem with time-travel makes for a fun comedy puzzle, but when I first solved it, I figured that was all it was. Like most non-Canadians/Americans, I had no idea that the TV show he was talking about actually existed. But did we miss out, or escape? Let’s finally find out…
The Second Guest set to creep in this Autumn
If you’re a fan of Tim Burton’s gothic imagination you might want to keep your eye on the indie scene come October. As reported at RPS, The Second Guest is set to be a five-part episodic point’n'click inspired by the quirky director’s art, developed jointly by Twice Effect and Head Up Games. Members of the development team have previously worked on The Whispered World, which means The Second Guest has potential to be a solid adventure. Read on for details and a completely pointless trailer with hilariously bad voice-over.
Saturday Crapshoot: Xena: Warrior Princess
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week though, it’s ancient history, in syndication.
“She was Xena, a mighty princess forged in the heat of 90s girl power. The pouting. The fashion. The lesbian subtext. Her cleavage will change the world…”
Yeah, I never really watched this show, nor its predecessor, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Saw a few episodes. Even… or perhaps especially as a big mythology buff, they just didn’t click. The same goes for all the similar shows from the same period – things like Sinbad, Robin Hood, Jack of All Trades, and god help us all, Cleopatra 2525. (Not heard of that one? It’s the one where a stripper gets cryogenically frozen after a botched boob-job and wakes up in a future full of killer robots.) Xena was by far the most popular of these shows though, especially when it came to spin-offs, and the inevitable games. You’d expect lots of simple hack and slash cash-grabs. You’d be right. Obviously.
But this isn’t one of those. Nope. This is Xena, adventure style!
Saturday Crapshoot: Leisure Suit Larry 2
Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, it’s the black sheep of one of adventure gaming’s most misunderstood franchises, and the weirdest cruise you’ll ever take.
Sequels are funny things. Usually, they’re relatively predictable – taking an idea that worked or struck a chord, ramping it up in the hopes that people will splash out more cash for a second helping, and putting a ’2′ on the end. Sometimes though, they just go crazy. The first Leisure Suit Larry was an adventure about a software salesman trying to lose his virginity. Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking For Love (In Several Wrong Places) ends with him fighting a supervillain in a volcano lair. Yes, really.
Saturday Crapshoot: Conspiracies
Once again, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. Today, he dons his fedora to meet the Greek detective that even other sleuths call… well… Nick Delios, probably. Because that’s his name.
Every great detective needs a gimmick. Nero Wolfe eats his weight in food on a daily basis. Adrian Monk can’t shake hands, or even get near milk. Hercule Poirot’s leetle grey cells make him the most punchable of all Belgians. Harry Dresden is the only crimesolving wizard in the phone book. If you don’t have a gimmick, you don’t have a career in sleuthing. It’s that simple.
Prepare to meet Nick Delios: Crazy Hobo PI of THE FUTURE!
A New Beginning preview
As all right-thinking people know, there are two reasons not to worry about the environment. If the babbling of fools is correct, the world will end in 2012 anyway. If not, television has long since taught us that if things get too bad, Gaia, spirit of the Earth, will send five magic rings to five special young people, and Captain Planet will clear up our mess. It wouldn’t lie about something like that, right?
There is of course a third possibility. Maybe nothing will change. Maybe the world will continue its spiral into chaos and decay, rendering the planet a barren wasteland where the surface can no longer support life and every day is a miserable existence of swallowing down food pills and waiting for a solar flare to scythe through the atmosphere and finally put us all out of our misery. Maybe in those dark days, only the sudden invention of time travel will offer some form of escape, allowing representatives of humanity to jump back and seek help from the one man who could have set it all right. That man is named Bent Svennson, and if you’re wondering how many cheap jokes about that are coming: just one, promise.
Saturday Crapshoot: Pepper’s Adventures In Time
Sometimes, it’s fun to play the villain. We all know this. But there are limits. We live in a civilised civilisation, and as such, not everything can be permitted. There are scoundrels whose mere existence is an affront to the one true Queen, she who all right-thinking Ladies and Gentlemen call Majesty. There are sins that should never be played out, particularly not in an ‘edutainment’ game designed to inform and shape other fragile minds. Some things, some people, are just… beyond inappropriate.
This is the story of one such wretch, and her most deserved punishment.
These are the crimes of Pepper Pumpernickel, the girl who stole America.
Back to the Future: Episode One review
Back to the Future is about a young Michael J Fox accidentally going back in time to 1955 using a time-travelling DeLorean. While there, he threatens his own existence by altering history, and in trying to save himself gains a greater understanding of his parents, saves his friend Doc Brown from Libyan terrorists, and builds himself a better future. It still holds up today as a wonderfully written adventure film, filled with exciting set-pieces, funny dialogue and plenty of heart.
Near the start of this first chapter of the episodic Back to the Future: The Game, the DeLorean returns to Marty containing only Doc Brown’s dog Einstein, and a shoe. To find out what time period the car has come from, Marty Uses Shoe on Dog, and Einstein leads him to a little old lady’s house. Marty solves the mystery by having a chat, turning a radiator on, and hunting through some old newspapers.
Crap Shoot: The Last Express
Richard Cobbett boards the Orient Express as it heads for straight for murder, action, suspense, and hopefully as far away from that snotty little Belgian detective as possible.
Please, get your wallet. Get your purse. Prepare to search behind the back of your sofa. This week, I’m not simply going to talk about an obscure game – I’m going to do everything I can to sell it to you. As of this week, The Last Express costs $5.99 from GOG. If you’ve never played it before, you should buy it. Six dollars. Less than four quid. If you went to a pub, you’d pay that much for a pint of cheap booze, bartender spit and little bits of unidentifiable grit. If you spend it here, you’ll get to play one of the most unique adventure games ever made, and see that in the right hands, absolutely anything – even walking up and down a train corridor for several hours – can be a captivating, unforgettable experience.
Crap Shoot: Granny’s Garden
Richard Cobbett goes back to school to face an old fear. The Witch has returned, and she wants your soul. Or to see if you can handle basic literacy puzzles for six-year olds. One of the two.
Hers is the face that haunted a thousand nightmares. Hers is the laugh that chilled the blood of almost every child during the decade that taste forgot. There was no running from it. There was no hiding. If you were at school in the 80s, facing her was as close to a rite of passage as figuring out what the older kids were actually doing behind the bikesheds. She was Freddy. She was Jason. She was the blood-soaked murderer in your older siblings’ carefully hidden videos. And at some point, your teachers would nervously plug in your school’s single BBC Micro computer and make you dance for her amusement.
She was… The Witch. And if this blocky cyan face means nothing to you, know that across England, a generation of gamers is even now crawling back into their skins after seeing it. Oh yes…
Crap Shoot: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
Richard Cobbett takes a break from bad adventure games in favour of a trip to the bar where everyone knows your name… because they’re telepaths, aliens, and crazy people from the future.
Finding a nice surprise in a bargain bin is always a mixed experience. Good, for the obvious reason: hurrah! This is terrific! Bad, because it ended up there at all. If the game doesn’t suck, that only leaves one option: it just didn’t sell. In the case of Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, the jewel case was beaten up, cracked, and came from a flea market somewhere in America. It was the game equivalent of the bedraggled cat at the back of the animal rescue shelter, with the big hopeful eyes, moulting fur, and cage right next to the room where they keep the nighty-night needles. I picked it up mostly out of sympathy, and I actually got it for free, because the guy on the stall couldn’t be bothered to make change for a note.
It deserved better than that. After carefully disinfecting the CD case and discarding it in the hope of stopping the faint but lingering smell of second-hand underpants and unidentifable juices getting into the sofa, I put the disc into my PC with no idea of what to expect. I’d never heard of the books it’s based on. I didn’t know what type of game it was. It didn’t have even have a cardboard box with some hints (which would have both made it sound cool, and immediately caught my attention with the words “Written by Josh Mandel” – one of Sierra’s most underrated writers/designers). It could have been anything.
It turned out to be the second-best thing I ever bought from a man who smelled of rotten eggs and liked noisily snacking on long, sloppily scooped up strings of his own glistening snot between sales.
Crap Shoot: Les Manley: Lost in LA
Richard Cobbett discovers that some games are so bad, even changing absolutely everything for the sequel can’t help. Yes, it’s Les Manley 2. And it’s even worse than the first one… Note: if you’re in an office or public place with a zero-tolerance approach to pixellated semi-naked ladies, you’re probably best emailing a link to yourself and reading this at home. In private.
As we saw last time, Les Manley in Search for THE KING was a truly terrible adventure that didn’t understand the importance of story, personality, comedy, or puzzles that could be solved without psychic powers or a hint book. Nevertheless, it did well enough to get a sequel barely a year later… or at least, developer Accolade had high enough hopes for it doing well to green-light one. Of course, this left it with something of a serious problem. Normally, a sequel is the game that takes the good bits of the original and makes the most of them. Since Search for THE KING had no good bits, Lost in LA was in trouble. Its solution? Grab a camera, hire some bikini girls, and hope like hell that sexism would sell.
What could possibly go wrong?
Crap Shoot: Les Manley: Search For THE KING
Richard Cobbett polishes up his psychic powers with a game that promised much, and definitely delivered Les. Meet Leisure Suit Larry’s geekier, harder to love, far-more-punchable cousin.
Ah, psychic powers. In reality, nothing but the fevered tools of charlatans and the easily convinced. In adventure games of the 80s and early 90s, a requirement on a par with a computer to play them on, and eyes to see the screen. It would be unfair… a little unfair… to say that adventure games of this era tended to be, uh, ‘a bit obscure’ about their puzzles and solutions in the name of selling hint-books and premium-rate tips lines, but not that the companies involved were shy about turning down the extra revenue such things provided. More than a few times, you’d be politely reminded that you could take advantage whenever you died, or would get a card right in the box with all the details you needed.
Of course, you wouldn’t ever dream of using such a thing… or at least, not admitting to it when brushing off how obvious it was to try and wear a dog so that it would be magically transformed into a pair of Hush Puppies to sneak past a guard. (Yes, that’s a real puzzle, from Simon the Sorcerer). They were for other people. Pathetic people. Weak people. Failures, in adventure games, as in life. Oh yes.
Which brings us to Les Manley. You didn’t need to be psychic to win this sadistic little game, but by god, it’d have helped. It fought dirty, and if you complained, it gave you the finger. Let’s play, shall we?
Crap Shoot: Hopkins FBI
Richard Cobbett is a cop on the edge… of insanity! The biggest crime Hopkins FBI should stamp down on is its own miserable existence. Anyone got a spare noose?
Hopkins FBI doesn’t make me cross, it makes me sad. No, wait. Scratch that. Reverse it. I hate this game. I hate it. When I think of games that have made me genuinely angry, Hopkins FBI may not top the list, but its name is still circled, underlined twice, and with little daggers sketched around the letters. It’s so bad, I fire it up about once a year just to remind myself how much I hate it.
How much do I hate it? I hate it a lot. It’s one of the most cack-handed, misogynistic, mean-spirited adventure games I’ve ever played, not to mention one of the stupidest. It’s a game that doesn’t seem to have been designed so much as congealed. If it has one redeeming feature, it’s that… no. No, forget fair and balanced. The only reason I haven’t microwaved the disc is that I don’t want the karmic fart-cloud of its ghost hanging around my kitchen for the rest of time. I cook food in there.
Warning: This week’s Crap Shoot contains uncensored nudity and some pretty graphic violence. For real this time, not like when I joked about it with Leather Goddesses of Phobos. It probably won’t shock you, but it might ‘surprise’ your parents/boss/colleagues/gimp/hamster if they see it over your shoulder. Warning over. Read on like you were going to anyway.
Crap Shoot: Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Richard Cobbett spends a quiet evening investigating an army of psychopathic ladies who want more than just your planet. People of Earth: Phobos needs talcum powder!
Let’s be honest, the main reason that anyone remembers Leather Goddesses of Phobos is because it’s called Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Here’s a list of game names from 1986. Alex Higgins’ World Snooker. Chessmaster 2000. Karateka. Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter. Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Tank Wars. Be honest. Which of those would have jumped out at you on a games shelf back then? It definitely wouldn’t have hurt that it was written by Infocom, then-Princes of the text adventure genre, or was written by the main guy behind both the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy game (which was awful, incidentally, no matter how rose-tinted your glasses) and A Mind Forever Voyaging (which was utterly brilliant, and we’ll be looking at in this column at some point). This was pre-Leisure Suit Larry too, when the mere idea of a game including (*whisper*) sex seemed daring and new. For many people, the Leather Goddesses of Phobos would be their first time… at least with a computer.
PLEASE NOTE: You must be 18 or over to read this week’s Crap Shoot. Don’t you dare read on if you’re not! Your young mind is not ready for the thrilling sexy adventures that await you!
