Inspector Gadget: Cooking with Secret Sauce

Written by Joe Pranevich

Go-go gadget retro-review! The manual has been read, the score-guesses have come in, and it’s time to actually play Inspector Gadget. This might seem silly, but I am struck first just by the question of what we should expect in an adventure for children. Some might argue (not incorrectly) that pretty much all adventure games are designed for children, even if some of those children are well into their thirties or beyond. With few exceptions, adventure games since the golden age have been all-ages affairs with puzzles and stories that would not be tremendously out of place for young people. So when I say “children”, I suppose I mean the younger ones. We at the Adventure Gamer don’t specialize in games for younger kids and I am not sure that we can review them fairly. I have personally reviewed only two so far, Dragon’s Keep (1982) and Winnie the Pooh (1985), while Aperama looked at Mixed Up Fairy Tales (1992). Trickster was famously uncertain about playing these adolescent adventure games, in large part because of how difficult it is to judge them on a scale that they never really aspired to. I will do what I can to be fair and to enjoy the games for what they are trying to do, rather than what an adult thinks they should do.
All that is to say that I do not know yet how I will cover this game. I’m just going to start playing and start typing and we’ll see what happens.

Quest for Glory III: Wages of War - Fricanan Wandering

by Alex

Yeah, that’s a picture of me fighting a dinosaur on the savannah with my paladin’s sword bathed in magical blue flame.

Read that sentence again: “ . . . fighting a dinosaur on the savannah with my paladin’s sword bathed in magical blue flame.”

Isn’t that just awesome?!

Now that I’m playing Wages of War for the first time in a while for The Adventure Gamer, the game’s vibe struck me:

It’s pulp. And that is a good thing.

Missed Classic 55: Red Moon (1985) - Introduction

By Ilmari

There are CRPG gamers and adventure gamers. And they are searching for different things.

Just to tease you all

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis – Final Rating

So. It's the moment of truth. Those who've been following along probably know that I've loved playing this game. But sometimes the scores of the PISSED system don't reflect the reviewer's own enjoyment. Will that be the case here? Will this be one of the highest rated games we've seen so far? Will I disappoint some fans of the game by giving a lower score than expected? Have you, like I usually do, already scrolled to the end to check out the final score before reading the actual post? Let's find out, shall we?

Fact: I was stumped in this game for a while and I only now noticed that if I looked at the back cover I'd have known that I needed a wheel for the Atlantean robot chest puzzle.

What's Your Story? - Biscuit

Introduction and captions by Ilmari

We've received a lot of new readers this year and some of your introductory stories have had to wait rather long for their publication. Here are finally answers from our reader known as Biscuit, and no, he's probably not a character in yet another law show.

His avatar has an oriental feeling to it