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Saturday, 27 December 2014

Missed Classic 4: The Scoop - Introduction (1989)

Written by Kenny McCormick

You need 512kb of memory?! My Gods! That’s… 1/12th of the power I need for an antivirus software! Talk about inflation!

I mean, really. Missing this game is like eating everything but the chocolate parts of a Neapolitan flavored ice cream. Seriously, Trix? You have something against chocolate? Is this an Aussie thing or can I pack a couple less bars of Toblerone if I ever visit Down-Under? Wait, what was I saying again? Oh right, The Scoop… of Chocolate Ice Cream? No, wait. Let’s do this all over again.

The Scoop was published by Spinnaker Software Corporation and developed by the same company who brought you the goddamn 1st game in this blog; which is Below The Root back in 1989. That’s like… I dunno… had this game got tipsy and had slotted its floppy disk into some skanky drive; it would have a college graduate playing computers the whole day in its basement by now. Sick, yes, I know. I ain’t Trickster. Go read something politically correct and hug some puppies (or kittens if you’re not a dog person) afterwards if my writing makes you cry, okay?

So, back to why I’m lauding it as a classic must-play for the avant-garde adventurers and I have to refrain myself from making it into a list to avoid looking like David Letterman, not that I need to do that, with me being so dashingly bodice-ripper-novel-cover-worthy handsome and even when there’s a lackluster review for it. Just ONE?! Here are the accolades.

For one, it’s based on the story written by a group (not just ONE) of six mystery writers; including the insatiable Agatha Christie. The story itself was good enough to be adapted as a radio play back when there was neither Internet nor frickin’ TV.

You know you’re the insatiable one when you’re the only one named in the group.

“Oh, that’s not gonna make me bite and try this game like I’m your beeyotch, beeyotch.”, I hear you say. Well, let me tell you something, you little disrespectful punk! Get off my lawn and get this. It has adorable graphics. Sure, it’s 1989 and you are exposed to nifty adult adventure games in full EGA glory, but come on. We all know you are a nice innocent kid who prefers to play make-believe with your lightsaber than… well… playing with your lightsaber. I mean, just look at the opening screen!

Don’t you just want to reach out to pull those sweet caricatures out from the screen and cuddle them till they stifle in your man-boobs? No? What kind of monster are you?!

So, the sad thing about this game was that, shortly after adapting this game to DOS, the developers (Telarium) went under the water, thus, not being able to market this game to its full potential that might have saved them. It was an extremely commendable effort though, earning a posthumous Top Dog on Home Of The Underdog.

The gameplay was written by Jonathan Merritt who also wrote for Below The Root but was responsible for a couple of terrible Legend Of Zelda games which I refuse to link and that we shall never speak of. Ever. Anyway, he usually teams up with Dale Disharoon, Incorporated to handle the programming of various, including The Scoop, games. Lego Batman? Yeah, him totally. A book about Jesus? Him too.

So, without further ado, uninstalling Skyrim. See ya, stupid bug-ridden piece of trash that I bought at 80% sale on Steam.

Admin's note: The first seven posts of Kenny McCormick's foray into the missed classic of 'The Scoop' will be played in a marathon (one per day) between 29th December 2014 and 4th January 2015. So get your bets and final score guesses in quickly before our Holiday 'The Scoop' Marathon begins!
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18 comments:

  1. Andy_Panthro27 December 2014 at 23:30

    Agatha Christie and the London Detection Club sounds like a band.

    I was always most fond of Poirot, as far as Agatha Christie goes.

    Score: 48 (purely a guess, I have no knowledge of this game)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Evan Stephens28 December 2014 at 02:43

    40

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ilmari Jauhiainen28 December 2014 at 05:58

    I suspect this will get very high score, since it's Kenny writing about a game he loves - let's say 60.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Aperama28 December 2014 at 07:23

    I'm going to even out and go with 50. I, as the rest of the English speaking world, have never heard of this game apart from Kenny's insistence that it is amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Joe Pranevich29 December 2014 at 02:23

    I'm thinking 51. I wish I could play along, but perhaps next time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kenny McCormick29 December 2014 at 15:29

    I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I'm about to finish the game! The bad news is, the posts will get longer!

    Also, just because I love the game, it does not mean I will go easy on it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. TBD29 December 2014 at 23:25

    I'm guessing 35! Never heard of the ga\me - doesn't look great!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Fry30 December 2014 at 06:46

    Writing style is irritating. If you feel the need to defend yourself from attacks that haven't even happened yet, there's a problem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kenny McCormick30 December 2014 at 09:46

      I sure have one. Financially. Har!

      Delete
    2. Ilmari Jauhiainen2 January 2015 at 15:59

      Kenny does have a unique style that will probably arouse lot of intense emotions for and against. If you are one on the former group, you will most likely enjoy this rare view to thought cycles of this mysterious person, and if you are one of the latter group, you can always console yourself that next week we'll get posts from other authors.

      Delete
    3. Kenny McCormick6 January 2015 at 16:07

      Wait, what? Nobody dislikes Kenny... and gets away with it! Unless, y'know, you live somewhere farther than 50km from me, owns firearms, has a black belt in karate, weighs more than 200 pounds and/or bench-presses more than half of that.

      Delete
    4. TBD6 January 2015 at 21:39

      50km? 200 pounds? Make up your mind, man. Do you use Imperial or Metric measurements.

      Delete
    5. Canageek9 January 2015 at 09:42

      TBD: You see things like that often in Canada, since we use metric, but buy things from the US. Weight is metric, unless it is about a person, since our bathroom scales from the US. Temperature is metric, unless it is cooking, since of course, our ovens and cookbooks are from the USA. Speed is always in km/h, though we call it kph. Volume is always metric I think, since pints are 500 mL.

      Delete
    6. TBD9 January 2015 at 12:57

      That explains it. But I really think it's time for the USA to progress to catch up to the rest of the world.

      I also think we should all start using some kind of metric time system.

      60 seconds per minute. 60 minutes per hour. 12 hours per half day before we start counting from 1 again (that's really ridiculous). 7 days a week, an inconsistent number of days a month. 365.25 days a year. Rubbish!

      With a few simple edits we can all start using an edited and more consistent version of Star Trek's Stardate system.

      http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Stardate

      Come on scientists! Make it so!

      Delete
    7. Ilmari Jauhiainen9 January 2015 at 20:01

      Actually 60-scale of seconds and minutes is pretty good, because 60 is divisible with so many numbers: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30. Compared to that, 10 can be divided only with 2 and 5 - makes life boring for a mathematician. We should definitely change decimal system to sexagesimal system!

      Delete
  9. Canageek1 January 2015 at 16:28

    Man, I missed another contest due to the pace of blog posts and actually being out and doing things! bad Canageek! Bad!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Canageek18 January 2015 at 20:03

    In case anyone wants to play along with Kenny, you can stream this game from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/msdos_Scoop_The_1989
    You can't save, but it is an adventure game, so you shouldn't need to, right? ;)

    ReplyDelete

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of the reviewer requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game...unless they really obviously need the help...or they specifically request assistance.

If this is a game introduction post: This is your opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that the reviewer won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return.
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