We’ve had a poll for games in our main list, but never one for Missed Classics, so this time you’ll get to decide which of them you liked best. We’ve included only Missed Classics we have completed so far in the poll.
Since you might not remember all of the Missed Classics we have covered, here’s a quick rundown. Our very first Missed Classic was Mystery House, the first in Sierra’s Hi-Res Adventure -series. Other parts of that series covered on our blog have been Wizard and the Princess and Mission: Asteroid, and Joe Pranevich has promised we’ll see the rest of them on the blog some day. In addition, we’ve also reviewed Sierra’s only all-text adventure, Softporn.
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| Where it all began |
We’ve done other pure text adventures, including the very game that gave its name to the whole genre, Adventure. We have also seen a blatant clone of the original, Level 9’s Colossal Adventure, which tried to combine Adventure with Tolkien. Level 9 continued this tale with Adventure Quest and Dungeon Adventure, both of which have already appeared on the blog. If it’s up to Ilmari, we’ll see some more handiwork of Level 9 in the future.
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| Hey, at least there's more colours than in Mystery House! |
And don’t forget our annual Christmas Classics. This series began with Merry Christmas from Melbourne House and continued with A Spell of Christmas Ice. Who knows what unknown classic we’ll find for next Christmas?
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| In a few months, this sleigh will fly again |
A somewhat different experience was The Scoop, a detective story guest reviewed by our most foul-mouthed commenter, Kenny. In addition to The Scoop, we’ve also reviewed Infocom’s detective adventure trilogy: Deadline, Witness and Suspect. And speaking of trilogies, you shouldn’t forget the three games based on Marvel comics: Questprobe Featuring the Hulk, Questprobe Featuring the Spiderman, and Questprobe Featuring the Human Torch and the Thing, which were designed to be part of a more extensive series of games.
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| Let's sit on a couch and think about it |
Many of our Missed Classic have been based on literary works, such as The Hobbit from Melbourne House, which wedded Tolkien's classic fantasy book with a chaotic system of freely roaming NPCs, and Seas of Blood, a game based on a game book and our first look on the early works of Adventure International (UK). And of course we reviewed Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood. Yes, they do make adventure games for children, also. Another game from this subgenre was the educational classic, The Islands of Beta.
Most of the Missed Classics have been text adventures and their graphics were rather crude. But we have reviewed also more technically advanced adventure games, like It Came From the Desert, which was filled with beautiful, state of the art graphics.
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| For once, a Missed Classic that looks good |
Final Results:
| Mystery House | 1 (1%) |
| Adventure | 5 (7%) |
| Merry Christmas from Melbourne House | 0 (0%) |
| The Scoop | 7 (10%) |
| Wizard and the Princess | 1 (1%) |
| Questprobe Featuring the Hulk | 1 (1%) |
| Mission: Asteroid | 0 (0%) |
| Softporn | 5 (7%) |
| Questprobe Featuring the Spiderman | 4 (6%) |
| It Came From the Desert | 22 (34%) |
| Questprobe Featuring the Human Torch and the Thing | 1 (1%) |
| Colossal Adventure | 1 (1%) |
| Adventure Quest | 0 (0%) |
| Dungeon Adventure | 0 (0%) |
| A Spell of Christmas Ice | 0 (0%) |
| Deadline | 4 (6%) |
| Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood | 2 (3%) |
| Witness | 2 (3%) |
| The Hobbit | 5 (7%) |
| Seas of Blood | 1 (1%) |
| Suspect | 1 (1%) |
| The Islands of Beta | 1 (1%) |
| Votes so far: 64 | |
| Poll closed The Winner Is... It Came From the Desert! | |
For all you Americans, happy Independence Day! (For the rest of you, Happy "Make the British Empire Smaller Day!")
ReplyDeleteThis poll is the first part of our wrap-up of 1991, covering all the Missed Classics that we did while playing game year 1991, plus half of 1990 since we hadn't quite transitioned the format yet. The idea would be that we have a similar poll for the best Missed Classic each and every game year. Should be interesting to see what everyone likes...
And it looks like someone is hinting that I need to get off my butt and finish playing Cranston Manor...
...or then we are just so convinced of your love of old games that we know you'll eventually play it!
DeleteIt is a bit early to say, but It Came From the Desert has got a bit of a head start. I guess it might be the best known of this group of games (and it definitely looks best).
Yeah, although this may be the only year that can happen. I suspect that had we of done 1989 in the new style of the blog, that would have been considered a mainline game. With more reviewers, we are hitting a lot more marginal games as main-line. (At least right now.)
DeleteYeah, I think It Came From the Desert did have the advantage of being made a few years after most of our Missed Classics.
DeleteOf course, I still love the game and am glad it's winning.
It may be time for me to consider getting my act together for a Missed Classic of the sequel!
Yes! That way you can dominate two rounds of the Missed Classic poll! :)
DeleteAntheads: It Came from the Desert II
My vote went to The Scoop, mostly because I enjoyed reading about it!
ReplyDeleteIt seems an interesting game. We should probably one day hold a competition for finding out how to solve that game, since Kenny couldn't finish it.
DeleteThe Scoop is the gift that keeps on giving. I think one of these years each of the primary reviewers of the site should give it a whack. I'm curious if we ALL tried to review the same game, how different would our reviews come out?
DeleteThat's the gift that Kenny has given us by not finishing it. :)
I was actually intrigued enough by that review to give the game a whirl myself. I also freely confess I resorted to a walkthrough to finish it.
DeleteThere is quite a lot more to that game and I expect a revisit that finishes it would make an entertaining read.
Hmm..shouldn´t Circuit´s Edge be in this list as well? It was categorized as Guest Game...
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, we probably should have added it to the poll, along with Oregon Trail, since both were kind of what we would later call Missed Classics. Oh well, it isn't possible to add anymore new options to the poll, since there's already votes. Perhaps we'll give a chance to vote them in next "year's" Missed Classic -poll.
DeleteI also love the shot of Spiderman sitting on a couch saying "I'm sitting on a couch". It always makes me laugh.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't get the poll to appear on my phone. There was just a big blank box where it was supposed to be. I had to switch to my computer to vote.
ReplyDeleteI have the same issue. I assume it's the poll widget, but not a ton that we can do about it.
DeleteJust tried this, also. I couldn't access the poll with the mobile view, but I could do it with my phone, if I chose the web view.
DeleteYeah. It's unfortunate. I just tried myself and had the same problem.
DeleteBut like Ilmari said, the "View web version" button allows you to vote. The button is near the bottom, just above "The Admins of the Adventure Gamer" section
When's the next blog post? It's been almost a week already.
ReplyDeleteIt has been a while.
DeleteUnfortunately, all our reviewers have become busy with non-adventure gamey things at the same time so posts are coming a little more slowly than usual.
Usually when one of us is going a bit slow our other reviewer/s is able to pick up the slack, but this time all our game-in-progress reviewers are time poor together.
As for when the next post's coming out, my money's on tomorrow.
Disclaimer: all money mentioned in this comment is metaphorical
Just like TBD said: it's just a row of unlucky coincidences leading to a situation where all our three active reviewers (two regular and one longer Missed Classic) are busy with RL things. We didn't want to begin another regular game or longer Missed Classic in the mean time, so we've had longer breaks now. Hopefully our readers have not minded that too much.
DeleteWe'd like to also have Emergency Fill-In Missed Classics to post, but we already burned through the two we had available. I have another one around 80% done and it will be posted soon, if we don't get a main game post.
DeleteBut as Ilmari said, we don't want to start a third simultaneous game, so the Emergency Missed Classics have to be one-and-done games. That means either we find a short game or one we don't cover as well as our usual. I'd rather it be the former than the latter.
But really, all of this is a lie. All of our reviewers are off playing Pokemon Go. Sorry.
And the results are in.
ReplyDeleteA third of us think that "It Came From The Desert" is the best so far with 22 votes and a landslide win
Our next highest is "The Scoop" with 7 votes
Then we have a bit of a logjam for third with "Adventure", "Softporn" and "The Hobbit" all getting 5.
I'm not sure if any of Softporn's votes are just from people coming to the wrong site accidentally and just hitting on the title that most sounded like what they actually wanted.
In celebration of It Came From The Desert's win, and after some prompting from Joe Pranevich, we'll be starting a Missed Classic of It Came From the Desert II sometime next month