Myst – Won!

Written by Vetinari

We still have a final age to go, but will there be any other surprises or will this truly be the end of the game?

Yes, it will, you can see it right there in the title of the post.

Channelwood is an interesting locale, different from the other ages in that it is not an island, but instead something more akin to a swamp, or a mangrove forest, or something like that.

Discussion Point - Best Sequels

 Written by The TAG Team

No, this movie is NOT better than the original.  But the image was a good match for this blog post.

We all have our favorite games, out favorite designers, and favorite series.  But, sometimes they don't start out strong.  Which adventure game sequel came out that was remarkably better than the original?

Tough, right?  Usually they mess things up in sequels.  In movies, for example: Back to the Future 2.  But sometimes they get it right, taking something good and rolling with it.  For example, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit took the idea of role-reversal and make the game so much better by letting you be the cop instead.

Thoughts?

Missed Classic Spreadsheet, Rarities and Unplayables

Written by the TAG Team

We need more games to play.

Since we included a spreadsheet for readers to put in your suggestions for missed classics, we've gotten a rather modest 20 titles over the years, not including games that have been covered and removed, like Zombi or The Hound of Shadow; It's been a great resource, but recent events have suggested it could be a lot better.

There's not really a place for people to discuss these, and to some of us it seemed better that this be in a central place than randomly thrown about other entries. To this end we will occasionally asking for help, like Ilmari asking for the Peruvian version of Emanuelle (It completely changes everything!) or Morpheus asking if anyone knows how to get an Oric game running. (He's learning that Franscois!)

We've also made a few adjustments to the spreadsheet format, which ties into another ask. We ask that you be careful with links to where we can find the game. Generally speaking, we don't care if it's outright free, but abandonware is tricky. If you can't find it by searching for it on most search engines or if it's tricky to find on a search engine, add it, because we'll probably be asking about that anyway. We don't need, say, links to EA games or some major company even if they don't sell it. We can find them easily and when the Franchise Wars start up, we don't need to be among the first marked for an EA death squad.

But more importantly, we're adding two categories, time added, and sub-genre. You don't need to get into too much detail in the first, just month and year, so we know how long something's been there, we also ask that in the future people don't add their names, just to ensure we aren't biased by certain suggestions.

The second, sub-genre is where the ask comes in. Here, we'd like to know about graphic adventures that we've missed. 1992 and earlier. Not text adventures with pictures, graphic adventures, as it can be hard to find information on harder to find games. It's not like text adventures or VNs, which have their own dedicated sites, or ADV (Japanese-style adventures) which you can easily figure out about. Oddities are also appreciated.

This is also a great place for you to discover new games yourself, and if you feel up to the challenge, play a little and try writing a post of your own for the blog.  Some of us enjoy reading about the conquests of others, and some like sharing the details themselves.  

This post is going to be linked in the sidebar of the page, where the spreadsheet link previously was.  It'll be an easy resource to find and discuss these overlooked and truly Missed Classics.

Myst – Our Ancestors

Written by Vetinari

In this installment of the Adventurers' Guild Myst playthrough, we will be visiting our third age, the Stoneship age.

Nice flyover of the island as usual.

We find ourselves at the aft of the sailing ship, which is correlated with the location of the book on Myst island. Strangely enough, however, the room where the book was is now completely submerged by seawater.

Veil of Darkness - A Weight Lifted (Won! and Final Rating)

Written by Zenic Reverie

Hindsight is often referred to as 20/20, but looking back on the last hurdle I needed to cross to complete Veil of Darkness has soured the experience just a touch because as far as can I tell there's no indication I needed to do this.

Thanks to Agrivar for the assist, I instantly realized this is a hole and not the tree's shadow.

Agrivar indicated it was indeed an item I hadn't used, and I should look to use it where I found it. I thought maybe I'd lasso the plane and pull a section out of the swamp. As soon as I loaded the screen though, I looked at this tree and tied the rope. The main problem I have with this type of solution to a puzzle is there's no way to examine the environment to know that shadow was a hole. Sure, I can't walk over it, but there's plenty of other fiddly bits of terrain that block progress that I didn't think much about not being able to walk under a tree. If there was an NPC that mentioned holes in the swamp, then I missed it, but as dialog is the main way the game gives descriptions I would have hoped for some hint about them or the mushrooms growing below.

Myst - Invisible Cities

Written by Vetinari

So, for this post we are going to explore the spaceship age.

Actually the real name is Selenitic age, you know.

As already seen in the Mechanical age, we arrive in a place which is an exact correspondence of the one that we have just left (in this case the interior of the spaceship) but our surroundings are completely different.

Stepping out on a brand new world.

I expected this place to be a volcanic wasteland, based on Atrus's journal description of it, but instead we are just on another island, with some geothermal vents as the only feature giving away the idea of underground volcanic activity.

Pepper's Adventures in Time – What's the Worst That Could Happen?

Written by Will Moczarski

When we left Pepper last time she was just getting ready to mosey around the small settlement of Philadelphia in the year of 1764. There’s a man called poor Richard (after Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack) clapped into wooden stocks who tells me all about Benjamin Franklin’s strange transformation of late. The once wise man has now turned towards foolishness and frivolity, and Richard wonders why. Poor Richard has a very dry mouth and asks Pepper for her help. Naturally, I pick up a dipper conveniently placed nearby, fill it up, and help Richard to some water. I then free him from his conundrum and Richard is very thankful, although he suspiciously states that he must now hurry back to “B--, er, back to my family.” Does he mean Britain? Ben? Did I help the wrong guy?

We're talking about Boston, right?

Because the game is targeted at kids the inventory is very streamlined. Pepper decides that she has no use for the dipper anymore and puts it right back. A soldier then comes along and accuses me of helping a criminal to flee. Pepper tells the man to "chill out" but he won’t have any of it. He cockily informs me that he’s the King’s own watchman and proceeds to grab Pepper and handles her quite violently, especially considering she’s a child. Our trusty dog Lockjaw decides to get in there and bites the watchman but in the end we both end up trapped inside a wooden building. The watchman is walking to and fro outside and we can’t do anything without him telling us to stop, prompting humorous and snide remarks from Pepper. 

Myst – The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Written by Vetinari

Last time we were finally ready, after solving most if not all of the puzzles on Myst island, to embark on a journey to a different age.

I've decided to tackle the four tomes in the order that we discovered it, so the first one is the book which was hidden inside the cogwheels.

The flyover animation of the island is very nice.

After the usual sound effect of entering a new book (the same as when we load the game, incidentally) we find ourselves in a very similar environment to what we left, i.e. some opened cogwheels, but with the book gone.

Cosmic Spacehead - Dreadful Warnings

Written by Morpheus Kitami

Because of the password system, I have to start from scratch until the game decides I deserve a code. So I pick up everything I can in the starting area, joke book, 1 gold coin and a teleport key. As I go through one of the platformer screens, I realize that Mr. Spacehead looks like the Kool-aid Man's shifty cousin, who can get you stuff if you don't ask too many questions.

This is supposed to be a pun on "lucky day", but I kept mentally thinking it as "luke e day".

Cape Carnival. That there's a slot machine. 99.9% payout, it says. I would suspect that Cosmic is the 0.1%, but it turns out he gets 50 lino dollars from it. I feel as though, in giving me no difficulty whatsoever in getting more money, it has cheated us both. I have done nothing for what I have, and it has no reason to be played. Nearby, there's both an advertisement for bumper cars, and an all expenses paid trip to a car factory. "That's the trip of a lifetime!"

Unfortunately, to get the trip to Detroitica, Cosmic needs a driver's license, because he is probably 5, but the attendant gives him a balloon as a consolation. I try to go to the left, but that's the bumper car race and I can't go in without speaking to him. I accidentally end up talking to him again, and in trying to get out of the dialog, I press escape. This quits the game.

Discussion Point: How Would You Change The Game?

By The TAG Team

Here’s a tough game of “what-if”:

We’ve all played games at times and said, “if only they had done this instead of that.”  Or maybe just thinking of a new twist on something to breathe more life into it.

For example:  What if they remade Police Quest 1, but from the point of view of Jesse Bains?  Like, perhaps, an adventure game version of Grand Theft Auto.  There’s probably not too many adventure games that make you sell drugs to win, right?

Or, how about the other direction?  After all, they already made a card game version of The Oregon Trail, how about a tabletop role-playing game of The Secret of Monkey Island?  A roll of the dice determines how many bananas you’ll need to make a monkey wrench...

Yeah, this is a tough one -- but we’re sure you have some ideas.

Myst – The Path to the Spiders' Nests

Written by Vetinari

I am in great difficulty when I have to write something about Myst for this blog, because, let's be honest, nothing much actually happens.

It would be much easier if I could, I don't know, just post some random screenshot and say "Here's another gorgeous view from this game".

Here's another gorgeous view from this game.

Anyway, we had to finish exploring the two buildings which we haven't entered yet, that is the power supply substation and the wood cabin and its environs.

Veil of Darkness - Dying a Charmed Death (Request for Assistance)

Written by Zenic Reverie

I'll start by admitting defeat. I'm stuck. I've been doing my best to avoid it thus far by scouring every place for items or clues, even replaying the game to make careful notes of words in dialogue before I learned to ask Seth for a light. I'll admit I've been a bit lax on doing so since then, and it might finally be time to pay the piper for that mistake. I thought the game would naturally give me all the pieces by the end. This game though seems keen on making me work for it. I'm facing Kairn, surely on the cusp of victory, and yet missing at least one vital step.

Maybe I need to blind myself.

I had thought avoiding the vampire's charms would require some item, and yet I've so far tried everything I have available. I hoped it was as easy as wearing the garlic necklace, but that must provide a different kind of protection. I reviewed the prophecy:

Myst – Under the Jaguar Sun

 Written by Vetinari

Welcome back to Myst.

Interestingly, when loading a saved game, Myst presents you with the image of an open book with the picture taken from whatever world you saved your game into, which is a nice thematic consonance with the fact that you are effectively being transported in the world described inside that book. The entrance in the new world is completed with a sinister sound effect which represents you getting whisked inside the world represented inside the book pages.

Problem is, the first time that I loaded my game, I was presented with the above picture, and I had no idea what I was looking at, and where I would end up when entering this book.

Problem is, I am an idiot.

Game 144: Cosmic Crusade (1993)

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

 Okay, I'm glad to have Urotsukidoji and Loremaster in the rearview mirror, its time to play some normal, western graphic adventures which don't involve spending hours at a school for no reason. Cosmic Crusade, never heard of this one, and I've been trawling abandonware websites for nearly two decades. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say...

In his adventures, Linus leaves Linoleum (using a fake ID for Larry Flynt to compete in a bumper car contest), quashes a robot revolution in Detroitica and gets gas from an abandoned space station.

Missed Classic: The Paradise Threat – WON! (with Final Rating)

 

Written by Will Moczarski

Did I say I was stuck? Well, that didn’t last long. Just a short recap to get you up to speed: My protagonist had reached a room with a sleeping dragon who ate me when I woke him up by attempting to talk to him, climb him, or attack him. I found out rather by coincidence that I was able to plant the seeds from the beginning once more here, causing a giant plant to grow right away. However, when I tried to “climb plant”, the dragon woke up and ate me. When I tried again...it worked! What had I done wrong?

This is how it's done.

It was a typo! In my transcript I could see that I typed in “climb plano” which caused the parser to understand “climb [wrong word]”, assuming I’d want to climb the dragon. In other words, it is vital to type “climb plant” and only that will work. Be very wary of typos, kids, or the dragon will eat you. It’s an educational game!

Myst - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Written by Vetinari

Previously on The Adventurer's Guild, we were on a dock on a Myst-erious island, and we were preparing to explore our surroundings.

Right at our side when we start, there is a submerged ship that is at the moment unaccessible.

A pirate I was meant to be...

At the end of the dock we find a lever, which we can pull without any apparent effect. On a nearby hill there is a big cogwheel, near which another lever is present. Throwing this also has no effect.

The background music turns ominous here, for no apparent reason...

Continuing towards the interior of this small island, we find some stairs that lead us higher on a gently sloping hill. Right before we arrive at the first building (a sort of circular neo-classical rotunda) we find a letter laying on the grass.

Missed Classic: Sherwood Forest - Won! (with Final Rating)

Written by Michael

So, when we last spent time together, I was doing my best imitation of an angel at Christmas.  So, I’m in a tree, with an ax.  I try the obvious.  CHOP TREE.  The game thinks, just maybe, that might not be the best plan while I’m still in it.

Huh.  Guess you’re right, game.

Missed Classic 133: The Paradise Threat (1982) – Introduction

 

Written by Will Moczarski

We’re back with our odd little company from Chapel Hill, NC, still going by the name of Med Systems in 1982. Although the company’s final adventure game was Asylum II they went on to release the three final games by the unusual and quirky game designer Jyym Pearson. If you’re interested in Pearson’s always surprising work you may want to read my coverage of his first six adventure games for this blog: 1 2 3 4 5 6. With Pearson’s two final games, the Med Systems marathon comes to a close, and I’m excited to have simultaneous coverage with Jason Dyer from over at Renga in Blue once again! Be sure to read his take on The Paradise Threat as well!

Once again, you say? Yes, we already teamed up for Lucifer’s Realm, you see, and The Paradise Threat is not only Jyym Pearson’s next game but a direct sequel to it! A quick reminder: In Lucifer’s Realm, our protagonist died right at the beginning of the game only to be sent to hell where Satan begged him to help him get rid of Adolf Hitler who had plans to overthrow the place. Because of our good deeds towards Satan (!) we are starting the next game floating up to paradise where a group of valiant men now needs our help way up there because Adolf Eichmann, one of Hitler’s most notorious followers, is causing trouble with the infernal Deecula Statue. 

Homeworld - Endgame Escape (Won!)

By Reiko

We're in the home stretch, having used the TransWarp technology to rendezvous with the Artifact en route to the Assassin homeworld. I need to stop the terrorists and escape before we arrive there.

When I exit the Heechee ship, I find myself back in one of the blue-metal Heechee corridors of the Artifact. A bulkhead door is closed in front of me, but there's a button next to it, which I press, opening the door. Proceeding down the corridor, I quickly find myself back in the familiar cargo bay area from earlier, with Diana waving at me from the storage area ahead.

Diana and I are both happy to see each other.

I climb up the ladder and talk to her. She's so excited but also puzzled to see me.

Missed Classic: Sherwood Forest - Cats Always Land on Their Feet

Written by Michael

This will be a shorter post than you usually get from me.  I was too busy hitting on the ladies at a hotel bar.

Sorry for the absence! I stepped aside to allow a couple of other games to finish up, and some important ones to start. But I haven't forgotten my beatnik hero trying to win the hand of the beautiful Maid Marion.

When we last left, I had just picked up my snazzy new suit from the tailors.  Will it do the job and get me past the bouncer at the river crossing?

Game 143: Myst (1993) - Introduction

 Written by Vetinari

Myst.

I hate Myst.

Missed Classic: Daughter of Serpents – WON! (plus alternate paths and Final Rating)

Written by Vetinari

We have left our heroes on the verge of rushing in towards the temple. We take the cultist by surprise, and Cameron tells me to take the scroll from the high priestess and burn it, which I do.

Burn baby burn.

This has a pretty dramatic effect on the priestess, since she immediately turns first into a serpentwoman, and then directly into ashes.

Missed Classic: Loremaster - Won! (And Final Rating)

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Up until this point, I've been playing far ahead of the CRPGAddict. I started very early in May, and it took a little while before he started up. You know character creation? Yeah, he figured out how to get that working. create [charname] (case sensitive, so daniel is daniel but Teal'c is Teal'c) [password] [class]. Characters are visually distinguished by might and magic. (actually, everything, but I didn't care enough to check it that thoroughly)

LanHawk, who I don't think actually posts here but is probably reading, sent me a textfile from a pirate release of the game, which is undoubtedly the closest thing to a manual we'll ever get. It was mostly useless, except for the most important aspect of all. I can move with the keyboard now, it's the numpad, it's a numlock issue. Even better, I can go diagonally.

Homeworld - Purloined Personality

Written by Reiko

Last time we had a number of lengthy conversations with Raphide and Astatine and then helped Raphide put Astatine out of his misery. Unfortunately, Raphide didn't know anything useful about the TransWarp drive theories that I need in order to intercept the Assassins before they destroy Earth.

First I return to Convergence to see if he has any other leads. He's back to hiding in his hood but speaks to me readily enough. The dialogue choices here are amusingly varied, from straightforwardly telling him what happened with Raphide, to gossiping about Raphide's mistakes, to accusing him about his own inaction, to playing it cool.

Some of these options are meaner than others.

I don't want to rat out Raphide to him, really, but I tell him about the dead end. Convergence's response is curious, though: "Did you say the [sic] Fogram had Solifluction STILLED? That's not the same thing as murder. We might still have a chance!"

Missed Classic: Daughter of Serpents – Murder in Mesopotamia

Written by Vetinari

“Mesopotamia” means “between two rivers”, and look! Alexandria is between two branches of the Nile, so... okay, I just didn't know what title to choose.

So, last time the god of knowledge gave me a gift, and somehow I don't remember anything at all after that. This strikes me as counter-productive somehow.

Anyway, we were going to examine the warehouse of Elytis Import Export Company, where three months ago a poor sod named Yusuf Al Raschid was found dead and tied to a chair, most probably murdered.

Missed Classic: Loremaster - No Prayer for the Dying

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

I need to get money. That's the clear thought I have starting up this game with a completely new world and save. Firstly and oddly, I'm buying the leather armor I have just a bit too little money for last time, it's a better choice as of yet. Since I should try to be a "proper" player, I guess I won't try to rob the church. Playing at being Henry VIII isn't my best choice anyway.

And someone may or may not smite you for it.

While trying to check my stats again, I realize that the command "help history" won't help me with my command history, but tells me what's going on. It's nothing we didn't already know. The King Yelraf (Farley backwards, guess there's someone with that name on this game's team) and Queen Tei live in the Kingdom of Peace and Tranquility, the kingdom to the north has been conquered by the evil Gaiasbane. We need your help LOREMASTER! (Player is not actually said to be Loremaster)

Game 137: Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. III - Introduction (1993)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Here we are again, for the third time! Video game history is filled with low-effort sequels, followup games built with the same engine for a fraction of the cost. Even the prestige studios got into the game. For all that the Ultima series was famous for building a new engine for every release, that didn’t stop them from releasing (or at least distributing) Ultima VII Part 2, Savage Frontier, Martian Dreams, or Ultima Underworld 2. Sierra, Infocom, and LucasArts were all made successful by building great engines and then making as many games for those engines as possible. This is pretty normal in adventure game history.

For Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, ICOM’s strategy can be best summarized by the ad blurb that they put on the box:

“What they said about Sherlock II, you'll say about Sherlock III."

This might not seem significant, until you realize that they used the exact same blurb on the second game, with just the Roman numerals decremented by one. 

In a way, this is completely expected: at some level, all three games in Consulting Detective are (quite literally) the same game. The 1981 tabletop game that ICOM licensed featured 10 cases to solve, three of which have been adapted each in the first and second games, and three more finally in this third game. (More on that “missing” adventure in a bit.) We’re treating these games like sequels, but even the box clearly says that they are merely “volumes” in the same game. As such, ICOM saved money by re-using many assets: the manual, game map, menus, help videos, and overall interface are identical between the three volumes. But unlike many low-effort sequels, they still needed to write, direct, film, and edit all of the new videos that made up the cases. A FMV game will be made or broken based on the quality of the acting and videography. We’ll have to see how this one fares.

Having said all of that, I must admit that it is all only partly true. Why did I just lie to you? Read on for more.

Missed Classic: Sherwood Forest - An Outlaw for an In-law

Written by Michael

So, the premise of this game is really quite original.  Robin Hood seems to have a little amnesia, forgetting who he is, and everyone seems to have forgotten what Robin Hood looks like in normal street clothes.  So, we need to help him convince others (and probably himself) that he is who the game says he is.  Then, we need to get his fiancée, Maid Marion, to accept it as well so their wedding can go on as planned.

Last time, we started to explore a little, finding even an owl that looks at him and questions, “Who?”

So let’s explore some more.

Game 136: Pepper’s Adventures in Time (1993) – Introduction

By Will Moczarski

It’s time for a Sierra game! Pepper’s Adventures in Time was an entry in the short-lived (1991-93) Sierra Discovery Series that Jimmy Maher regards to be „[a]mong the most rewarding hidden gems in Sierra’s voluminous catalog“. You can read about several of the previous games from the series on our blog as many of them are adventure games or at least games with features reminiscent of adventure games, meaning our authors’ appreciation sometimes surpassed the actual PISSED rating. Reiko awarded Castle of Dr. Brain (1991) 46 points but EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus (1991), being the first proper adventure game in the series, scored an impressive 60 points. Not bad for a game targeted at children! Roberta Williams’ Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1991) is so far a future missed classic whereas Mixed Up Fairy Tales (also 1991) was reviewed by Aperama, scoring an equally impressive 54 points. Then there’s Quarky & Quaysoo’s Turbo Science (1992) which is neither an adventure game nor actually developed by Sierra but it’s still part of the Discovery Series so a short review for our blog wouldn’t be out of line, either. The sequel to Castle of Dr. Brain, called The Island of Dr. Brain (1992) scored 45 points but again Reiko thought it was „fun to play“ and it may well have scored higher on an alternate PISSED scale more suited to puzzle games. Alphabet Blocks (1992) is another non-adventure game not developed by Sierra but this one is even less likely to appear on the blog as it’s targeted at very young children (ages 3 and up). Finally, Lost Secret of the Rainforest, a game from the current gaming year and the sequel to EcoQuest, scored a little lower than its predecessor at 55 points. All of this bodes well for Pepper’s Adventures in Time which is the final adventure game from the series. So far, the average score of the series is 52. The Discovery Series was continued (or should I say stretched out?) for three more games: Spelling Jungle (1993), Ready, Set, Read with Bananas & Jack (1993), and Turbo Learning: Mega Math (1993). None of them was developed by Sierra but by the two companies responsible for previous non-Sierra games from the series: Bright Star Entertainment and Jeff Tunnell Productions.

Missed Classic 132: Loremaster (1991) - Introduction

Written by Morpheus Kitami

Valhalla is another game like Twin Valley Kingdom in that it requires an absolute ton of mapping, which in its case, involves a lot of busywork. I'll explain when the next entry on that comes out, but for now, let's talk about the very mysterious Loremaster.

Actually, it's not just me that's going to be talking about this, because Loremaster is another one of those weird RPG/adventure hybrids. Which means of course, that the CRPGAddict has so graciously agreed to do another collaboration with us, so his first entry can be found here. I promise I'll finish this one within a year, I swear. (Note, finish, not win)

This seems to be overselling it considerably, judging by the following screenshots.

As you can see, that's a lot of money. I think this might have been shareware, but if it was that was a hell of a lot of money for a shareware game. Either way this explains why it was missing for a long time, nobody was going to spend that much money for what was effectively a random game. We've had screenshots for a while, but the game was only findable on the internet a few years ago. So, let's get into it.

Missed Classic: Daughter of Serpents – Death on the Nile

Written by Vetinari

Alexandria is on the Nile, so the title is technically correct.

Last time we were going to visit Bimbashi Cameron at the police station to check on our leads about the case which brought us here in Egypt. Cameron gives off the vibe of being a very strict and severe man, a classic by-the-book policeman.

This is the one and only pleasantry which he exchanges with me.

In an As You Know moment, Cameron explains the backstory which brought me here, i.e. the fact that a friend of mine was sold shares in a worthless company, and that I have managed to find out that the man behind the fraud is one Constantine Elytis, who runs the Elytis Import Export Company here in Alexandria.

Missed Classic 131: Sherwood Forest (1982) - Introduction

Written by Michael

Back in the early years of graphic adventure gaming, there were many releases of games that were often no more than a disk and a paper in a plastic baggie on a spinner rack at the local computer shop.  There’s so many stories of the varied quality of these games.  That’s the history of the predecessor to Ultima and also the first release of Mystery House.   It’ll be fun to explore some of the games of that time.  

My choice today was packaged a little better than that.  As best I can tell, it was a professionally-printed cardboard folder holding the single disk and a double-sided instruction card.  The game was Sherwood Forest, a 1982 release from Phoenix Software, Inc., of absolutely no relation to the then-growing Phoenix Technologies, responsible for the BIOS in many early IBM PC clones that helped make MS-DOS a standard and Bill Gates very, very rich.

Veil of Darkness - A Good Ol' Coffin Hunt

Written by Zenic Reverie

A small correction from my last post. The Rowan staff is used to kill the Will-o-wisps, while the zombies are damaged only by the silver sword. Also, I thought I had killed Andrei to gain a crystal, but when I loaded the game up he was still alive. I attempted to kill him and realized why I didn't save, the disease zombies give is devastating. It drains continuously increasing damage, isn't cured by the gypsy woman, and I haven't found a cure for it yet. I'm not sure where I gained that crystal, but Andrei has a diamond specifically.

The machete I found by the plane proved the bane of these plant monsters.

Unlike the zombie's disease, the poison from the topiary creatures does get removed when healing at the gypsy camp. I also had many herbs that cure it, but I was hoarding them while I could make the trek back to camp. Only once I was deeper into the maze did I resort to using the nasturtium to remove the green lipstick. I could easily take out two or three creatures before needing to retreat, and as the only creature in the maze it proved easy to navigate despite the name. I picked up some comfrey plant and garlic throughout the maze. The garlic was strung together into a necklace by Annabelle. She warned to keep it hidden, lest those sided with Kairn might upon seeing it be embolden to strike me down. The comfrey doesn't seem to have a use other than trading for coin.

Missed Classic 130 - Daughter of Serpents (1992) - Introduction

 Written by Vetinari

Daughter of Serpents is the second of the two games created by British developer Eldritch Games and based on the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft, the first of which, The Hound of Shadow, was my first series of posts for this blog.

Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards are credited as authors also for Daughter as they were for Hound, but here they had contributions from at least six or seven other people, which may bode well for this game, at least in comparison to Hound where there were four persons credited in total.

Missed Classic: Beyond Zork - Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

It was a bumpy ride and I took too many hints, but we have defeated Beyond Zork and can finally put it to rest. I am grateful to our community for the assistance! I was able to solve most of the rest of the game on my own, but as you will see, there were still a few places that caused me trouble. I ended the last post with Prince Foo of Pheebor’s helmet, finally retrieved from the far distant future with the help of our trusty time archway. We had to take a chocolate truffle, dip it into the Fountain of Youth, travel back in time to the battle where the prince died, hide the truffle in a ditch next to his body, travel forward in time thousands of years, and then dig it up with the help of a magical chocolate-sniffing ferret. When you write it out like that, it sounds perfectly normal, right? 

Stay turned to the very bottom of the post for questions and discussion on the future of the Infocom Marathon, especially with Return to Zork coming very soon in the 1993 cycle. Your input will be invaluable as I work out how I approach the coming months.

Missed Classic: The Hound of Shadow - Won (Plus Alternate Characters and Final Rating)

Written by Vetinari

After the poppycocks of the game wiping out the file for my character just because he had been devoured by an abomination from outside of space and time, I proceeded to create another character and play all through the game again until the end.

Not really. I just edited Sven's character file with Notepad by copying the values from one of the pre-generated characters.

So, back to Blythburgh church. This time I choose to meditate, emptying myself of all conscious thoughts. And then...

Discussion Point: Standout Soundtracks

Written by The TAG Team

In the comments recently, we were admiring some outstanding music in a game.  That made us wonder: what’s the best song or soundtrack in an adventure game?

There are some well-known songs, like the video above from Quest for Glory, and some overall good soundtracks.  But what’s your favorite, from a game new or old? Any obscure tracks from a forgotten game?

Let’s keep it to original compositions.  The soundtrack to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City isn’t a contender in this discussion, no matter how awesome those 80s hits are. 

Wayne’s World - Final Rating

by Michael

Okay, kids.  Grab some Red Vines and let’s rock out this final rating post.

So, we reached the end of Wayne’s World in the last post, and it’s time to reflect on the experience.  This can be a very educational experience, and with some soul-searching, this process will bring us to total harmony....

... NOT!

Seriously, this wasn’t a bad game.  It definitely has flaws, but I was expecting something much, much worse based on the games of this developer we played already.  Most recently, Alex briefed us on L.A. Law back in 1992, and Ilmari drove The Beverly Hillbillies to the view of civilization earlier this gaming year.  I think they made a better effort with this outing, but let’s see how it fares in the scoring.