Written by The TAG Team
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| You are carrying: Nothing. |
An adventure game wouldn’t be an adventure without a character walking around and picking up anything he sees that isn’t nailed down.
So, what’s the most unique item you’ve picked up in a game? Or the funniest? Or the most disgusting?
Maybe something grosser than the mucus of Largo LeGrand from a pole in the bar?
Sometimes, items are homages. Larry Laffer starts his first game with lint in his pocket because of Infocom games. There’s a monkey named Guybrush you can interact with in The Longest Journey.
What items stand out in your memory?
The image caption immediately brought to mind "no tea" from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
ReplyDeleteHitchhiker's guide had lots of strange inventory objects, indeed.
DeleteLeather Goddesses of Phobos had a "TEE remover" that would remove the letter T from the name of any object you put in it. Many years later, Counterfeit Monkey would dial that idea up to 11 (at least!) but I've only played part of that game.
The 'no tea' wasn't just a joke imported from the source material, but part of a puzzle:
DeleteVs lbh rire npdhver fbzr grn, lbh qebc gur 'ab grn', naq ivpr irefn. Ng bar cbvag va gur tnzr lbh unir gb perngr n cnenqbk, juvpu erdhverf lbh gb trg obgu 'grn' naq 'ab grn' vagb lbhe vairagbel fvzhygnarbhfyl.
No discussion of weird adventure game items would be complete without a mention of the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle!
ReplyDeleteBut also just so many from Monkey Island 2, perhaps the dog (also named Guybrush)? Just the animation when Guybrush picks him up is great, they had a few other unique ones for stuff.
As far as Monkey Island 1 items are concerned, I think the navigator head beats the rubber chicken.
DeleteThat is a great call, both creepy and useful
DeleteSpeaking of weird animals to carry around, I'm rather fond of the Dangling Participle from KQ6.
Delete@Radiant yeah that's a good one.
DeleteHow about the dog in MI2 you stick in your pocket? Or the petrified monkey?
DeleteOr my last post that went up for Hand of Fate, a bottled up ghost.
Seems we carry a lot of creatures around in these games.
Freddy Pharkas has that bagged fart of a horse. It's difficult to find something more weird and disgusting.
ReplyDeleteDOTT has a fake barf, Amazon guardians of eden has a real size ladder, Monkey Island 2 has a dog and a monkey, Hector badge of carnage has various unusual items, Sam n Max with the 3 seasons have a ton of weird stuff.
The Deponia games had a lot of funny inventory items but I can't remember something specifically.
ReplyDeleteAlso the Specks of Dust from Thimbleweed Park was pretty stupid and unique.
Yeah, what was the point of the specks of dust? I finished Thimbleweed Park but can't remember
DeleteIt was to unlock an Easter egg. If you collected all of them.
Deletean easter egg, or a steam achievement , not sure. Have to play it again
DeleteCurse of Monkey Island: a map that is literally sunburnt human skin.
ReplyDeleteEscape from Monkey Island: the "abomination of nature" you can assemble by getting all the excess prosthetic body parts that otherwise have no use and putting them together.
King's Quest 4: actual Pandora's Box.
Larry 2: The improvised incendiary device made from an airsick bag and a bottle of hair-growth lotion is certainly something.
Larry 5: the Hooter Shooter, which is a sort of metal bra with gun barrels built in to the nipple area.
Larry 6: You have to fill an oil lamp with liquid human fat from a cellulite removal machine. Gross.
Space Quest 4 containing its own hint book is pretty unique.
Sorcerer (Infocom): A grue suit and a floor waxer.
There's a bunch of great ones from Space Quest IV, the hint book is a great choice, but it has also reminded me of the unstable ordinance!
Delete@arcanetrivia definitely the cellulite lamp is a contender for grossest item. How many times have I played the game without reflecting on that?
Delete(Also, that was probably REALLY oily. Be careful lighting the lamp.)
Ween the prophecy: the cauldron
ReplyDeleteIndy 3 : grail diary
I gotta go with the bag of farts from Freddie Pharkas, as Alex points out.
ReplyDeleteNah. In Freddy Pharkas, you can pick up a gigantic pile of literal horse crap, and even die if you eat it in one of the game's grosser deaths. As gross as the horse farts are, an actual pile of poop is grosser.
DeleteOther interesting adventure game inventory items I can think of are the ladder in Space Quest III, the used cigar butt in Space Quest IV, the avocado and garlic sandwiches in Quest for Glory IV.
The ladder in SQ3 as well as the soda in LSL2 are great examples of the games referencing the ridiculous nature of the inventories these guys carry.
Delete@Michael yeah the Grotesque Gulp is a fun visual gag. Same with the monkey head key in MI1 and the cannon ramrod in MI3. They did a joke about this in The Legend of Monkey Island and had Guybrush refer to himself as "a guy with unusually spacious pockets".
DeleteIn terms of grossness/uniqueness, the Q-Tip in Monkey Island that turned out to be a key to unlock the monkey's head definitely stands out.
ReplyDeleteIn a similar vein, except not gross but still really funny was the guy in Sam and Max giving you the "universal Key", which turns out to be a crowbar.
In terms of unusual, going to mention the Kazoo in Zak McKracken, just because I don't know any other adventure game that had one, and it's even used as an actual Kazoo in the game.
Oh, also: The Magic Marker in Larry 3. For the longest time I thought that Monkey Island 2 had the wackiest out of left field ending until I got to Larry 3 and as much as I love MI2, LSL3 did the wacky out of left field ending SO much better! (Though fair play to Ron Gilbert, he absolutely nailed it with Thimbleweed Park's ending.)
ReplyDeleteI even call that "The Wacky, Illogical Ending" in my walkthrough, lol. The marker is a neat concept, but kind of a dick move on Sierra's part because 1. it's very easy to miss on the screen and thus get softlocked, and 2. the intuitive leap to "this pen is literally magic when nothing else in this game has been and can draw a portal in midair" is a doozy.
DeleteIn KGB, you can buy a pirated VHS tape of The Maltese Falcon. This is entirely unrealistic—during that era in Moscow, you’d be far more likely to find something like Rambo III or a porn. The tape itself is useless in the game, but I couldn’t help feeling incredibly cool walking around as an undercover agent with The Maltese Falcon tucked in my pocket.
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