Game 151: Innocent Until Caught (1993) - Introduction

Written by Morpheus Kitami

 

It's nice to get back to some normal, standard and uncontroversial adventure games after what in retrospect, was a year consisting entirely of more experimental titles, the most traditional of which was arguably the most insane in other respects. (This was actually written in 2025, since I know it's 2026 when you read this) Yes, sir, it's nice to get back to the realm of adventure games that actually enjoy being adventure games.

What, you think there's going to be a joke here? Nah.

Innocent Until Caught is one of those adventure games with a cool premise and world design that even at the time, seems like a complete and total waste of resources. You're telling me that someone made an adventure game with its own unique universe, completely disconnected to any published sci-fi writer or licensed material? And instead of playing as an actual hero, you're just the local equivalent of a tax dodger? The nerve of these people. Give me ten copies and a framed poster of the box art.

To say I'm looking forward to this is an understatement. I'm really looking forward to this. But as we learned with Dracula, sometimes when you look forward to something you...get Dracula...and disappointed. This is a Psygnosis published game, who have a reputation for disappointing people. Remember when I played The Kristal? As a prelude to the Psygnosis published Obitus as a predecessor to this? It was so disappointing that I'm not even going to bore you with a link. To describe Obitus as a video game is to be correct, anything else is generous.

But before you start breaking out the forbidden numbers, let's see a bit of this beforehand.

First, the manual, it's sixty-six pages, all in English, explaining the whole game from the story to the gameplay. Unlike some games, this is not necessarily information you can't figure out without playing the game, it just makes things easier. It also uses the game's title as "Innocent - until caught", several times. Which actually got me checking. the title is often Innocent Until Caught, but the logo hides that this could very well be Innocent - Until Caught. Innocent is used on its own to refer the game several times. The sequel is just called Guilty, which fits either way, but if the title is supposed to be one word, it fits much better.

Our hero in this game is Jack T. Ladd, self-proclaimed honest, hard-working felon and master thief. Jack wanders out through the wide and vast galaxy, which is under the control of the Federation of Planets, who controls all colonized worlds, no matter if they're monarchies or commies. Unfortunately, wrecking this spirit of fellowship towards man among the stars, is that the Fed is 100 percent corrupt. (According to the honest, hard-working felon.) The worst of them all is the Interstellar Revenue Decimation Service, or IRDS.

Now, the IRDS doesn't care how you get your money, they're just going to take their battle fleet, which is the fastest and meanest group in the galaxy, and take it from you. They'll take anything that moves, and if it doesn't move they'll slap an Immobility Tax on it. They'll probably even tax taxes. It's like with Al Capone, if the IRS came at him with stealth bombers and tanks.

At this point, Ladd starts rambling a lot, he goes to the backstory of how he stole the ship he got caught in. That is, he stole a painting, forgot which art gallery it belonged to, then tried to sell it back to the owner. Who then chased after him with a machete before getting his peg leg stuck in a metal grate, he discovers he's being followed by another strange individual in a suit who kept talking into his lapel. He then gives a very amusing anecdote about stealing spaceships and escaping a fight with "space pirates", who are actually the IRDS. This is where the game begins.

The game was released on DOS first, then Amiga, and then a DOS CD version. As far as I can tell, the CD version is just a compilation of the floppies with nothing added. The Amiga version runs quite slow and there's no way for me to get it running at a reasonable speed, so DOS it is. But wait, by default the Adlib music sounds like something out of Fatty Bear, which is somewhat off-putting for a sci-fi adventure game. As luck would have it, there's Roland MT-32 support, which everyone seems to have missed in the half a dozen LPs posted on Youtube.

As is tradition when I find these things unuploaded, I've done it myself. Gotta say, this music gives the game a nice mood. Perhaps too nice for the intro, but whatever. Gotta show movement in space somehow.

The screenshots I took of this all look like crap, so this is one that isn't working well out motion.

The intro happens, and we see a ship being ambushed by a much bigger ship. The smaller one sort of flutters around. Not sure what the ship is expecting to happen with that kind of moving around. Guess it looked good in 1993. It doesn't really show the tractor beam too well, but I guess those kinds of visual effects are more of an afterthought.

The IRDS doesn't have an IFF system?

Our protagonist, Jack Ladd, steps out of the ship and into view. He wonders who owns this ship before a guy who looks like a future sports player steps from the left and tells Jack to follow him. Jack follows for one screen, then protests. Which causes the guy to bring another future football player on-screen. The manual says he tried to engage them in conversation, but they didn't have much vocabulary. Methinks Mr. Ladd is a bit self-serving. They drag him to...a door.

After a robot robs him of his remaining earthly possessions.

We are left in the darkness for a moment, before two figures are revealed, in front of a computer. They're the IRDS. Mr. Ladd has been a busy boy, with a record full of misdemeanors and felonies, but they don't care about that. No, what they care about is that he hasn't been paying his taxes. He's going to do that, or he's going to see his vital organs sold off to make the difference...then killed. Speaking of which, I hope my fellow Americans have already filed their taxes this year.

They spew him out of their plane and Jack heads for Tayte, the planet with the nearest bar. Thus begins our adventure. Gotta say, this intro was more humor based than I was expecting, but I liked it. The dynamic here's nice, Jack's that kind of snarky asshole character who works as a protagonist and the IRDS guys have clearly had enough of people like him. But we'll see if that continues as the game goes along. Well-animated too, but it's easy to shine up your intro. It's the game that's the tricky part.

So, how much money do we have to get? The manual says, and I quote. "Censored". Basically, arbitrary amount decided upon by the game. All I have to do is get it within 28 days, which may or may not be similarly plot decided. We'll find out which next time.

This Session: 5 minutes