Pepper's Adventures in Time – Final Rating

 by Will Moczarski

When I started playing Pepper's Adventures in Time for the blog (way back when) I singled out the manual as a true labour of love. I stand by my assessment. However, I also remarked: "This is beginning to sound like work, or worse - school." And if I ask myself the pertinent question: was the game fun and did it meet its goal of teaching me something as well? I'm not sure what to answer. Did I learn something? Yes, lots of trivia. Would I have learned more had I known next to nothing about US history? Possibly but...the game tends to work sort of like an old-school museum. The "TRUTH" button is a stand-in for reading the plaques, and you learn a lot about the artifacts but not so much about the broader strokes of history. Your mileage may vary but I felt that a kid playing Pepper will pick up a lot of tidbits and facts which means that the most absurd ones will probably stand out and continue to linger in the back of their head. The game is edutaining, but is it educational? I doubt it.

On the other hand, TAG regular Vetinari claims he learned a lot about history when he played Pepper around the time of its release. Maybe I'm wrong but the TRUTH button sure felt a bit like the Neuschwanstein episode in Gabriel Knight 2 at some point - I fear it belongs in a museum.

But we're not here to rank a game based on its educational merit but rather to see how it fares with our six PISSED categories. Let's do that instead of waxing didactic, shall we?

Pepper's Adventures in Time – Won!

 By Will Moczarski

400 points in my pocket, and one more act to go. This time around we need to find out how meat was cooked in colonial households, learn about colonial cures for fleas, compositions for the glass armonica, blue dye, and taxation without representation. Sounds like a wicked school day to me.

Actual objectives are as follows: 

• Get into Penn Mansion,
• Rescue Lockjaw,
• Prove General Pugh's a Fraud!

Time to tie up all these loose ends, it seems. If you think back to act 5 you may remember that it involved a bit of time-travelling to the year 1787. Instead of witnessing the Constitutional Convention firsthand we learned about Ben Franklin's troublesome gout. Then we went back in time to 1764 again, which is why middle-aged Ben now looks quite young to Pepper. The jolly founding father, not knowing about our time travel shenanigans, takes that as a compliment, of course, and then the chitchat makes way for some serious plotting. Ben hands Pepper a custom-made kite and wants her to go windsurf across the river with it. After that, she is to distract the sentries at the front bridge with food. While Pepper proceeds to sneak into Penn Mansion, Ben will rally the colonists in order to put pressure on the General. (He does not acknowledge that it was us who did all the legwork for the rallying in the previous act by performing some mind-numbing...well, what's the opposite of a fetch quest? A spread quest?)

Pepper’s Adventures in Time – Back Without A Vengeance

 by Will Moczarski

Well, on to the penultimate act of Pepper’s Adventures in Time we go! Let’s dive right in...

Act 5: Pepper Visits the Constitutional Convention or The Key to an Old Ben’s Heart

In the fifth act we need to learn about gout, Ben’s raccoon skin cap, unusual uses for a kite, Ben’s role at the Constitutional Convention and eyeglasses invented by Ben. As usual, these will be necessary in order to solve the quiz at the end of the act. The objectives needed to progress to the final act are: 

* Distribute Ben’s Special Editions

* Go to the Constitutional Convention

* Get Advice from Ben

That’s fairly unspecific. Let’s see how we fare with this one! 

On the first screen we see Ben working on a new pamphlet. He wants to help the people get back to the “good old colonial ethics of hard work and diligence”. No more hippy-dippy for Mr. Franklin, it seems. Pepper asks whether Ben couldn’t just go to Penn Mansion and ask for Lockjaw, seeing that he’s a “pretty important guy in Philadelphia”. Ben turns her down, telling her that he was never on good terms with General Pugh and thus his influence doesn’t extend to his mansion. Pepper suggests they just raid the joint but Ben tells her that the Mansion is well guarded. He is positive that he can help her cross the river and sneak into the Mansion – it’s getting her out he’s worried about. Pepper then suggests that the townspeople of Philadelphia might be able to help but Ben tells her they’d need a reason to gather at Penn Mansion because they won’t rally against the General for a dog they don’t even know.

Pepper’s Adventures in Time – One Taste & You Get It.

 by Will Moczarski

Welcome back to Pepper’s Adventures in Time! Last time we managed to make Ben Franklin lose his no-good hippie ways by taking him along for the kite/key experiment. It worked like a charm: lighting struck, and Ben is back to his own self again. Thus, act 4 begins, and the hot tub is...let’s just say it reminded me of this:

Source

I manage to salvage quite a lot of items from this mess: Ben’s backscratcher, his fan, a lever, a stepstool that seems too big for Pepper to carry around, and his paddles. His book of “Hindu Meditations”, unfortunately, is ruined. Being primed by the well-hidden item in the previous act I keep on pixel-hunting for a while before I re-enter the Franklin Mansion. 

The objectives of this act are to 

•  find proof of General Pugh’s dishonesty,
•  rescue poor Richard.

Not a long but a tough to-do list. But as I wrote before it’s really all smooth sailing from here on.

Pepper's Adventures In Time – Always One Of A Kind

By Will Moczarski

The last time I ended my narration on a cliffhanger, promising a grisly death scene - however, that was only half true. But more about that in a while. When we last left the game we were busy collecting items to build a Leyden jar and subsequently conduct the famous Kite/Key experiment in order to get Ben Franklin out of his cozy hot tub. On the surface of it he promised to help me with my experiment if I topped up his tub with some hot water - however, my secret agenda is to get the man back into science, obviously.

Pepper's Adventures in Time – Can You Handle The Taste?

by Will Moczarski

Shortly before the ending of act 2 the game switches back to Lockjaw who's still serving time as a playdoll for the spoiled daughter of the Pugh family. There's a brief cutscene showcasing Lockjaw's torments at Ima's hands (and voice, particularly) before we get to take control of the dog once more. 

Pepper's Adventures in Time – The Dude Abides In Philly

Welcome back to the first exploration phase of Pepper’s Adventures in Time! A short recap: Our pet was dognapped by the spoiled daughter of an evil British colonist and we are looking for clues on how to infiltrate their mansion and bring Lockjaw back. Also, Pepper is looking for Ben Franklin who has succeeded in turning Philadelphia into a veritable Hippie town. Parts of it, at least. Our objectives for this act are simply to meet the colonists and Ben Franklin. To pass the obligatory test we’ll need to be all ears whenever somebody starts talking about British taxation acts, millinery shops, Ben Franklin’s influence on the colonial post office, the Penn family, and potholes. 

It may just be my pot-luck. 

It’s right on the first screen that we meet some laid-back fella called Marty Hardy tossing a frisbee off the screen, calling me “little dude”, going on about “big bad Ben” and whatnot. He’s not exactly helpful with any of my inquiries; we only learn that the Guvner is big on taxes and curfews. Marty also tells me that the “flying disk” (aka, the frisbee) is Ben Franklin’s greatest invention which would not be too shabby for anybody but people like Ben Franklin, I guess. 

Who will win? Historical inaccuracy or the last-minute addition of self-referentiality?

I leave the screen to the left and arrive at the Governor’s Mansion. Unfortunately, there are several guards blocking my passage, and I am unable to sweet-talk them into letting me pass. Maybe Pepper’s story is just not good enough – she’s claiming to make a delivery of nice, fresh air. Try selling fine leather jackets next time, kid! There is some kite string stuck in a tree but Pepper can’t reach it. The two guards mock me when I try to grab it but they still take it down and give it to me. When I talk to them one of them hints that he may be corruptible if I bring him food. Other than that they are quite rude, insulting me when I try to approach the bridge or even the little river.

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. 

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.