An American Tail - Final Rating

By Torch

Waaait a minute.. I didn’t see any candy cane guns in the game. Talk about false advertising

With a few exceptions games based on movies haven’t historically been known for their quality. Sometimes they are practically considered merchandise and are hastily slapped together to capitalize on the release of the associated movie. This game, with the snappy title An American Tail: The Computer Adventures of Fievel and His Friends, was released in 1993, 7 years after the first movie it’s based on (An American tail, 1986) and 2 years after the second one (An American tail II: Fievel goes west, 1991). In other words, it doesn’t seem like the game developers were aiming for a release that coincided with any of the movies. If they were, they certainly missed their mark, by quite a margin.

An American Tail - Won!

By Torch

So my previous play session lasted all of 30 minutes and got me through the first part of the game, which is based on the first movie. I’ll just spoil some of the fun right now, and let you know that this second part took me about twice as long to complete. But was it more enjoyable because of this? Let’s find out

Like the first part, the second starts with some PowerPoint exposition. (I’m not including all the slides. There were a fair few)

A new antagonist enters the stage, with a new pun for a name. Caterwaul…

Also, for whatever reason

Right after, I’m dropped onto the westbound train.

I wonder why Fievel is the only guy who has access to a color protecting laundry detergent

An American Tail - Get Shorty

By Torch

At this point I’ve elected not to watch the movie(s) before playing the game. Though it would probably give me a bunch of context, it might also give away plot points or possibly puzzles. Also, I’d like to see if the game is able to stand on its own feet with regards to storytelling, or if it will just assume that I already know what’s going on.

But let’s take it from the start. As you may recall from the intro post, I’m playing poor little mouse Fievel Mousekewitz, who just migrated from his home in Russia to New York, and got separated from his family along the way.

We start off at the dock in New York, where the only thing I can interact with is a somewhat suspicious looking rat, Fievel himself and a couple of exits. One thing of note: I can’t move Fievel around on a screen. He just stands firmly in one spot until I click an exit, after which he does a short walking animation.

Hey! Matching outfits!

Game 126: An American Tail - The Computer Adventures of Fievel / Fievel Goes West

By Torch

In 1986 Amblin Entertainment (Steven Spielberg’s movie studio) decided to challenge a certain other animation studio’s market dominance on animated anthropomorphic mice. Their champion was a movie about a jewish-russian mouse named Fievel Mousekewitz, who has to leave Russia with his family, to avoid persecution by anti-semittic cats. The Mousekewitzes decide to go to America after being told that there are no cats there. They manage to board a ship to New York (where else?), but before they arrive at their destination, there’s a storm, and Fievel gets washed overboard. Believing that he’s dead, the rest of his family continue on their journey. Fievel manages to hike a ride with a floating empty bottle and ends up in New York after all, where he sets out to reunite with his family.

Ah, the play on words (tail/tale)

Nippon Safes Inc. - Final rating

Written by Torch

What were my expectations when I started playing this? Well, maybe more safes... Honestly, my familiarity with the game only goes as far as remembering to have seen some screenshots in a magazine some time in 1992. I guess it was a review, but I can’t recall what the reviewer thought about it. The reason I remembered it is probably due to the colorful and cartoony graphics, that must’ve struck a note with me at the time.

Since then I’ve not heard anything about it, with adventure game classics like the Sierra Quest-series or anything made by LucasArts claiming all the spotlight, so I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t actually an adventure game, or if it just wasn’t very good. It certainly didn’t propel the creators Dynabyte to stardom. They made only two more games, one of them, Big Red Adventure seems to be a sequel to Nippon. I’d never even heard of that game before I researched this, but that could be me.

Famous or not, the game has both entertained me and frustrated me, so as I ponder how to go about evaluating it against the mighty PISSED, I’m still not sure how it will all play out in the end. But let’s start with the first category, and see how it goes

Nippon Safes Inc. - Get Smart (Won!)

Written by Torch

I ended the previous post on a slightly slow-moving note, if I can call it that. For the umpteenth time, I needed to find 100 yen for a metro ticket. While I didn’t flag that post as a request for assistance, I nevertheless found myself unable to obtain the necessary funds for the duration of my next play session. So I went ahead and sneakily requested some hints in the comments section, and luckily, Vetinari yet again came to my aid. I’m not sure what to think about the solution to the problem, but at least it again confirms my theory that the game interface is doing its utmost to fool me at every opportunity

Consider the following screenshot

Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Mexican standoff. Only I don’t see any Mexicans

Nippon Safes Inc. - The Adventures of Mister Bean

By Torch

After tackling the problems of Doug Nuts (the smart) and Donna Fatale (the sexy), time has now come to meet Dino Fagioli. Yes, the stupid. And boy is he ever! But more on that later.

Dino’s chapter doesn’t start outside the prison like Doug and Donna’s, but rather in the office of the prison governor. Since Dino doesn’t have any prior criminal record, the governor wants to give him a second chance and offers to get him a job at the museum.

Looking for… odd… man…. get.. more.. trouble. Got it.

Nippon Safes Inc. - Imperial Makeover

Written by Torch

In my last post, I managed to get sort of stuck. I imagine I could’ve brute forced my way through, but there’s only so many times one has the patience to try every action on every screen. Luckily commenter Vetinari came to my rescue with some much needed hints on how to proceed.

I only had a couple of items in my possession, but one of them was a saw, and I was pretty hung up on trying to make the saw in this chapter as useful as the wrench in Doug’s. Alas, what was needed was the “bowl” I found outside Doug’s apartment, that was in fact an empty perfume bottle ( or “flacon” ). Well, after filling this up with water from one of the fountains in the park, I can now go to the department store, pass the bottle off as a new one and ask for a refund.

Change is always possible for those who believe, Donna

Nippon Safes Inc. - Been There, Donna That (Request for Assistance)

Written by Torch

The perceptive reader will know that in my previous post, I finished Doug’s chapter. It ended with him being knocked out by a mysterious stranger as soon as he’d escaped with the Jade Buddha he was assigned to steal from the Saku-Rambo monastery.

This means that it’s time to pick a new character to play. And for the very good reason of “why not?” I picked Donna Fatale, whose most important character trait - as we learned from the intro - is being sexy.

Yes, this is the game’s description of Donna

Nippon Safes Inc. - Back with a Wrench-ance

By Torch

Doug Nuts here again. Being a genius, I usually like to get by in the world using my brains. This time, however, my legs have done most of the job

Last time I left off trying to figure out how to win the grand opening competition at the restaurant Kaizen-Sushi… the Kai..?

Doug Nuts and the lost art of consistent spelling

Nippon Safes Inc. - A Tale of Two City Names

Written by Torch

The name’s Nuts, Doug Nuts. I’m an electronics genius with a mission. And that mission is… what was it again? Oh yeah, to steal a jade Buddha from a safe in the “Saku-Rambo” Monastery. Only problem is, I have no idea where to find the monastery.

It’s time to check out the rest of the great city of Tyoko! Or Tioko! Frankly it’s getting a bit silly that the game can’t decide on a spelling for the name of the city, so going forward I plan on doing a count of all the city name references I find, to see which one is used most frequently, and will thus be the official name. Check the summary at the bottom to see if your favourite comes out on top. But now, let’s start exploring! And by exploring I mean wandering around aimlessly, clicking stuff until something useful happens.

The city center consists of a number of screens. The exits aren’t always logical or easy to spot, so I hope I’ve found them all. Due north from Honest Chan’s, however, I find this busy street.

“Busy” means featuring more than 2 people

Nippon Safes Inc. - Three’s Company

By Torch

In my previous post, we took a gander at the manual and discussed the history of the developers, but not much was said about the game itself, so let’s get cracking (literally) on that.

I start off as Doug Nuts. (So no quiz-based character selection as of yet.) He’s underground in what looks like a sewer and has seemingly huffed and puffed his way through a brick wall and is now facing something that looks suspiciously like a bank vault.

Who exactly is this “BANK” sign intended for?

Game 108: Nippon Safes, Inc. (1992) - Introduction

Written by Torch

Doesn’t look very safe to me

Two years after my first ever playthrough for The Adventure Gamer, I’m finally up for another. Quite the gap, but - surprise! - we’re still doing games from 1992! We sure are taking our time here, or perhaps 1992 was just a particularly bountiful year. Either way, the next game up is Nippon Safes, Inc. This game was developed by Dynabyte software, an Italian game creator. I couldn’t find a lot of information about this company, but running a couple of Italian wikis through Google translate helped a little.

Dynabyte. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it’s a portmanteau of dynamite and byte

KGB - Final Rating

Written by Torch

Well, here we are. My first attempt at applying the PISSED rating to an adventure game. I’m slightly awestruck and hope I won’t skew the scale too much or otherwise make a complete fool out of myself.

Without further ado, the categories:

KGB - Protopopov, Where Art Thou? (Won!)

Written by Torch

Take that, you Karl Marx-looking statue head thingy

KGB - The Waiting Game

Written by Torch

We’re still in chapter 2. In my previous post, I had to get rid of a dead body, interrogate prostitutes and foreign agents, and finally I got to trash a hotel room, rockstar style. No wonder I was dead tired by the time I got back to my hotel room. I emptied my pockets of hard and pointy objects, and threw myself on the bed.

Guess who found the chainsaw fuel

KGB - The Trouble with Viktor

Written by Torch

I’m still in chapter 2. During my previous session, I met a mystery contact, who I refer to as Cut-throat, based on the phrase he used to identify himself. I don’t know who he works for yet. Could be an organization, or someone independent. Nevertheless, I provided him with some info, and he returned the favor. I’m now back in my hotel room, right after our meeting, waiting for my Department P mission controller to show up at 7.30 pm.

Well, there’s no time to rest. At exactly 7.30, I hear a knock on the door. It’s the controller, Major Savinkov, and he has apparently decided to bring me a house-warming ( or rather hotel-warming ) gift, in the form of a dead body. Swell...

Gee, thanks for bringing in more work, major.

KGB - Codebreaker

Written by Torch

KGB - Backtrack’s Back Alright

Written by Torch

The observant reader may remember that I mentioned the backtrack function in the intro post. Well, I’ll have you know that I became quite familiar with that particular mechanic over the course of this next session. The possibilities for failure in this game are numerous, but whereas the first mission was pretty forgiving and didn’t kill me at the drop of a hat, the gloves came off pretty quickly once I got to Kursk street.

Before I dive in, here’s a quick plot summary. Our guy, Maksim Rukov has been sent to Kursk street to further investigate the death of former KGB agent, now private investigator Pyotr Golitsin, who was supposed to meet tonight with a contact going by the codename “Hollywood”. Golitsin would present himself as “Buyer2”, and the meeting was arranged by someone called “Romeo”. I’ve been given a fake identity for the purpose of this undercover mission. My fake name is to be Kliment Kruglov, and I’m a bicycle brake repairman.

I arrive on Kursk street, outside a bar with the curtains closed.

A classy-looking establishment

KGB - Hello, Comrade!

Written by Torch

Здравствуйте, товарищ! And welcome to the KGB. Since this is your first day, we’ll give you a generous 5 minutes to get settled in before sending you out on a mission.

I’m not an authority on Soviet work habits, but I find it hard to believe that their work days used to start at 4 pm.