Missed Classic 94: The Palace of Deceit: The Dragon’s Plight (1992) – Introduction

 Written by Will Moczarski

Here we go again! According to Wikipedia, The Palace of Deceit was “remade for Windows 3.x and subtitled The Dragon’s Plight as a graphical point-and-click adventure game with an entirely new plot and graphics”. Call me old-fashioned but how is this a remake and not a sequel? You actually play a dragon in this one, so it must at least be a spin-off. However, the designer was still Cliff Bleszinski and according to a portrait of the man written by a guy called Joe Funk (seriously!) in Hot Jobs in Video Games (2010) his inspirations were the ICOM games like Déjà Vu and Uninvited. I’ve already pointed out the similarities to Shadowgate when playing the first iteration of the game, so this doesn’t actually come as a shock.

Missed Classic: The Nine Lives of Secret Agent Katt - Too Many Numbers

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Secret Agent Katt is a weird game. I don't mean weird in the usual sense. There's nothing I could take out of context and say, what is this crap? Nothing like Inca or Melvin Freebush, or whatever Japanese obscurities there are. Secret Agent Katt is entirely mundane in that regard. Too mundane. In Secret Agent Katt, the most obvious answer is seemingly the right answer. Door's locked? Find a key. Nothing does anything? Well, its already open you fool.

In the mythical women's bathroom

Meanwhile, in a gas station bathroom...

I had done something, that was certain, but what did I do? The lounge area offered me nothing but a guard. It had two bathrooms, the woman's one was clean and the men's was dirty. Get it? Because women are prim and proper, while men pull a Jackie Chan on the ceiling to take a dump. Nothing here. Not even opening the faucet does anything. I should explain, in Last Half, if you messed with one, they turned on and the sink overflowed. Neat touch. I'm not seeing that here. At some point coming back here, I saw a guard, but I ran away afterward, uneager to waste ammo. We'll find out if that's right later.

Puzzle...solved?

Nearby there was a vending machine...which was unplugged for some reason. I didn't do that. I plug it in. There are some names on the wall, but is that for a puzzle or just something clever? I have no money. You'd think unidentified US black ops agency would give their agents a few Lira before dumping them somewhere in Italy.

Space Quest V - Arena of Freedom

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! Last time out, Roger Wilco had his first adventure at the helm of the garbage scow, SCS Eureka. We met our crew, collected three sets of garbage, and rescued a poor face-hugger with a case of indigestion. Thus far, I am loving the Star Trek pastiche. The whole game has been note-perfect with just the right amount of love for the franchise while still ripping apart its conventions. We’ll see whether we can keep it up. After our third pickup, we were assaulted by an android assassin that wants Roger dead. For most people, having a killer robot try to kill you would be a pretty big deal, For Roger, it’s just Wednesday.

Let’s get on with the game!

Arena of Freedom

Captain’s Log, Stardate: Wednesday morning, after my first cup of coffee but before my second. No sooner than my brave crew and I finish our appointed rounds, but we are assaulted by a mechadroid. My dark past has caught up to me and I’m forced to face an assassin on my own or risk the lives of my crew. Will my mistakes doom us all? I’m beaming down. If I don’t return, bring back my overdue library books. 

Missed Classic: The Palace of Deceit: The Secret of Castle Lockemoer – WON!-ish and Final Rating

Written by Will Moczarski

Thou shalt not pass.

First of all let me say: what a fantastic community we have here at The Adventure Gamer. I had five people respond to my request for assistance with great advice – alas, it was not to be: The Palace of Deceipt indeed appears to be a game of deceipt, it is unwinnable in its present state and I’ve boldly gone as far as I could have gone in playing through it. However, the good news is that the remaining text bits of the game are somewhat readable as parts of the main .exe file, so I will try my best to provide you with a second-hand account of what the other parts might have played like.

Let’s resume our story, and go back to the armoury where I found a shield with my family crest on it. When I try to take the shield, I hear a deep rumbling from within the suit of armour next to it. The suit comes to life and proceeds to attack me with a sharp sword. If I try to kill the knight, the game informs me that I left the knife (you know, the cutz-o-matic one) with the carcass – however, there’s still a sleeping lion next door, right? I open the door and...the lion springs at the knight and knocks him over. He proceeds to tear him to pieces, and then turns to me. There appear to be multiple solutions for what happens next: holding up the shield either results in the lion shredding it to pieces of metal but then blacking out because there “must have been something in the meat”, or the lion’s head “clangs off the shield, and he drops to the ground, knocked out, several of his teeth scattered around the room. […] There are now 19 knights here, a knocked out lion, shreds of metal, lion's teeth, and a frustrated adventurer (you).” A frustrated adventurer? You can say that again. It’s strangely meta to read this parser output after THE CRASH.

Missed Classic 93: The Nine Lives of Secret Agent Katt (1992) - Introduction

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

What do you do when everyone is wrong about a game? I don't mean in a subjective sense, like you think Citizen Kane is worse than Plan 9 From Outer Space; I mean objectively, like Citizen Kane is a space opera/nunsploitation film starring Jackie Chan, Vincent Price, and Gloria Swanson. Today, that's what I bring you, the game the internet calls a RPG, The Nine Lives of Secret Agent Katt, hereafter referred to as Secret Agent Katt; Until I need to inflate my word count that is. If you submit to the collective wisdom of the internet, its a RPG. Even one Russian site, who are usually good about this, and shall remain nameless, mention RPG elements in the description. I know the CRPG Addict briefly played this game before rejecting it. Why wouldn't he? After all, everyone says it is a RPG, and everyone is wrong. But first, a little backstory...

Mobygames lists this as 1991? Another lie?

Secret Agent Katt is the second or third game by American developer Softlab Laboratories, later WRF Studios, and consists of William R. Fisher III and whoever he works with at the time. He is known for two things, a series of horror adventure games known as The Last Half of Darkness, six sequels, three remakes, and a series of vampire RPG games called Bloodlust. The Last Half of Darkness was little Morpheus's first horror experience, something that haunted him for years. I guess they're second fiddle to the Hugo series, in the sense that anything is second fiddle to the Hugo series, shareware adventure games never hit it big like action games.