Myst - Invisible Cities

Written by Vetinari

So, for this post we are going to explore the spaceship age.

Actually the real name is Selenitic age, you know.

As already seen in the Mechanical age, we arrive in a place which is an exact correspondence of the one that we have just left (in this case the interior of the spaceship) but our surroundings are completely different.

Stepping out on a brand new world.

I expected this place to be a volcanic wasteland, based on Atrus's journal description of it, but instead we are just on another island, with some geothermal vents as the only feature giving away the idea of underground volcanic activity.

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. 

Myst – The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Written by Vetinari

Last time we were finally ready, after solving most if not all of the puzzles on Myst island, to embark on a journey to a different age.

I've decided to tackle the four tomes in the order that we discovered it, so the first one is the book which was hidden inside the cogwheels.

The flyover animation of the island is very nice.

After the usual sound effect of entering a new book (the same as when we load the game, incidentally) we find ourselves in a very similar environment to what we left, i.e. some opened cogwheels, but with the book gone.

Cosmic Spacehead - Dreadful Warnings

Written by Morpheus Kitami

Because of the password system, I have to start from scratch until the game decides I deserve a code. So I pick up everything I can in the starting area, joke book, 1 gold coin and a teleport key. As I go through one of the platformer screens, I realize that Mr. Spacehead looks like the Kool-aid Man's shifty cousin, who can get you stuff if you don't ask too many questions.

This is supposed to be a pun on "lucky day", but I kept mentally thinking it as "luke e day".

Cape Carnival. That there's a slot machine. 99.9% payout, it says. I would suspect that Cosmic is the 0.1%, but it turns out he gets 50 lino dollars from it. I feel as though, in giving me no difficulty whatsoever in getting more money, it has cheated us both. I have done nothing for what I have, and it has no reason to be played. Nearby, there's both an advertisement for bumper cars, and an all expenses paid trip to a car factory. "That's the trip of a lifetime!"

Unfortunately, to get the trip to Detroitica, Cosmic needs a driver's license, because he is probably 5, but the attendant gives him a balloon as a consolation. I try to go to the left, but that's the bumper car race and I can't go in without speaking to him. I accidentally end up talking to him again, and in trying to get out of the dialog, I press escape. This quits the game.

Discussion Point: How Would You Change The Game?

By The TAG Team

Here’s a tough game of “what-if”:

We’ve all played games at times and said, “if only they had done this instead of that.”  Or maybe just thinking of a new twist on something to breathe more life into it.

For example:  What if they remade Police Quest 1, but from the point of view of Jesse Bains?  Like, perhaps, an adventure game version of Grand Theft Auto.  There’s probably not too many adventure games that make you sell drugs to win, right?

Or, how about the other direction?  After all, they already made a card game version of The Oregon Trail, how about a tabletop role-playing game of The Secret of Monkey Island?  A roll of the dice determines how many bananas you’ll need to make a monkey wrench...

Yeah, this is a tough one -- but we’re sure you have some ideas.