New Poll: Should we change our colours?

By TAG Team

When the photographer was gone, Suzie quickly jumped from Java to adventure gaming

A regular reader has asked us whether we could change our background colour to white, because apparently the black background of The Adventure Gamer has resulted in some queer looks from employers of the reader. As we did not feel we should do any major changes for the blog design just for the sake of one delinquent procrastinating at work, we decided to ask the opinion of all our readers: do you like the current colours of the blog or would you like to see them changed?

Game 67: Maupiti Island (1991) - Introduction

By Ilmari

The game has nothing to do with the island in this map.
The real Maupiti is in Polynesia, the one in game in Indian Ocean.

No, French games have definitely not thrilled us. We have had games with perhaps too original ideas (Captain Blood), games that have looked superficially great, but had poor game mechanics (B.A.T.) and games that should be thrown straight away to some deep cavern, where they can bother no living beings (Emmanuelle). And then there was Mortville Manor.

Reading through Trickster’s playthrough of the game was quite interesting. It appears that translation to English was, as always with these French games, a major problem - it was truly impossible to decipher what the plot was all about.

Conquests of the Longbow – Won! (Plus a Surprise)

Written by Alex

Well, I did it. I have conquered Conquests of the Longbow. And for the first time in a while since I started blogging here, I enjoyed every minute of this game. My only gripe is that I wish it were longer: There were three more game days since my last post, but they came and went quickly. But at least they were consequential and chockablock with action. I’ll go through each day in a similarly swift manner.

But before I do, I want to underscore again how much this game does right. I don’t think we’ve such a game so well-constructed since The Secret of Monkey Island, although one could make a strong case for Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. In any event, we’ll get to all of that in the forthcoming final rating post, although given the tenor of my posts it’s not surprising that Longbow will likely land near the top of the PISSED scale.

And finally, please read this post to the end because, in the grand tradition of the Adventure Gamer blog, I have a cool surprise for everybody.

Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. - Won!*

written by Aperama

… It was like my memory had been erased. I walked away for a while – it was the only way I could see the forest for the jungle. I forgot where I'd installed the game to. It was like the game wanted me to forget that it had ever been played. Could a game really have that sort of power? It had been a week.. no, a week and a half? Two? Even the calendars didn't make any sense any more. Why would someone dip a weenie in green tapioca? Every time I tried to recall what had actually happened in it, it was like I couldn't help but fall down another well of memories. It was thankful I was keeping notes. It.. It was just all terrible. The game was about missing 'celebrities', only even though they referenced some real people, they just had horrible models take some obvious homages to real people. I was willing to say that the game had just been made so that the developers could spend some time with the models they'd hired for their 'acting talents' at first, but then I found it – it seemed something more sinister. What if the 'celebrities' were actually the code for the long lost Larry game? The only way its hypnotising effect could be explained seemed like it must have been because the game wasn't really a game. It was something else.. mind control? I had all of the questions, but none of the answers. I was going to have to look deeper.. into the game...

Where we last left off! Well, sort of..

So, here's the thing. I've played this game before. I kinda remembered it as 'innocuous' – annoying at points but at least not grating in its length or puzzle idiocy. That said, I think I could well be remembering things a touch too kindly – it's as though the subconscious part of my mind kept all of the terrible puzzles in mind, ergo remembering to scrape pigeon droppings off of a windshield. Cause a significant planetary event by reading a paper. I'd like to say that I don't remember anything else, but maybe it'll come to me when I see the screen – who's to say? The game is at least kindly enough to not allow you to dead end yourself for particularly long.. but that also means I've found a dead end in this section of play. It didn't take long, but it was a huge exposition dump, and I also didn't want to be playing any more – so you get a summary of what I've done up to this point. If this were a conventional adventure game, this would likely mean that I'd be at the 'meat of the quest' by now – I'd have had some sort of trial or ordeal to overcome, and now have a good idea of what the game was really about. Oh, I know what the game's about, alright...

Missed Classic 20: The Hobbit (1982) - Introduction

Written by Joe Pranevich

Smaug looms large in the Hobbit.

“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.” With those words in 1937, J. R. R. Tolkien launched a fantasy series that arguably changed the face of genre fiction for all time. Bilbo Baggins, the titular “hobbit” (or halfling) is joined by a wizard and some dwarves to travel across the land, through caves and forests, to defeat a dragon and claim its treasure. Along the way he meets the sage elf Elrond and his hidden valley, lunches with a were-bear named Beorn, catches a ride on some eagles, and plays a riddle game on a hidden lakeshore deep underground. It’s a fantastic book, one of the first novels that I can remember falling in love with as a child. Tolkien followed up his children’s novel with a more mature and intricate sequel trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, between 1954 and 1955. In the years after his death, the Tolkien estate have released two further novels, The Silmarillion (1977) and The Children of Húrin (2007), short stories and poetry, as well as drafts and unfinished portions of yet more stories. The Hobbit itself was adapted into an animated film in 1977 and then, against all common-sense, made into a trilogy of films by Peter Jackson between 2012 and 2014. While some might argue that you should not transform a 293-page children’s novel into nearly eight hours of film, the movies collected nearly three billion dollars at the box office. How can you argue with that? Even if you believe that modern fantasy would exist even without Tolkien, you have to admit one thing: he changed the plural of dwarf from “dwarfs” to “dwarves”. No kidding.