Graphic Adventures

Sam & Max Hit the Road
Maniac Mansion + Day of the Tentacle
Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis
Myst
Monkey Island 1+2 (never played three) :(
Grim Fandango
Discworld 1+2
Beneath a Steel Sky
Broken Sword
The 7th Guest

Honourable mention: Wrath of the Gods (did anyone else like this, or was it just a case of right game at the right time?)

So my list could be POX Lucasarts, almost. Shocked at lack of Sierra games, but these were the first ten that came to mind. Sam & Max has to be my all time favourite, with Indiana Jones in second, if only because of the amount of times I played that one through to get the different minigames/endings. I'm sure there are some of my favourite games missing from this list, but it's late and I felt like bashing a POX out :)

T/S - third person, for sure. First person adventures always make me feel lost/confused/claustrophobic (I had this problem with the graphical Zork games, so never got far). Had the same problem with Myst, but got the impression that was exactly what they were going for. I liked 7th guest a lot, possibly because of the animated movement which eliminated the whole lost/confused thing. Also, it seemed to have more of a sense of humour than the other 1st person ones (and was about GHOSTS).

There are loads of others I want to play, like ones I watched my brother play when I was younger. (Cruise for a Corpse, Lure of the Temptress, Curse of Enchantia, Beneath a Steel Sky)

Also, unsure about my inclusion of Future Wars, as I have an issue with Graphical Adventures in which you can die. I don't mind being stuck, and spending ages working out a puzzle etc, but dying and having to go back to your last save (which you inevitably haven't done for a long time) is irritating. I think that explains why I never played ANY of the Space/Police Quest games.

Lucasarts had a shaky start too. Zak McKracken and the first Indiana adventure are both lousy. Maniac Mansion is a weird little game that I've never gotten into, although I give it points for originality. Afterwards they figured things out.

The only Space Quest game i enjoyed was SQ3.

The setting was the most interesting thing, though. Both games were set in a ruined future America in which the human race has been enslaved by giant disembodied eyeballs, and you are employed by them as a kind of amateur detective who has to run around solving murders and stuff. The graphics and mouse interface are fairly crude(we are talking 1987-88 here), but the games were inventive and atmospheric and had loads of potential. I'm sure there's huge scope for doing a modern update, if anyone was still making graphic adventures any more.

This is fucking awesome.

Search Diskworld Noir, actually, quite smart and funny (and not based on the original books at all). And The Longest Journey (I don't know if the sequel is even out over here yet, it's been a million years in the making). And Syberia (ditto)

D: that recent one with the panther.

adam: I have the official GK2 soundtrack CD somewhere, I could try to find and upload it if yr interested.

http://www.davelgil.com/wordpress/?page_id=128

Been a long time since I've seen that tagline for a computer game

SOMEONE PLZ PLAY THIS

I mean, "Jews Quest 6: Kabbalah Nights" is an obvious one, but there's gotta be others

I cleaned out my drawers today and finally found this:

Robert Holmes - Gabriel Knight Soundtrack
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=58DU7NIR

fucking AWESOME

For a second I read that as Rupert Holmes, of "Pina Colada Song" fame.

Was The Shivah worth it? (worth the measly $5 and time to bother, I guess) I was kind of curious for a while, but then forgot about it.

Same question towards that Longest Journey sequel, Dreamfall.

The Shivah was an enjoyable 2 hours or so. It was made with AGS which I hate for all the shitty freeware it has spawned, but the Shivah is high quality.

It is very, very, very against rabbi-officiated intermarriage, however.

The Last Express: Revisiting An Unsung Classic
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3862/the_last_express_revisiting_an_.php

Interview with the game's producer and technical designer. Many interesting factoids about the game's ambitious production, and it sold nothing despite its large critical acclaim. (They actually do mention why it was so hard to find for a while!) Also, a surprising amount of talk about Drake's Fortune and Assassin's Creed, among other games, and the old "narrative vs. gameplay" chestnut.

Recommended reading:

PC Adventure Games
Text adventure games
Sierra classics circa '90
Adventure game "puzzle logic"
Sierra Adventure Games: KQ, SQ, and more
Your all-purpose adventure game kit
King's Quest

And:

Has Anyone Played Lucasfilm's LOOM?
Has Anyone Here Played Lucasfilm's "LOOM" ?
iz the Lucasarts DOS game "The Secret Of Monkey Island" named after the song "Monkey Island" by the 13th Floor Elevators?

Ha, nice hunt. I wasn't sure what thread to post in. Also many of those are pre-ILG!

Gog.com offering Beneath a Steel Sky and Lure of the Temptress for free today. Don't know the second one, but I guess maybe I'll finally get around to Steel Sky. I think it was released as freeware already a while back, but the Gog packages are usually nice and working.

I never got to play that and was just thinking about it! Thanks for the heads up!

They were both released as freeware before. I do love how GOG's releases just work with no fiddling required.

Beneath a Steel Sky 2 announced!

Beneath a Steel Sky 2 is to be developed for iOS, Android, PC, Linux, OSX whilst Revolution is also looking into the possibility of a console release.
http://www.develop-online.net/news/42048/Revolution-greenlights-Beneath-a-Steel-Sky-2

Woah, that has to go under "least expected sequel ever." It's been almost twenty years!

I don't think I ever finished the original.

I knocked through it a few years back. Don't remember a lot of the details but I think it had nice atmosphere and a cool ending but some terrible puzzles.

Grim fandango was awesome. Surprised there hasn't been an iOS port by now.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2298/2444392923_2c9396f7d8_z.jpg?zz=1

this is the first geeky internet product i think i have ever kind of wanted

cool! wonder if dave gibbons will be back doing the artwork? that was at least half of the experience for me.

the other abiding memory is immense frustration at frequent deaths. i'd been trained out of the expectation of instadeath at any moment by the gentle, welcoming playground of lucasarts adventures, where not even being stuck on the ocean floor could kill guybrush.

That's not true! If you left him there for 20 minutes he died. You got a lot of warnings before that point though so it would be pretty much impossible to do it for any other reason than to see what happened.

I was trying to narrow the Lucasarts oeuvre down to just one for that "your personality in 5 games" thread but it was too difficult: Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island I all too brilliant.

But yeah, I was really excited for BaSS as a teenager because I loved graphic adventures and post-apocalyptic sci-fi and here at last was a British company combining the two, but it was just... OK. Cool setting; nice artwork but the graphics themselves, while pretty nice, aren't quite as gorgeous as I'd hoped; jokes fall flat; puzzles and deaths and some pixel-perfect item detection were frustrating.

Still interested to hear about the sequel though.

That's not true! If you left him there for 20 minutes he died.

really?!? the things you learn 20 years after the fact...

I think it's the only way you can die in a Lucasarts adventure post-Loom, but after I typed that I began to wonder if maybe The Dig (which I haven't really played) or Full Throttle were exceptions.

he can hold his breath for a REALLY long time!

i think i have vague recollections of dying in both of those games, actually. my cherished illusions of the gentle, welcoming lucasarts playgrounds are shattered! xp

xp oh yeah, he tells the pirates in the bar he can hold his breath for ten minutes, doesn't he? I guess it's 10 minutes and not 20 then.

Well, it definitely made a change from the Sierra games. Like that tortuous pixel-wide walk over a chasm in King's Quest III, which you didn't just have to do once and then have the game go "ok, you've done that thrilling and innovative puzzle, now we can just teleport you over every time you walk up to the chasm", oh no, every time. Or in Police Quest, every time you fail to follow some minutia of protocol which may or may not have been in the long and tedious booklet.

I honestly believe that was basically the whole point of Police Quest, to show how horribly tedious it was to be a police officer

in that respect, and perhaps in that respect alone, they were an unqualified success.

We had a copy without the manual. had to ring the hint line a couple of times to find out stuff that was probably in the booklet. "administer field sobriety test" sticks firmly in the mind.

I think I beat the first Police Quest and half the second one?

My dodgy copy of PQ1 came with no manual but did come with the hints program so it only provided standard levels of Sierra frustration for me and I do have some fond memories of it.

PQ2 seemed to have all the bad points of 1 with none of the redeeming features, or maybe I was just older and less patient when I played it. There's one point at a crime scene where iirc it totally encourages you to leave after some escaping felon without having done the 6000 hours of dusting fingerprints required to get some item you'll need 4 scenes later, by which time you may have overwritten all your save files when the plot grinds to a halt and you eventually realise maybe you missed something earlier.

PQ3 got seriously souped up graphically and music-wise but was the same exact crap, I think most of your time is spent clocking in and out of work and making sure to file the correct paperwork with your plastic evidence bags. Guh.

I want to ask that girl about LOOM.

Really, the Secret of Monkey Island was MY LIFE for a month or two when i was 10, and LeChuck's Revenge was MY LIFE for months and months, ever since before it came out and I saw all the beautiful original drawn background artwork in some videogame magazine. The 3rd was a huge letdown, but looking back on it, it was still fun. But really, MI1 and MI2 are just incredible. They've affected me in more ways than many of the best films. It still bugs me that they turned LeChuck from a really genuinely frightening dude into a zombie. Also Guybrush's voice. He should never have a voice. Just like how Calvin and Hobbes should never have a voice. They really nailed down the magic of timing the jokes using text. Really incredible stuff. Plus the soundtrack was just AMAZING. Even years after beating it I would start the game just to listen to that song. Even in PC Speaker it sounds beautiful, catchy, somewhat somber, silly, and dramatic, all at once.

All right, I'm done ranting. I liked most of the LucasArts adventures (the Indy ones ruled too) but MI i love forever. I will never get a tattoo but if i had to, it would probably have something to do with MI2...

Oh yeah Day of the Tentacle is some ultimate shit. LucasArts are the Beatles of graphic adventures and that is like the White Album.

Never got into the first Maniac Mansion tho, i think it was slightly before my time. Also the lack of music kind of turned me off.

It's quite sad that Ron Gilbert never got to do his MI3, the end of 2 was just so bizarre and such as wonderful mindfuck. I've spent many an hour searching for an interview where he lays out what his plans were but I fear he will take that secret to the grave.

Maniac Mansion was more tedious + poorly designed than those later LucasArts games (and less forgiving). Def a huge generation gap. Also - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was terrible, especially compared to totally classic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Oracalcum!

Yeah, the less graphically fancy ones pre-Monkey Island always sort of kept me at a distance, something offputting, and I was no stranger to clunky old-school graphics! There was just something really warm and fuzzy and inhabitable about Monkey Island, part of it's definitely that feeling of "timing" that you get at with regards to the jokes. I never did play most of their games actually - I bet I'd totally dig Day of the Tentacle or Sam & Max if checked 'em out today.

OTM about the music too. The opening song, also the LeChuck theme are woven into my brain.

i absolutely love the remixed opening theme they used for MI2's opening credits

DOTT and Sam & Max are both so cracked out, I think they'd hold up well in humor, if not necessarily in gameplay. DOTT had some really crazy, hilarious, unintuitive puzzles. Not as crazy as MI2's, but generally funnier.

some of them i still remember! like aging the bottle of wine to vinegar. or wrapping your mummy up for the costume contest

Mummy costume contest was awesome. Using the severed head in MI1 was just flat-out insanely awesome. One of my favorite parts of MI2 was when you dig up the bone in the graveyard, hold it up triumphantly as lightning crashes, and your pants fall down.

Lightning crashes ..... and your pants fall down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwgUxKe0Ao

Weird to hear the music like this...MT32? CD-ROM reissue?...as opposed to trusty old AdLib/SoundBlaster soundtables...but it's the Monkey Island music, all right.

I think that version did use CD audio for the music, and IIRC it's just the recorded output from the Amiga card. General MIDI version was pretty similar

the ending of LeChuck's Revenge is the most moving sequence i've ever played in a game

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was terrible

i'll have your kneecaps for this kind of talk

Yeah i didn't think it was bad at all.

i felt nothing at the end of lechuck's revenge

I may be confusing http://videogamecritic.net/images/nes/indiana_jones_and_the_last_crusade_(ubisoft_version).png

With http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/virtual_pc_guy/WindowsLiveWriter/IndianaJonesandtheLastCrusadeTheGraphicA_14813/indy3_2.png

Oh yeah, the Action Adventure is HORRIBLE. The Graphic Adventure is not bad!

Last Crusade was decent but the Nazi castle segment can go fuck itself. it's a pain even with a walkthrough open.

the smooth music changes of the first MI2 town are copied in a prominent area of Zelda: Skyward Sword. i'm surprised more games don't do it, it's a winner of a technique.

pshaw, the nazi castle part was great! it is the very last part of the game that was the worst. "the penitent man...FUCKSSAKE" x 1,000

xp iMuse 4 LIFE

I'm selling these fine leather jackets

BTW, just discovered this but gog.com is selling tons of the Sierra games for cheap and additionally, they're apparently on sale this weekend... most things are $2.39 apiece plus there are a lot of combo packs (all five quest for glories for four bucks). Not sure I'll let myself indulge but they ARE out there!

Yeah, today I got the QfG pack and all the Space Quests.

oh shit. i'll write a quick list of recommendations but can i put at the very top and everyone should def get it:

GABRIEL KNIGHT << maybe the greatest and underrated adventure games of the era and all time. hard puzzles, great story, sharp writing.

also these i love are currently on sale:

Police Quest 1
Kings Quest 3
Quest for Glory 1
Space Quest 3
The Zork Anthology (actually also greatest of all time but who hasn't played these yet?)

i don't see any of the leisure suit larrys but #3 was the classic (#1 was okay too)

oh man, arcanum on sale. i've been meaning to pick that up for awhile. do any of you know how these gog games play on windows xp? i'm thinking of paralleling it on my mac... (or know about an easier way of playing a gog game on a mac?)

i think i might get vampire the masquerade too. i missed it when it came out (i remember reading reviews that it was very buggy)

crossing my fingers at what this implies
http://www.gamefront.com/cd-projekt-gog-com-plan-mac-announcement-event/

but i doubt the windows games would transfer easily, just the DOS ones

V:TM was ehhh okay iirc

in the early days of internet warez scene (when i was in high school) all the very early sierra games were super available everywhere online and i went back thru them and hit up like every game in the catalog. even the obscure weirdo ones like gold rush and The Adventures of Willy Beamish

freddy pharkas: frontier pharmacist

Bloodlines was the one people really liked, wasn't it?

(xpost: I mean as far as Vampire:TM games go)

It's really alarming to me how tempting it is to download the QFG pack, just for the prospect of actually playing a character straight through all five games and becoming the most badass unstoppable paladin ever.

Willy Beamish was pretty cool to me as a kid, I'm sure there were some baffling crap puzzles but the graphics were pretty sweet across the board. In general Dynamix was doing a little better than the core Sierra team at that date - Heart of China is also pretty cool despite some terrrrrrrible action sequences.

oh wow, I remember Freddy Pharkas from the Sierra magazine, it is actually, like, any good?

all i remember are the puzzles involving filling pharmaceutical orders???

hahahaha the amazing thing is for a second i thought you were talking about quest for glory and i could actually remember puzzles that seemed like they might actually apply

QfG are pretty great, there is a nice VGA remake of 2 that i think may even be freeware, not sure. 3 was my favorite for some reason, maybe the setting, which was in a faux Africa with an Egyptian city and a couple screens of cool grassy areas and Savannahs to fight monsters in. When it turns into a rain foresty lost civilization at the end it's utterly gorgeous.

Yeah, I LOVED the last third of that game, with the leopard magic people and the overgrown ruined city and your little monkey companion helping you out. Also loved the like utopian "giant tree of peace" area even though just visiting it involved clambering through a bunch of screens of tree-hiking, usually for no payoff. (I did a lot of checking back in old areas just hoping something would, this time, be different...)

I feel like it dragged a bit in the middle, a little too much stat-building by chucking pebbles at stuff in order to pass my warrior tribe tests or whatever. But overall one of the more decent VGA-era Sierra games, I'd put it equal with Longbow and just below Dagger of Amon Ra.

3 was all right, but it was a tad weak in comparison to 1, 2 and 4 - trial by fire and shadows being my favorites

I've probably said this before, but if you subtracted out the maze-like town fabric stuff, which is just straight up indefensible, QFG2 is awesome - fucking cool puzzles, great setting, really different paths for the three character types. I think QFG1 is better, just overall smoother and more satisfying, but I also just love the generic "European magical fantasy past" type setting.

In general I prefer the EGA games, seems like they had to work harder and get more creative to convey the settings...or it's like a halfway point towards the total abstraction of the text adventure where you imagine everything in your head (which I still prefer)...and anyway the EGA ones, being text based, have no fucking hunt-the-pixel stuff.

do you remember those games that were really midpoint between text adventures + graphic adventures? like eric the unready and the spellcasting series?

spellcasting 101: sorcerers get all the girls

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/M/Mindshadow_ingame1.gif

played this a lot, never ever got anywhere after the first journey on a boat, probably screwed up starting from the very first screen

omg that sierra sale! i own most of those on CD but i never play them cuz it's so hard to get them going in dosbox. 2.39 for someone else to make them work in dosbox for me? yesssssssssss.

also as a youth i wasn't allowed to play phantasmagoria, i only got to play the demo they included in the ~roberta williams anthology~ which didn't have any of the cool sex or violence. i am playing the shit out of some phantasmagoria now, hell yeah.