The Adventure Game (Or The Rise And Fall Of LucasArts)

[Consignia]

I've always wanted to give that Woodruff game a go. I loved the Goblins games (well, 2 and 3), but never I got around to playing it. I remember it being CD only at the time, and although I had a CD drive, it was prohibitively above my pocket money.

[Phil_A]

It's quite interesting how many misfires there were in the early years of point and click gaming. It really did take a few years before the design quirks were ironed out, which unfortunately means there a lot of games from the late 80s - early 90s that just don't hold up well with the passage of time.

Lankhor's Mortville Manor was very much a predecessor to CFAC. it was a mystery game that entailed copious note-taking and utilised synthesised speech for all the dialogue, but this had the effect of making all the characters sound like monotone Gallic robots, and half of what they said was indecipherable. There were no subtitles, of course.

I also remember a game based on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea(yet another French one, this time from Coktel Vision), which I rented for a week once and just found utterly baffling. You were trapped on Captain Nemo's sub and had to figure out how to escape, but the means of doing this was opaque to the point of frustration. I just seemed to prat about doing odd mini-games and playing Nemo's organ(steady) until my time ran out. Actually, it was an awful game.

I was always intrigued by the MacVentures series (Deja Vu I & II, The Uninvited, Shadowgate), but they proved incredibly disappointing - interesting concepts let down by badly dated gameplay mechanics. There was something particularly perverse about the way they would give you a strictly limited inventory space, but then fill every room with useless red herring items so you would never know for sure if what you were carrying was any use. I'm no fan of arbitrary time limits, either. Why bother constructing a rich, detailed environment for the player and then pointlessly restrict their ability to explore it?

[Steven]

It's quite interesting how many misfires there were in the early years of point and click gaming. It really did take a few years before the design quirks were ironed out, which unfortunately means there a lot of games from the late 80s - early 90s that just don't hold up well with the passage of time.

I think Maniac Mansion is the breakout star of these early forays into the genre, it's still fun to play so must have been an absolute revelation at the time, an important element that other games didn't have was the animation, the fact the characters moved around and background scrolled gave it real life. Along with cutscenes and the horror based story it made it much more like an interactive movie.

There's a very crude mix of styles in these early games because of the roots of the genre the server-based Will Crowther text-adventure Adventure and Colossal Cave were obviously RPG influenced. The later games inspired by these incorporated graphics but were unsure of how to interpret this content graphically so the 1st person RPG type of look and interface became common with those MacVenture titles and those influenced by them.

The things we find horrible today like time-limits, a limited inventory and these kind of things were just accepted back then because the people putting them out were obsessive nerds toying with ideas and trying to make a difficult game, and since the users were also obsessive nerds who'd just hammer away on these things for hours it scarce mattered - except of course a modern audience approaches the form in a much more leisurely manner.

The Mortville Manor title looks a bit shocking, I mean the voice thing is innovative but the guy was a bit silly not converting the speech patterns for English or maybe even providing subtitles. Nevertheless it obviously is drawing off the MacVenture stuff quite heavily. I remember enjoying this Dylan Dog game (based on an Italian comic) back in the day, which has a similar RPG style with lots of dialogue stuff involved. Companions of Xanth was another more RPG styled one I remember playing, think it was one of the first CD games I played because it came free with some magazine.

[biggytitbo]

I don't remember mortvile manor but played the sequal maupeti Island, and the speech synthesis gave it a very peculiar I feeling indeed. I presume it was only possible because the amiga could do it natively?

[Steven]

I presume it was only possible because the amiga could do it natively?

Obviously, but I'm sure you could program aspects of the voice to make it sound English or French for example and the game author (being French) obviously didn't comprehend how awful the dialogue sounded for native English speakers.

[Phil_A]

I don't remember mortvile manor but played the sequal maupeti Island, and the speech synthesis gave it a very peculiar I feeling indeed. I presume it was only possible because the amiga could do it natively?

I don't think these games were using "pure" electronic voice synthesis, but phonetic vocal samples stitched together into sentences. Unfortunately Lankhor's speech engine didn't seem to account for natural inflections, hence the dalek-like intonation of all the characters.

The Atari ST speech module used to be fairly infamous and turns up in loads of programs and quite a few dance tracks of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJIVrEg-6YI

Interestingly, it wasn't quite as sophisticated as SAM on the C64, which could actually do rising and lowering inflections pretty well, and pitch and speed variations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm4ZCGgzeeU

[Phil_A]

I think Maniac Mansion is the breakout star of these early forays into the genre, it's still fun to play so must have been an absolute revelation at the time, an important element that other games didn't have was the animation, the fact the characters moved around and background scrolled gave it real life. Along with cutscenes and the horror based story it made it much more like an interactive movie.

There's a very crude mix of styles in these early games because of the roots of the genre the server-based Will Crowther text-adventure Adventure and Colossal Cave were obviously RPG influenced. The later games inspired by these incorporated graphics but were unsure of how to interpret this content graphically so the 1st person RPG type of look and interface became common with those MacVenture titles and those influenced by them.

The things we find horrible today like time-limits, a limited inventory and these kind of things were just accepted back then because the people putting them out were obsessive nerds toying with ideas and trying to make a difficult game, and since the users were also obsessive nerds who'd just hammer away on these things for hours it scarce mattered - except of course a modern audience approaches the form in a much more leisurely manner.

Indeed, and I think that was half the problem with Sierra adventures in the 90s; they were still being designed with that mentality in mind, not accepting that gaming as a whole had moved on and players just wouldn't have the patience to put up with that kind of thing like they would've done in the past.

[Steven]

I don't think these games were using "pure" electronic voice synthesis, but phonetic vocal samples stitched together into sentences. Unfortunately Lankhor's speech engine didn't seem to account for natural inflections, hence the dalek-like intonation of all the characters.

If that's true it's quite mental, most computers at the time had the ability to synthesize speech from text. I mean fair play for innovating the other method using a patchwork of contestants and vowels or whatever but with the French stress it sounds bloody terrible, not to mention would be difficult to do and take up a lot more disk space, literally a colossal waste of effort.

I think it may be another symptom of developers being obsessive nerds who have an idea and the time/inclination/ability to actually get these very difficult things done, which is a great thing but without the actual wherewithal to realize the initial idea is actually a bad one or irrelevant. You sometimes need another guy who's got their eye on the consumer market etc, it's the old Woz and Jobs dynamic.

[Steven]

I was imagining titles like Mortville Manor were created by a single programmer doing the entire game, hence not having a sounding board for ideas, but it seems there was a small team of 4 people involved in the games production. It makes me wonder how such bad ideas and plot-holes and mistakes get into games when you do have a few other voices involved. This blog goes through someone attempting to play the game and points out how frustrating it all is, eventually pointing out the game had to be changed because you could basically skip most of it by doing a couple of actions at the correct time. So things like 'testing' are important and it's difficult for the actual developers to do this because their judgement is clouded by being the creators, a lot of random actions you can do will not occur to them, it's like a magician doing a magic trick on himself.

The same blog goes through the first time playing Maniac Mansion as well as many other titles, so is worth a look at before downloading and playing any of these old muses. Getting through Mortville Manor and the Sierra titles etc, the guy is surely a glutton for punishment.

I have some small experience with tunnel-visioned developers as I knew a programmer guy when I was a kid who I think was associated with Magnetic Fields who put out the Lotus series, also stuff like Supercars 1 and 2 - the guy appeared in both games as his face was scanned in as the car dealer. Anyway his living room literally stank like an ashtray and his computer was caked in yellow nicotine from obviously coding shit all day and night while chainsmoking, I think his wife helped doing the graphics and me and a mate used to swap games and stuff with him and one day he asked us round to 'test' a game he was working on. It was a kid of Heimdall type game but when you killed enemies they just kept respawning over and over again without you knowing when it was going to end, so you just got stuck in these dull endless fights and we said how this element wasn't fun at all and basically he just ignored any of our comment and just wanted positive feedback. In the end I think he bribed a reviewer at The One Amiga magazine to give it a high score..

[Phil_A]

The same blog goes through the first time playing Maniac Mansion as well as many other titles, so is worth a look at before downloading and playing any of these old muses. Getting through Mortville Manor and the Sierra titles etc, the guy is surely a glutton for punishment.

Ahh thanks, I'll check that out. I follow a similar one called The CRPG Addict, which is a fella gradually working through every computer RPG from the mainframe era to the present, and it's really interesting seeing the genre develop from it's most basic elements. There are also many, many examples of "What could the designers possibly have been thinking?". Like for instance in the Wizardry series, if any of your characters die, the game permanently deletes them from the save file. Seriously.

I have some small experience with tunnel-visioned developers as I knew a programmer guy when I was a kid who I think was associated with Magnetic Fields who put out the Lotus series, also stuff like Supercars 1 and 2 - the guy appeared in both games as his face was scanned in as the car dealer. Anyway his living room literally stank like an ashtray and his computer was caked in yellow nicotine from obviously coding shit all day and night while chainsmoking, I think his wife helped doing the graphics and me and a mate used to swap games and stuff with him and one day he asked us round to 'test' a game he was working on. It was a kid of Heimdall type game but when you killed enemies they just kept respawning over and over again without you knowing when it was going to end, so you just got stuck in these dull endless fights and we said how this element wasn't fun at all and basically he just ignored any of our comment and just wanted positive feedback. In the end I think he bribed a reviewer at The One Amiga magazine to give it a high score..

Ha, he looks a bit like Tony Clifton. Was this the game, by any chance? http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/crystal-dragon

[Steven]

Ha, he looks a bit like Tony Clifton. Was this the game, by any chance? http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/crystal-dragon

I don't know, I'd need to see screenshots - and well basically it looked like Heimdall. I can't see his name listed in the credits on that site, all I remember is hearing he bribed someone at The One magazine to give it 90%, I think I did see the review at the time and other mags it was reviewed in scored it very low. I loved Supercars 1 and 2, they were really fun multiplayer games and after knowing this guy for a year or two he said he was the sleazy car dealer in the game and it was really funny when you noticed (he's featured on the wanted poster in the police station of the 2nd game as an in-joke. I think in the game I tested his wife was one of the witches on the title screen as they'd just scan in people then draw over them in Deluxe Paint or something as an easier way to create game art back then.

EDIT. Think this was it Tower Of Souls, it certainly looked very similar to this, I looked at the related publishers of the other game. Looking up the credits and yes the guy's company developed it, and there's a similar pattern of very poor reviews of 20% with a few high (probably bribed) ones thrown in! There's even video reviews and he's redeveloped it for iOS, haha!

[Steven]

The blog I previously mentioned has a few titles which I've never heard of, and a wealth of information about the format and background of each title plus journals of actually playing through each game and its strengths and weaknesses. So I'll just link to a few of the introduction pages:

Below The Root (1984)

Tass Times In Tonetown (1986)

Captain Blood (1988)

Psycho (1988)

KULT: The Temple Of Flying Saucers (1989)

Circuit's Edge (1989)

The Scoop (1989)

I played a bit of KULT yesterday and it's a very strange game in look and approach:

[madhair60]

Loving this thread, inspired me to set up SCUMMVM with loads of games.

Also I'd like to recommend this book:



772 pages, b/w, addictive as sin.  I devoured it.  £16.99 on Amazon but worth every penny imo.

[biggytitbo]

The ending of Curse of Monkey Island really lets it down. Talk about abrupt!

[Steven]

Also I'd like to recommend this book:

772 pages, b/w, addictive as sin.  I devoured it.  £16.99 on Amazon but worth every penny imo.

That looks interesting and pretty lengthy like a long gnarled cock, duly noted, cheers.

The ending of Curse of Monkey Island really lets it down. Talk about abrupt!

I remember disliking the game generally and don't remember the end but recall it was dreadful. I mean, they even begin in a typical fanfic 'get out of jail free card' way by avoiding the end of Monkey 2 and just begin as if that storyline didn't happen - they just throw in a few carnival references to supposedly link both games. Ron Gilbert knows the 'secret' of Monkey Island and what the story of Monkey 3 should be, so only time will tell if he can get the license back - maybe Telltale Games could buy it off Disney at some point?

[biggytitbo]

It's great up until then, imo.

[Steven]

Finally finished Zak McKracken but had to use a guide for a lot of bits, really. It's a really infuriating game because there are so many ways to get stuck, having finite cash to fly from country to country, lots of mazes, multiple characters, finite oxygen on Mars, it's a bloody nightmare. A few times even using Save Games I had to restart because of some error I didn't realise and had become stuck. I find it very doubtful anybody could have finished this game without help and constant Saves?

[Lt Plonker]

That looks interesting and pretty lengthy like a long gnarled cock, duly noted, cheers.

I remember disliking the game generally and don't remember the end but recall it was dreadful. I mean, they even begin in a typical fanfic 'get out of jail free card' way by avoiding the end of Monkey 2 and just begin as if that storyline didn't happen - they just throw in a few carnival references to supposedly link both games. Ron Gilbert knows the 'secret' of Monkey Island and what the story of Monkey 3 should be, so only time will tell if he can get the license back - maybe Telltale Games could buy it off Disney at some point?

It's a cracking adventure game in terms of visuals and puzzles but COMI marks the point that it becomes a full blown cartoon and loses some of that bite, that moodiness of the first two. For all its goofiness, the first two had moments that felt quite threatening and sinister - being stalked by LeChuck in the underground tunnels in LeChuck's Revenge used to terrify me as a child but in COMI I can't take him seriously. He's whiny and lovesick and just annoying. Right from the off Elaine just can't be arsed with him and brushes his threats off with an eye roll and a snarky remark. I still really like COMI though; it's a solid game I just think the tone is a bit off. Maybe it's the voices? I dunno.

[Consignia]

I only played Curse much later on, even way after Escape, but it never clicked with me. Although nearly everything I associated with the tone of the series going to shit is actually in Escape. Starbuccaneers, insult-fucking-everything, Monkey Kombat, that pirate holiday resort, gah. But I still enjoyed it more than Curse. But neither hold a candle to the original two.

I haven't even bothered with the Telltale ones. Are they any good?

[Rev]

Curse is probably okay as a game in itself, but I came to it about 10 years after my last dabble in the Monkey Island world on the Amiga, and the atmosphere felt so off.  It's not the cartoon nature of it, or the voice acting, it's just that the writing's a bit slack and it all seems passionless.  With the first two you really get the feeling that a bunch of people put everything they had into making something that they wanted to make, but with Curse it felt a bit more like a bunch of people who wanted to get a good game out that met reasonable expectations and was delivered on time.  Nothing at all wrong with that, of course, but its blood does seem a lot thinner.

Escape is a total fucking travesty, though.  It's all so cold and empty.

[Mister Six]

Replaying Curse of Monkey Island I forgot just how good it is. It was late in the day but it was the perfection of the Lucasarts adventure game formula, finally managing to evolve out all the annoying and frustrating elements from the gameplay and just leave the fun.

Nooo, you're insane. Great cel-animated intro, great opening with Wally on the pirate ship, okayish start to the second chapter, and then an irreversible descent into plotless meanderings, incoherent puzzle design (use hammer on nail to catapult corpse into graveyard where it comes to life and runs off with a ghost? Wha?) and lots of tedious callbacks to previous games instead of building a bigger, more exciting world. RUBBISH.

[Steven]

Curse Of suffers from being actual fanfiction, it's a franchise that has no association with the previous games (except maybe Michael Land doing music), and this is apparent when you have familiar characters and callbacks patched over the top like a carapace but something underneath is deeply wrong - like Hannibal Lecter wearing the eviscerated guard's visage. LeChuck isn't a scary manifestation of evil anymore he's a goof, a foil, Gov Marley is now all sassy and wisecracking, Guybrush suddenly has a phobia of porcelain because that's funny right? They avoid the ending of Monkey Island 2 and just makes some references to carnivals as a get-out-clause, shove in a bunch of pirate-insult fights and recurring characters to remind you of the first two games, but they don't really add very much new. Aside from the change in graphics (which I dislike very much) there's very little to get excited about. It's essentially consuming the first two games, digesting them a bit and then vomiting up some incongruous mixture of elements and slapping a bow on it in the shape of the pretty graphics.

I mean c'mon, look at the character design for LeChuck, it's horrendous.

[MojoJojo]

Curse is probably okay as a game in itself, but I came to it about 10 years after my last dabble in the Monkey Island world on the Amiga, and the atmosphere felt so off. It's not the cartoon nature of it,

Much the same thing with me.

or the voice acting, it's just that the writing's a bit slack and it all seems passionless.  With the first two you really get the feeling that a bunch of people put everything they had into making something that they wanted to make, but with Curse it felt a bit more like a bunch of people who wanted to get a good game out that met reasonable expectations and was delivered on time.  Nothing at all wrong with that, of course, but its blood does seem a lot thinner.

I think voice acting is a part of it... I think it killed a lot of the spontaneity and playfulness in the first games. It's hard to imagine a manager signing off  "I'm selling these fine leather jackets"[nb]which was just a bizarre non-sequiter until at least a decade after I played it[/nb] when it will cost $$$$ in studio time.

[Jerzy Bondov]

'I'm selling these fine leather jackets' appears first in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as an option if you get caught sneaking around the Nazi castle. Of course Indy is wearing a leather jacket so it makes sense. Dropping it verbatim into Monkey Island is brilliant. Somebody must have been tickled by it.

Edit: I guess you realised that but it's still interesting. Fuck it

[Steven]

Edit: I guess you realised that but it's still interesting. Fuck it

Partly that, but also partly Lucasfilm were actually selling Indiana Jones jackets to promote one of the movies so the Lucasfilm Games team all got one and hence putting the reference in the game.

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

Genuinely never get the stick CoMI regularly gets. It's always exactly the same too, none of which particularly chimes with me.

I'm always particularly perturbed by the blind faith many fans have in Ron Gilbert and his alleged vision of the true 'third' MI, particularly as the first two games were decidedly a group effort rather than a singular vision, and his recent work has been middling at best.

All his talk of the concepts for a third game smack more of an entirely fictional MacGuffin he enjoys tantalising said fans with, purely for his own amusement. It is, of course, easy to author a potentially perfect game if you never actually create it or even give any info on the ideas behind it for people to judge.

Escape on the other hand is where the rot really set in.

[Steven]

I'm always particularly perturbed by the blind faith many fans have in Ron Gilbert and his alleged vision of the true 'third' MI, particularly as the first two games were decidedly a group effort rather than a singular vision, and his recent work has been middling at best.

All his talk of the concepts for a third game smack more of an entirely fictional MacGuffin he enjoys tantalising said fans with, purely for his own amusement. It is, of course, easy to author a potentially perfect game if you never actually create it or even give any info on the ideas behind it for people to judge.

It's probably entirely a MacGuffin, but who cares? Nobody really is interested in what the 'secret' of Monkey Island was, only that LeChuck sailed off to discover it and he pretty much was what the plot revolved around and not the secret in of itself. Gilbert hasn't really done another adventure game since Monkey Island 2, other than his children's series for Humungous Entertainment. However now he's working with Gary Winnick again for Thimbleweed Park which bodes well, and with Dave Grossman at Telltale Games who have used the license and Lucasfilm being sold to Disney there's scope there for Gilbert's version of Monkey 3 at some point in the future if they can do a deal.

I don't really care if he's got the entire thing figured out and besides, the game he may have had ideas for back in the early 90s and NOW would probably be very different, that game is lost to time but I have some level of confidence whatever was put out would certainly be better than the other sequels. I don't know if Tim Schafer would be involved, but he and Gilbert seemed on good terms while working at Double Fine, Schafer even dangled him as pinwheel during his adventure game Kickstarter campaign to get older fans pledging cash.

[Lt Plonker]

Much the same thing with me.
I think voice acting is a part of it... I think it killed a lot of the spontaneity and playfulness in the first games. It's hard to imagine a manager signing off  "I'm selling these fine leather jackets"[nb]which was just a bizarre non-sequiter until at least a decade after I played it[/nb] when it will cost $$$$ in studio time.

The voice thing is interesting. I sometimes wonder how much of the humour comes from my own interpretation/reading of the dialogue. Having a voice kind of nails the line - and character saying it - to the wall a bit.

[Eclectic Boogaloo]

I've only ever skimmed in and out of the point and click adventure genre, it wasn't until a few years ago I started playing a few LucasArts classics (Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion) and a few Sierra titles (Well, ok, just the Leisure Suit Larry titles) but its been a genre I've always been fascinated with...

...With that in mind, I recently bought a game for the Wii that, although doesn't sit comfortably with some of the games named in this thread, it did give me a taste of the P&C adventure style.

It's called Zak & Wiki by Capcom - and yes, strictly speaking you POINT and CLICK on items to solve clues, but what I like most about it is it manages to give you the puzzles and item collecting/using skills you used in the games of yore - but in micro bites - with each challenge contained in a single level at a time. This means you can dip in and out and progress at a more leisurely pace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_%26_Wiki:_Quest_for_Barbaros%27_Treasure

I'm really enjoying it - its aimed at kids, but frankly, some of the puzzles are quite taxing. It's got a great sense of humour, good characters and gives more than a hint of Monkey Island in the world it creates.

Puzzles range from using the environment to progress, to using a collection of weird and wonderful gadgets to get your way to the treasure hidden on each level.

In fact, probably the best way to think about it is if you imagined that every level was like a cartoony pirate themed room from The Crystal Maze.

And then, i walked into CEX the other day and saw a BROKEN SWORDS: Directors Cut game for the Wii!! Only a couple of quid? So.. worth a punt?

To end.. a link, to an article about Fate of Atlantis - which I hadn't considered before, but now heartily agree with!

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/04/11/fate-atlantis-movie-techniques-games

[Bored of Canada]

Curse is great and may even be stronger than Secret. Which starts off great but falls apart in the second half.

LeChuck's revenge is the best. It's brilliant.