From the forum issue 115 - Adventure games

[IronMaidenRule]

Bedlam on the TRS-80, a beautifully well written text adventure that tasks you with exploring and escaping a mental asylum, it gets really interesting once you get a lobotomy.

[SonicTheHedgehog]

Grim Fandango. Lovely world and art, brilliant characters and voice acting and some original puzzles make this i.m.o one of the best games ever.

[therealeasterbunny]

I am a big fan of Scott Adams' Adventures from the early 80s, especially Pirate's Cove, and more recently I have been a one of the few lucky enough to beta test his new game - The Inheritance.

YES! HE'S BACK! The Grandmaster of Adventure and one of the father's of the computer gaming industry.

http://www.msadams.com has a free demo download for it and I must say, after playing many, many Adventures, two puzzles in this Adventure are pure GENIUS! If they did BAFTAs or OSCARs for Adventure puzzles, these would win hands down. I'm not just saying that because I beta tested it, ... it was one of those "Holy Cow that is genius" after realising the puzzle. SERIOUSLY!

You are not an Adventurer until you have beat the two puzzles in this game. It turns Adventuring on its head.

Magnificent!

[paranoid marvin]

Labyrinth on the C64. Graphically gob-smacking, and great use of a licence too.

[Katzkatz]

Twin Kingdom Valley (C64) - Superb text adventure with limited graphics. Plus, the novelty of the NPCs moving around.

Monkey Island 1 and 2 (Amiga) - They're both great games. I do prefer the first one's storyline though.

Day of the Tentacle (PC) - Love the humour of the game.

Heat of China (PC) - Has an "Indiana Jones" vibe. A great game from Dynamix.

Beneath a Steel Sky (Amiga/PC) - Great sci fi storyline.

Blade Runner (PC) - Has some replay value as it can be different each time you play it.

[Hiro]

Labyrinth on the C64. Graphically gob-smacking, and great use of a licence too.

A bit of a slow start, but great game and movie license indeed. And somehow a precursor to the SCUMM games.

I'm going a bit off-topic here, but maybe some adventure lover can help... I recall a C64 text adventure where if you asked for "score" you got the answer "This is not football manager!" Does anybody remember it?

[antsbull]

Black Cauldron by Sierra Online - came out when I was 11 and had great Disney influenced graphics but more importantly was the first graphic adventure to include multiple routes through the game, multiple solutions to puzzles and a parser-less interface (it was released before Maniac Mansion). For an 11 year old, it was an awesome experience.

As a related note to this thread, there is a guy called Trickster who is playing through the majority of the old adventure games and chronicling them on his blog, with detailed posts of the gameplay, masses of screenshots and also the ability to win the games being played. A very cool blog:

http://advgamer.blogspot.co.nz

[Gibberish Driftwood]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting site.

[kleinemaus]

C&VG always had the best Adventure column, until Julian Rignall stopped it and ZZAP!64 had its own excellent adventure review pages (as did Atari User).
RIP Keith Campbell.

Here's another great link:
http://adventure.if-legends.org/names.html

.

[kleinemaus]

The Dallas Quest from Datasoft, how could I forget this great graphic adventure. Getting past the snake took some doing...

[Gordon Bennett]

Given that adventures are far and away my favourite genre it's going to be nearly impossible to choose just the one. But I'll try.

Under a Killing Moon had it all. It was a massive, four CD epic with fantastic visuals, glorious sound, inventive puzzles, memorable characters and was filled with hilarious situations and asides from beginning to end.

But most of all, the reason I am picking it is that I happened to live for a time in San Francisco in the exact spot on the map where Tex's office is located in the game. A game location which, incidentally, looks nothing at all like the real place.

[Confessor]

The Hobbit. If nothing else, because I learned english (I'm italian) just to play it. And to learn what artificial intelligence was, when you asked Thorin to perform a complex action and then have as an answer: "Thorin says no. Thorin exits the room".

[stvd]

When you say adventure games all that comes to mind is the Spectrum.
Rebel Planet, Robin of Sherwood and the Questprobe series.
And most of level 9's games.

[Gabe]

Either of the two classic Indiana Jones games because...well, who doesn't wish they could be Indy?!

And because they were cracking games with novel ways to play, looked lovely, were funny and had some great puzzles.

But mainly because I wished I was Indy.

[Antiriad2097]

Of the classic text adventures, I'll opt for Bored of the Rings as it got so many things just right. Not too hard, but sometimes taxing, lots of detail and plenty to see and do, but really nailing the humour in a way that so many parodies miss.

From the point and click era I'll choose Full Throttle. Shame its so short and there's no sequel as Ben is such a great character and I'd love to see more of him.