Jon Gracey's

Posts Tagged ‘Adventure Games’

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Games That Rocked…Jonny Garrett’s World – #44: The Secret Of Monkey Island

In Amiga, iOS, Mac, PC, PSN, Xbox 360 on July 19, 2013 at 10:36 am

Today’s post is by Jonny Garrett…

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Title: The Secret Of Monkey Island

Format: Amiga, Mac, Mega CD, iOS, PC, PSN, Xbox 360

Released: October, 1900

Monkey Island Box Art

A great man once said “Always be yourself. Unless you can be a pirate. Then always be a pirate.” I don’t remember who said that, but they are wise and, presumably, a pirate.

Sadly, when I first heard that saying I couldn’t be a pirate. I was 7 and lived in Oxford, a city so far from the sea we thought punts were an efficient way to navigate water. My ambitions were landlocked and somehow scuppered at the same time.

Then everything changed. My dad brought home a copy of The Secret of Monkey Island, installed on about 12 floppy discs and with a glossy stapled manual. From over my elder brother’s shoulder I watched Guybrush Threepwood shuffle onto my screen, dressed like a Jane Austen character pixelated out to protect his identity. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Bec Hill’s World – #39: Starship Titanic

In Mac, PC on June 13, 2013 at 4:23 pm

Today’s post is by Bec Hill.

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Title: Starship Titanic

Format: PC, Mac

Released: 10th Feb, 1998

Starship Titanic Box Art

I don’t know how he had heard about it – as most people I know today still haven’t – but my first memory of Starship Titanic is my Dad picking it up at Cash Converters and stating that it was meant to be a brilliant game. When we took home that little bundle of joy that day, I had no knowledge of how it would remain in my heart and mind forever. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Tom Crowley’s World – #32: The Longest Journey

In PC on April 26, 2013 at 12:46 pm

Today’s post is by Tom Crowley.

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Title: The Longest Journey

Format: PC

Released: April 20th, 2000

TLJ box

“You’re about to take the first step on the longest journey of your life.”
“I must be insane to do this.”
“Yes, it’s pretty much a given.”

I’ve really dug myself into a hole here. All I had to do was pick a computer game to write about in a heartfelt but vaguely amusing way for up-to-but-not-including a thousand words and I had to choose The Longest Journey, about which unsurprisingly there is far, far too much to say. Ask me to describe this game in real life sometime and see a man say a lot of seemingly unrelated words in sequence and wave his hands around. Ah, well. When it comes to retrospectives, we can all be clever with hindsight. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked My World – #25: The Neverhood

In PC, PlayStation on January 30, 2013 at 5:10 pm

Today’s post is by…me! Jon Gracey. Finally pulling my finger out.

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Title: The Neverhood

Format: PC, PlayStation

Released: 31st October, 1996

Neverhood_box_art

Or: Wallace and Gromit via biblical quantities of acid.

The Neverhood. Part claymation adventure game, part existential psychadelia-tinged nightmare, it’s not a game to be played by an eleven year old.

When I was eleven I played The Neverhood. My uncle Johnny worked in Hong Kong and occasionally he’d send games. Hong Kong had a prosperous piracy scene (sadly only in the illegal-copying-media-side, not rum and pieces o’ eight) and sometimes these thin, card CD slips would appear containing enticing, label-free discs within.

At eleven, any game with an animated bent was sure to catch my eye, and titles like Innocent Until Proven Guilty 2 introduced me to the “combine-poisoned-cheese-with-racist-mouse” logic of adventure games. Their slow methodical pace allowed my vaguely completist tendencies to blossom as I slowly scoured the static environments for clues, obessively clicking on each successive pixel like a young Howard Hughes but also a massive virgin. Read the rest of this entry »

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Games That Rocked…Paul Foxcroft’s World – #21: Day Of The Tentacle

In Mac, PC on January 14, 2013 at 8:00 pm

Title: Day Of The Tentacle

Format: PC, Mac

Released: June, 1993

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Hello Jon’s readers, I’m Paul Foxcroft. This guy:

PaulTrust me.

This will mean little to you, but I’m a human man, I live in London, I make my living by pretending; and like Jon, I like games. Here’s the quite simple request I’ve been putting off for a few days now…

“The brief is simple: 1,000 words or less, on a game that you love / has changed your perspective / made a big impact on you in some way.”

So has that eaten into the word count? Yes. But now, you and I swim in the sea of context. Brilliant.

A game that I love, has changed my perspective or has made a big impact on me. There’s so many, I mean really. THERE ARE SO VERY MANY. Read the rest of this entry »

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