The adventure thread (Free beer and false advertising!)

[Nael]

Name: The Adventures of Willy Beamish
Developer: Dynamix
Released: 1991
Description: "This game stars Willy Beamish a young boy who wants nothing more then to spend his summer playing Nintari (Sounds like a similar early 90’s system we all loved to play) and winning the Nintari gaming championship. Of course things do not go according to Willy’s plans as he becomes swept up into a zany adventure that pits him against the two most powerful figures in town, Leona, the head of the very powerful Toot Sweet Company, and Louis the Leader of the Plumbers Union when they unite to try and bring the entire city under their power. Throw in two loyal friends, a crazy pet frog called horny, a family of ninjas, a talking parrot, a ghost, and a vampire babysitter for good measure and you get a wacky and fun filled Sierra adventure." (This game is amazingly short though, just to warn ya. Kind of a fun diversion if you're extremely bored.)
Status: Abandonware
Link: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/179/The+Adventures+of+Willy+Beamish.html

 

[fastpunk]

Name: Broken Sword series (The Shadow of the Templars, The Smoking Mirror, The Sleeping Dragon, The Angel of Death)
Developer: Revolution Software
Released: 1996, 1997, 2003, 2007
Description: The Shadow of the Templars introduced the quirky and refreshingly different gaming heroes, George Stobbart and Nico Collard to the gaming world. Humour, adventure, detective work and conspiracy on a global scale are all elements that define the Broken Sword series.
Link: http://www.revolution.co.uk/index.php

 

[pug987]

I thought that as long as a company owned the rights to publish a game (even if they don't), it wasn't abandonware? If I'm wrong, then Loom is abandonware as well I'd presume (since the only way to get it now is that adventure box, and they don't really sell it anymore).

A game is considered abandonware when, although the company that made it still retains all the commercial rights, they don't sell it anymore. Games that you can purchase from a company's site aren't abandonware. Games that are sold as part of a collection aren't abandonware.
Games that you can find in stores alone or as part of a collection but have been there for years and there are just a few last pieces left are abandonware.

Of course the above is just a rough description. Sites that deal with abandonware have much better descriptions. Of course abandonware are just as illegal to download as any commercial game that you don't own. Still the whole logic behind them is that the companies aren't interested in selling them anymore and it would be a shame to deprive the gamers of some great gems of the past. As a result, although technically illegal, no one is gonna care enough to prosecute these sites. In fact many old companies give their old games for free on their own or support the abandonware movement.

Sites like The Underdogs have very stict policies and quickly remove any download links for games that are rereleased (they did so for example with eye of the beholder 1 and 2 when they were released as part of a collection). The Underdogs has an extensive database of old games and provides links to sites where you can buy them for many of them that aren't true abandonware.

 

[Nedrah]

I thought that as long as a company owned the rights to publish a game (even if they don't), it wasn't abandonware? If I'm wrong, then Loom is abandonware as well I'd presume (since the only way to get it now is that adventure box, and they don't really sell it anymore).

A game is considered abandonware when, although the company that made it still retains all the commercial rights, they don't sell it anymore. Games that you can purchase from a company's site aren't abandonware. Games that are sold as part of a collection aren't abandonware.
Games that you can find in stores alone or as part of a collection but have been there for years and there are just a few last pieces left are abandonware.

Of course the above is just a rough description. Sites that deal with abandonware have much better descriptions. Of course abandonware are just as illegal to download as any commercial game that you don't own. Still the whole logic behind them is that the companies aren't interested in selling them anymore and it would be a shame to deprive the gamers of some great gems of the past. As a result, although technically illegal, no one is gonna care enough to prosecute these sites. In fact many old companies give their old games for free on their own or support the abandonware movement.

Sites like The Underdogs have very stict policies and quickly remove any download links for games that are rereleased (they did so for example with eye of the beholder 1 and 2 when they were released as part of a collection). The Underdogs has an extensive database of old games and provides links to sites where you can buy them for many of them that aren't true abandonware.

Thanks for clearing that up, pug.
If it's ok with everyone (I care to listen to), I will mark games as abandoned if I can't find them on Amazon and either Underdogs or Abandonia have it as a download. I'd go with Underdogs exclusively, but they obviously don't have the "hit" games.

 

[Longshanks]

Name: Realms of the Haunting
Developer: Gremlin
Description: This is one of my favourites, the best action/adventure I've played, great as an adventure game, and the action elements (FPS) are also good. Utilises the Doom engine, and contains 2 hours of often cheesy but quite well done FMV. Think Clive Barker's Undying with plenty of puzzles and a whole lot of game (probably the longest adventure game I've played). For those reflex lacking adventure gamers, there is a difficulty slider for action as well as puzzles. From the box: "The untimely death of his father leads Adam Randell to the Cornish vlillage of Helston and a remote and seemingly desolate country home. Unkown to him he has entered the epicentre of the battle between dark and light fought throughout the milennia".
Status: Abandonware
Link: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=889

 

[Nael]

Here's another one of my old favorites that is abandonware now.


Name: Alone in the Dark
Developer: Infogrames
Released: 1992
Description: A very atmospheric and Lovecraftian adventure game. Can't beat the badass, early 3D models either
Status: Abandonware
Link: Alone in the Dark@Abandonia

 

[Keldryn]

Name: The Pandora Directive
Developer: Access Software
Description: This game is apparently part of a series centered around a guy named Tex Murphy, with the plot taking place in a post WW3 San Francisco. It uses some kind of "Virtual World" 3D engine which is said to provide a fully explorable gameworld. Unfortunately I have not played the game myself, yet. The wiki page got me pretty interested, though! A better description from someone who is familiar with the game would be nice.
Status: Amazon doesn't have it, so propably abandoned.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pandora_Directive

The Pandora Directive is part of a series of five games starring Tex Murphy, a down-on-his luck private investigator living in post-apocalyptic San Francicso. The games are clearly inspired by film noir detective movies.

Mean Streets
Developer: Access Software, 1989
Description: Tex Murphy is hired by a beautiful woman to investigate the death of her father. Mean Streets was one of the first games to make use of the 256-color mode on the then-new VGA cards, and was also one of the first games to use digitized photos and film clips of actors. The game used Access' patented RealSound technology to play digital sound effects and speech through the PC speaker, without requiring any "expensive" sound hardware. And in 1989, PC sound cards were expensive and relatively new to the market, and very few games supported them. You investigate areas in the game through a point of view very reminiscent of Sierra adventure games of the era. A feature dropped from future installments in the game was the flight simulator-esque mode where you fly your car around the city.

Martian Memorandum
Developer: Access Software, 1991
Description: 2nd game in the series, and I never played it, so I can't say much else. Might have had you travel to a Mars colony or something.

Under a Killing Moon
Developer: Access Software, 1994
Description: 3rd game in the series, and set up the technology and structure of the following two games. You explored areas in a free-roaming 3D (non-accelerated) interface, and you would simply "fast travel" between areas, instead of manually flying as in the first game. First game in the series to use FMV cutscenes instead of digitized actor "heads" that only spoke a handful of their lines in full speech. The acting was really, really bad for the most part. There's a sticker on the box proudly proclaiming that it is narrated by James Earl Jones.

The Pandora Directive is the fourth game in the series, and mainly re-used the technology that drove UKAM. It did feature 3 or 4 endings, depending on what you did during the game.

Tex Murphy: Overseer
Developer: Access Software, 1998
Description: Overseer is a re-telling of Tex's first case, as portrayed in Mean Streets. In the context of the game, he is sitting down with his girlfriend and recounting the events of that first game. This was one of the first games to be released on DVD (had higher quality video than the CD version), and while it was built on the technology of the previous games, the 3D exploration mode supported 3D accelerators (IIRC).

There were apparently two more games planned in the series, but they were cancelled shortly after Access was acquired by Microsoft.

I would also like to add to the list:

Rise of the Dragon
Developer: Dynamix/Sierra, 1989
Description: A rather Blade Runner-ish game featuring a PI named Blade Hunter. For its day, the game featured some pretty "mature" content and didn't pull a lot of punches. Many of the puzzles featured multiple solutions, there were a number of different endings, and it was entirely possible to screw up your game irrevocably if you pissed off the wrong people. There's also a 3-day time limit, and if you spend too much time traveling around and not solving the central mysteries of the game, the game will end. Some frustrating bits (due to being able to totally fuck things up), but a fantastic adventure game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_dragon

 

[Nedrah]

Thanks guys, I updated the list accordingly

Please keep coming up with games, there are still plenty of the big ones (mkay, just added some myself) that we have not covered, not to mention the indie ones.

 

[Longshanks]

Title: Dark Earth
Developer: Kalisto
Description: A grtty, far post apocalyptic (comet, not nuclear, been over a hundred years since) science fiction setting, a mostly compelling story, too few, but quite good puzzles along with some affect of choice and a minor plot branch, make this a game I’d highly recommend. It does have an action component (real-time combat), and it’s not all that enjoyable, luckily it is possible to automate it, so that all you need do is hold Ctrl (though I’ve not tried it). Dark Earth is set 300 years in the future, and there is a decent amount of information and history provided in the manual. By modern standards the graphics are mixed, very nice 2D backgrounds, but blocky and low detail character models. From the manual: Join Arkhan, a Guardian of Fire in the city of Sparta, as he is swept from his routine life and daily duties to a new and terrifying ordeal. Ever-darkening plots of treachery and greed surround him as a fearful darkness envelops the city and an unknown evil threatens to transform him into a monstrous creature.
Status: Abandonware
Link: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=4596

 

[Longshanks]

Title: Of Light and Darkness
Developer: Tribal Dreams
Description: A fully 3D FPP Adventure, where you are tasked with preventing the Apocalypse by defeating Gar Hob (voiced by James Woods), the Dark Lord of the Seventh Millennium. Gameplay entails redeeming the Dark Lord’s apparitions (evil-doers through the ages, such as Aleister Crowley and Caligula) by matching them with one of the deadly sins and the correct colour star. There’s little adventuring in this game, you pick up artifacts from which you learn clues about an apparition’s crimes, bringing you closer to deducing the apparition’s sin, repeat this for each apparition and that’s the gameplay. The game is timed, and it is important to move about the world quickly (this gets very hectic late in the game), speaking of moving about, the quick, automated movement of the camera in OLAD up, down, and side to side is likely to cause motion sickness for those who are susceptible. Whilst this is a severely flawed game, I still quite enjoyed it, it looks great (environments created by supposedly world famous artist, Gil Bruvel), the voice acting is good and I enjoyed piecing together each apparition’s sin (well, maybe for a bit over half the game anyway). Could have been a very good game with more varied and less timed gameplay.
Status: Abandonware?
Link: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=1367 (not available for download)


Feel free to edit my descriptions as necessary, some are more review than description.

 

[Nedrah]

I'm fine with your style, no changes

Thank you, good contributions so far!

 

[Au naturel]

Title: Legend of the Sword
Developer: Rainbird
Description: The evil sorcerer Suzar and his army of mutated humanoids attacked the land of Anar and defeated its bravest warriors in a bloody battle. You were the only one who was able to escape. You were picked up by a royal merchant ship and brought to the king Darius. The people of Anar know the ancient legends, that tells about magical sword and shield, whose power alone is able to defeat Suzar. You and five other adventurers have volunteered to venture into the wilderness of Anar and to retrieve the magical items.

Legend of the Sword is a fantasy adventure game with slight RPG elements (top-down view, day and night cycle, world map exploration, traditional RPG plot, etc.). But the core gameplay is that of a pure puzzle-solving adventure. You interact with the environment by typing commands, and only a few of them are represented by icons (movement in eight directions as well as going in and out).

Status: Abandonware

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=627

I loved this game, and played it to death. Very difficult though, so you are warned.

 

[Au naturel]

Title: The Adventures of Maddog Williams
Developer: Game Crafters
Description: The Adventures of Maddog Williams is an adventure game that was released as freeware due to lack of sales. It was originally released in 1992, and was very successful in Europe with the Atari.

Help Maddog rescue the beautiful Princess Leoria and free her father King Thaylor. Help him vanquish the Evil Serak and restore peace to the lands of Duridian. The game plays in a similar vein to earlier Kings quest titles.


Status: Abandonware

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php? ... ams%2C+The

 

[VonVentrue]

Name:Black Dahlia
Developer: Take 2 Interactive
Description: A horribly underrated, yet one of the best FMV adventure games of all time. It's set in Cleveland, in the early 1940s; the player assumes the role of Jim Pearson (a new member of a recently formed federal agency, the Office of Information), who has been assigned the task of investigating the Brotherhood of Thule (supposedly, a Nazi-related organization). Black Dahlia weaves an intriguing, compelling story with excellent, mind challenging puzzles. It's truly a remarkable, suspenseful game - however, the very ending part of the game might not be everyone's cup of tea.
Status:Commercial
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dahl ... puter_game)


Name:Grim Fandango
Developer:Lucas Arts
Description: "So, you're not sure what Grim Fandango is? Or you just want to know some more about it? Well, to put it in a nutshell, Grim Fandango is an epic adventure game which combines beautiful visuals, a highly emotional storyline, a masterful soundtrack, and some of the most memorable characters to ever exist in any game ever. It really is the pinnacle of gaming, and is a title that should not be missed. "

Source:http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=info
Status:Commercial
Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Fandango

 

[Longshanks]

Title: Sanitarium
Developer: DreamForge
Description: The Planescape: Torment of Adventure games? Well, not really, but the main character is an amnesiac and the story involves an inner struggle, also the box prominently features an eye, reminiscent of PST's box design. Sanitarium's strongest aspect is its unfolding story and general atmosphere, but the puzzles are also quite good. Gameplay is standard adventure fare, lock puzzles, inventory puzzles etc, a few brief action sequences, but they're not difficult and there's little penalty for death. The visuals are great, isometric view, with impressive 2D backgrounds. Not much else to say about this game, other than it's one of the best Adventure's I've played, and any fan of the genre should have already played it. My all time favourite? Hard to go past Grim Fandango, but this is certainly the best "serious" Adventure game I've played. From the box: "A journey through the depths of one man's consciousness to confront the demons from his past and escape the imprisonment of his mind"
Status: Possibly abandoned, but available at Amazon.
Link: Buy at Amazon, Download at Underdogs

 

[MetalCraze]

well I haven't noticed Blade Runner here... but as I'm almost finished it and now I think I should post it.

Name: Blade Runner
Developer: Westwood
Released: 1997
Description: The game's story takes place somewhere in between Phillip K. Dick's book "Do Androinds Dream Of Electric Sheep" and the movie "Blade Runner". Game's storyline takes us to a dystopian Los Angeles of 2019 and moves alongside with the events seen in the movie. Earth's atmosphere and ecology were damaged after the third world war, but humanity managed to reach the depths of outer space. As a slave force on the distant planets humans use replicants - androids developed by Tyrell corporation. But replicants have started a riot and became "illegal" on Earth...
You are playing a detective Ray McCoy, who is a special Blade Runner unit - a hunter, trained to track-down replicants and "retire"(kill) them.
Blade Runner is a non-linear game, with multiple choices and consequences. But choices aren't forced on you, you can make them through dialogues or your own decision to shoot some bastard or not. But choose carefully as almost each one of your actions has consequences. Short-term and long-term ones. Like f.e. someone may just shoot you on sight if you pissed someone off or you may miss some people and a secondary story-line with them if you screwed something in a game. But in the end your actions will lead you to the 1 of 12 endings.
The minuses of this game are that it's very short and not fully represents the dark atmosphere of the movie - like some areas may have too much sunlight.
But nonetheless it's a wonderful adventure game and probably with some rpg-ish feel to it.

Status: Abandonware (it seems)
Link: Wikipedia Article

Warning! Wikipedia's article contains lots of spoilers - so be careful

 

[Nedrah]

Hay Skyway. I edited your contribution a bit, let me know if you want anything changed. I'm not too comfortable with old-games. While we are obviously operating in a grey area here, it's imo a little too much on the warez side of things.

 

[MetalCraze]

old-games.ru is an abandonware site. in their policy they wrote that if any publisher/developer will have anything against putting a game online there - they will remove it.

considering that the creator of the game was westwood back in 1997 and there is no westwood today - and that the soul of westwood now belongs to EA - which is established in Russia too btw - and considering that old-games.ru is the most popular abandonware site in that location - and I'm sure somebody at EA knows about them but still EA didn't do anything about BR at OG.ru (and I'm not even sure if EA has any rights to publish BR) - and it's 10 years passed - and considering all of these clues - I presume that BR is pretty much abandonware now.
but it's your decision whether to add link to there or not. I edited my post - but in case you'll reconsider I have a back-up copy with dl description.

oh and Nedrah - can you please sort the games in the first post in alphabetical order (to avoid such mess) and make the color of their titles slightly different (so people would be able to quickly notice where another game entry have started)

edit>
EA does not have BR in their adventure games list

http://www.electronicarts.co.uk/gamesearch/*/5/5/0/

 

[Noceur]

Jesus Christ and Allah rolling in the hay, I can't believe I forgot about this one...

Name: Dreamweb
Developer: Creative Reality
Released: 1991
Description: The bartender Ryan must become the deliverer, killing those who threaten the Dreamweb, in order to stop his increasingly disturbing nightmares. What follows is a bloody descent into madness, paranoia and murder.
A dark story in a cold and dystopic future, Dreamweb is a game that feature great atmosphere, style and logical puzzles. Some of the weaker points is the dialogue, which features no options or branching and the fact that you have a limited inventory but can pick up a lot of useless stuff.
Status: Abandonware
Link: MobyGames, Home of The Underdogs

 

[Nedrah]

old-games.ru is an abandonware site. in their policy they wrote that if any publisher/developer will have anything against putting a game online there - they will remove it.

considering that the creator of the game was westwood back in 1997 and there is no westwood today - and that the soul of westwood now belongs to EA - which is established in Russia too btw - and considering that old-games.ru is the most popular abandonware site in that location - and I'm sure somebody at EA knows about them but still EA didn't do anything about BR at OG.ru (and I'm not even sure if EA has any rights to publish BR) - and it's 10 years passed - and considering all of these clues - I presume that BR is pretty much abandonware now.
but it's your decision whether to add link to there or not. I edited my post - but in case you'll reconsider I have a back-up copy with dl description.

Hey, did that rub you the wrong way by chance?
Look, I know the site and what they have. A quick look seemed to indicate that they have Starcraft and SC:BW available. Maybe I got that wrong?

oh and Nedrah - can you please sort the games in the first post in alphabetical order (to avoid such mess) and make the color of their titles slightly different (so people would be able to quickly notice where another game entry have started)

I'll consider cleaning the list up once the amount of daily updates goes down. I'm in collecting mode right now. I don't see the need to color things, but if a few more people request it, I'll probably do it. As for alphabetical order... well, yeah, might be ok, but any decent browser will let you search for things on a site a lot faster than you could scan through a list with those eyeballs MK1, anyways, alphabetical or not. As I said, I might still do it once the list is more complete.

I was not debating that BR is probably abandoned.

Edit: I just checked again, but I might be biased. Is quickly noticing where the next entry begins really hard for anyone?

 

[MetalCraze]

Look, I know the site and what they have. A quick look seemed to indicate that they have Starcraft and SC:BW available. Maybe I got that wrong?

well yeah I know that O-G has some... sins... (though SC is almost 10 years old - but I know that it is still supported by Blizzard) but we were talking about BR solely.

any decent browser will let you search for things on a site a lot faster than you could scan through a list with those eyeballs MK1, anyways, alphabetical or not.

the list will have some order the alphabetical way.

Is quickly noticing where the next entry begins really hard for anyone?

it's not hard, but the way I recommended it will be more comfortable. if you will want to color the titles - I will recommend the orange color. fits perfectly.

 

[Jasede]

Linking to a site that also has games that definitely aren't legal is not a good idea, skyway, that's the point. Even assuming BR is abandonware, it's still risky legally because the site has games which are not.

[On an interesting sidenote, I just found out System Shock 2 isn't abandonware despite HOTU saying otherwise. Might this mean someone is working on SS 3 somewhere?]

 

[elander_]

If HOTU says it's abondonware then that's because nobody cares to send them a message asking them not to redistribute the game and in that case it makes the game abandonware in the usual sense of the word.

 

[Nedrah]

If HOTU says it's abondonware then that's because nobody cares to send them a message asking them not to redistribute the game and in that case it makes the game abandonware in the usual sense of the word.

Nope, actually the dedicated guys running the place have historically gone through great pains to make sure the games being offered are not available through regular retailers. HOTU was never a "sit there and hope no one sends an email" gig.

Apart from that, what Jasede said. Linking to a site that has titles that are OBVIOUSLY not abandonware is a bad idea, or at least not a good one. That has nothing to do with the game in question at all. I would place a link if it was at abandonia or underdogs, for example.
As for SC, it doesn't matter how old it is. It is, obviously to everyone, far from abandoned. Common sense tells me so.

What do you think about coloring stuff? I'd rather not, because I think it would make the list look shittier instead of better, but it's not a big deal to do it now.




Edit:

So, I went ahead and just re-compiled the list in alphabetical order, which was a major pain in the ass for various reasons. The good news is, you can now find stuff easier without using your browsers search feature and you don't have to be scared of the list anymore if you have trouble handling a bit of chaos. The bad news is, obviously, that you won't be able to tell if any new stuff is on the list with a quick glance, anymore.

As far as I can tell, nothing got lost in the transition, but if your contribution is missing, let me know.

So, only that color issue remains.

 

[Müg]

Am I the only one who thought The White Chamber was just one giant homage to Event Horizon the movie?

Anyway, some of these look pretty good, but are there any myst-type FPP adventure games out there that you'd recommend? I love a good "wtf am I supposed to be doin" type game.