Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist
| Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | Sierra On-Line | ||
| Publisher | Sierra On-Line | ||
| Senior Developer | Al Lowe | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1993 | ||
| platform | DOS , Mac OS , Windows | ||
| genre | Point-and-click adventure | ||
| Game mode | Single player | ||
| control | mouse | ||
| medium | Floppy disk , CD-ROM | ||
| language | English German | ||
| Age rating |
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| information | A manual query serves as copy protection. | ||
The computer game Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (also known under the title Freddy Pharkas: Cowboy Pharmacist ) is a classic point-and-click adventure game from 1993 by Sierra On-Line . The author of the game is Al Lowe , best known for Leisure Suit Larry .
content
The scene of the action is the town of Coarsegold in the Wild West. The player slips into the role of Freddy Pharkas, a young, a little reserved but likeable pharmacist. His ear was shot off as a teenager by a boy named Kenny the Kid, which made him refuse violence and led to his career as a pharmacist. As such, he settled in Coarsegold.
First, Freddy works in the pharmacy, prepares various remedies for residents of Coarsegold and introduces the most important characters to the player: Mom, the nice restaurant owner, and Hop Sing, her Chinese cook, Doc Gillespie, the mostly drunk doctor, and Penelope, the new school teacher Freddy is in love with. Along the way, one learns a lot about the gradual decline of Coarsegold, which has accelerated since the opaque sheriff closed many shops for dubious reasons. Finally, it's Freddy's pharmacy. Freddy has to close his pharmacy for his customers due to a violation of fire protection regulations.
Now that he has more free time, he takes care of other community problems. Since someone has fed the horses with beans, Coarsegold threatens to choke on the exhaust gases. But thanks to the complex analysis of a gas sample and Freddy's special knowledge, he succeeds in finding a cure. But soon the next catastrophe is imminent : A snail stampede threatens to roll down the city. With beer and ingenuity, Freddy manages to save the city again this time. But when well poisoning and arson plagued the city, the limit was full: the city needed a hero. Freddy decides to tackle the problems properly from now on: With the Colt .
Easier said than done, for the relics of his past are hidden and well kept so as not to tempt him. Practicing also takes time, but then Freddy is armed on the street. The city has now taken on the traits of a ghost town even more.
Freddy admits in the city on and buttoned the meantime emerged in the city rabble before. Cardsharps, rowdy cowboys and even gangsters - he can handle them all. But then his arch-rival appears, who once shot off his ear: Kenny the Kid .
There is another duel and Freddy loses his second ear. But he learns, bleeding in the dust, who is the originator of the conspiracy. It's Penelope! Your heartwarming friendliness was only a play and hid ice-cold calculation. For the purpose of speculation, she wants to ruin Coarsegold. Only Freddy can stop them. Now it comes to the final showdown .
Game principle and technology
Freddy Pharkas is a 2D point-and-click adventure . The locations of the game are shown as hand-drawn still images, some of which are animated, and in front of which the characters made up of sprites act. With the mouse, the player can move Freddy through the premises and use the mouse buttons to initiate actions that allow the game character to interact with his environment. Freddy can find objects, apply them to the environment or other objects and communicate with NPCs . As the game progresses, further locations are unlocked. Mini-games are integrated into the game , which the player must master with skill.
Freddy Pharkas' particular success lies in dealing with the western genre. Unlike most westerns, the problems are not solved by confrontation. Like Space Quest , King's Quest or Leisure Suit Larry before , this adventure is also a puzzle and puzzle-oriented computer game.
A special feature of this game is the copy protection: At some points in the game, Freddy has to produce medicines for his patients or carry out chemical analyzes. The recipes and instructions for this are listed in the manual and, like a manual query for other games, serve as copy protection.
The game could be installed under both MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows . The game magazine PC Player registered a slower game speed for the Windows version.
Production notes
Freddy Pharkas is set in a town called Coarsegold. While the structure of the town is purely fictional, the namesake is real: Coarsegold is a small town near the then Sierra company headquarters Oakhurst , which already existed in the 1880s, in which Freddy Pharkas plays.
Larry Laffer's great-great-great-uncle makes a guest appearance in the game. The game's author, Al Lowe , himself sang the theme song, The Ballad of Freddy Pharkas .
In 2017, a version of the game that ran on modern PCs using ScummVM was released on the GOG distribution platform .
reception
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From 2 aggregated ratings, Freddy Pharkas achieved a score of 90 on GameRankings. The German magazine Power Play praised the graphics, sound, atmosphere and humor of the game, but criticized the not very original and challenging puzzles and the fact that almost the entire game world is already at the beginning of the game is accessible, so that no game progress in the form of newly accessible areas is possible. Overall, the magazine rated Freddy Pharkas as Al Lowe's "most atmospheric work to date". The PC Player praised the atmosphere, graphics, background sound and humor of the game, but characterized the protagonist Freddy Pharkas as a "shocking, colorless, everyday character" and criticized the pharmaceutical puzzles in particular as not very entertaining to "annoying".
In 2011, the trade magazine Adventure Gamers ranked Freddy Pharkas 78th in its list of Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games .
Web links
- Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist at MobyGames (English)
- Private fansite
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Thomas Werner: Freddy Pharkas . In: PC Player . July 1993, p. 80.
- ↑ GOG.com: New Release: Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. Retrieved March 23, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Power Play 7/1993: Freddy Pharkas. Retrieved May 11, 2017 .
- ↑ a b GameRankings.com: Freddy Pharkas. Retrieved May 11, 2017 .
- ↑ AdventureGamers.com: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games. Retrieved March 2, 2016 .