Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
| Zak McKracken | |||
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| Studio | Lucasfilm Games | ||
| Publisher |
 Lucasfilm Games soft gold
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| Senior Developer | David Fox | ||
| composer | Matthew Kane | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1988 | ||
| platform | Amiga , Apple II , Atari ST , C64 , FM Towns , MS-DOS | ||
| Game engine | SCUMM | ||
| genre | Adventure | ||
| Game mode | Single player | ||
| control | Mouse , joystick or keyboard | ||
| medium | Floppy disk , CD-ROM , download | ||
| language | German , English , Spanish | ||
| Age rating |
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Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a 1988 published point-and-click - Adventure . After Maniac Mansion, it is the second game of its kind from Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts ).
action
The player takes on the role of Zak McKracken, a frustrated tabloid reporter from San Francisco who works for the National Inquisitor (a joke of the National Enquirer ). In the opening credits of the game, aliens appear to him in a dream, an ancient map of the earth, a strange device and an unknown woman whom he sees again the next morning on a television program. In the course of the plot it becomes clear that Zak McKracken has to save the earth from an invasion by aliens ("Caponians") who want to dumb down humanity. He receives support from the archaeologist Annie, who appeared to him in a dream and also lives in San Francisco, and her two friends Melissa and Leslie, who flew to Mars in a converted VW bus . The aim of the game is to assemble the so-called scolar device , the individual parts of which consist of artifacts that are distributed all over the world.
The plot of the game uses various popular science , supposed puzzles from human history. In addition to the large chapter pre-astronautics , which forms the framework for the story, u. a. the high culture of the Inca , the riddle of the pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt , El Astronauto , the unexplained function of Stonehenge , the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle , the myth of Atlantis and the supposed face of Mars are taken up. According to this multitude of influences, numerous locations on all continents and on Mars are visited in the game. In their endeavor to dumb down humanity and finally enslave it, the Caponians should use a buzzing sound in telephone lines.
Game principle and technology
The game mechanics were developed with the help of LucasArts' SCUMM engine for point-and-click adventures: the screen is divided into five parts: an area for action verbs, an inventory of the game figure made up of words below, and above the action line for setting up the command to be executed , the big game screen, and at the top two lines for dialogue texts. In special situations in the game it can happen that the action verbs are gradually faded out. This is supposed to represent a dumbing down of the game figure, but which is fully reversible over time.
Production notes
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was developed by Lucasfilm Games in 1988. Designer David Fox, who was previously responsible for Rescue on Fractalus and the Adventure Labyrinth at the company , said he was already enthusiastic about science fiction , the supernatural and UFOs as a child . His original vision was to "do something with a" New Age "approach (...) that should have something uplifting, entertaining and funny at the same time" as well as "global proportions". An early design draft called Ancient Astronauts had a more subtle sense of humor, and the main character was initially called Jason and worked for a daily newspaper. The final design was determined at the instigation of Ron Gilbert as part of a conference of several Lucasfilm designers on the company's own Skywalker Ranch , whereby the name "Zak McKracken" was composed of parts of the name from the telephone directory of the surrounding Marin County . Towards the end of production time, the Lucasfilm employees had to work overtime for scheduling reasons ("crunch time"). Designer David Fox said he was temporarily locked in a room at the Skywalker Ranch and "sometimes [...] didn't know where [he] was" .
When Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is to Maniac Mansion for the second game of its kind based on the SCUMM storage engine. Designer Fox had been involved in scripting and programming at Maniac Mansion and was therefore familiar with the engine. Depending on the platform, the title is based on version one, two, or three of LucasArts' SCUMM engine. Despite the different SCUMM versions, a look and feel identical to that of Maniac Mansion was achieved for all ported systems . It is the first LucasArts adventure with a digital MIDI soundtrack. The game was released in 1988 for C64 , MS-DOS with EGA graphics, Amiga , Atari ST and Apple II , and later also for FM Towns with 256-color graphics and a modified soundtrack. Contrary to later practice, the technically significantly improved FM Towns version was no longer backported to MS-DOS.
The original edition of the game was accompanied by a copy of the National Inquisitor , which was intended to increase the player's immersion and provided coded help for some of the game's puzzles.
In March 2015, Zak McKracken was republished on the Gog.com download platform after years of non-availability .
In the game, the entire story of which is set in 1997, nine years after the game was released in 1988, some statements are made regarding future technology trends. Examples are the exclusive payment with a so-called CashCard and the use of DAT cassettes . The former has a real equivalent today in cashless payment transactions with credit cards and debit cards , while the latter never really caught on and has now largely been replaced by CDs .
In the game, depending on the version, there are numerous cross-references to other LucasArts games, for example a can of chainsaw fuel that was supposedly missing in Maniac Mansion to solve a riddle. The names of Zak's three companions, Annie, Melissa and Leslie, are the names of Fox's girlfriends at the time, Gilbert and Kane. David Fox and Annie Larris are now married. The gag that Leslie always has a different hair color when taking off her helmet is due to the fact that the real Leslie, who acted as a model, often dyed her hair at the time of Zak McKracken's development . Miami Airport wasn't useless as a travel destination, but you never got past the airport as a sign on the airport door stated that Miami was closed for renovations. The game's theme tune has become quite famous due to numerous remixes and cover versions. The monolith on Mars, which serves as a ticket machine, is an allusion to the monoliths in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey , which are located in different places in the solar system ( earth , moon , Jupiter ). The name of the tabloid Zak works for, The National Inquisitor, is a nod to the real-life newspaper The National Enquirer .
Zak McKracken brought about some fan adventures , games created by amateurs that have a different plot, but play in the same game world and at least partially have the same protagonists. The best-known Zak McKracken fan adventure is Zak McKracken - Between Time and Space from 2008, and The New Adventures of Zak McKracken was published in 2003 .
reception
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The German Happy Computer praised the game's humor and user guidance. Editor Boris Schneider pointed out that the game has an increasing level of difficulty and is therefore suitable for adventure beginners and advanced players. He criticized the “not so well drawn” graphics of the game.
In a retrospective of the game in the specialist magazine Retro Gamer , "obscure riddle solutions", labyrinths tiring the player and the possibility of seemingly maneuvering into an unsolvable game situation by overloading his cash card were criticized.
Web links
- Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders at MobyGames (English)
- Scans of test reports from Amiga Joker and ASM
- Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders at Tentakelvilla.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Point & Click Adventures . In: Retro Gamer . 2015, No. 3, June 2015, p. 30.
- ^ John Paul Jones: Outlaws, Zak McKracken among new line up of classic Lucasarts games hitting GOG.com ( English ) gamewatcher.com. March 19, 2015. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
- ↑ Max Magenauer: Zak McKracken . In: Amiga Joker . April 1992, p. 101.
- ↑ a b Boris Schneider: Zak McKracken . In: Happy Computer . September 1988.