An old gem, but still shiny...
User Rating: 9.6 | Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders PC
I was a little surprised seeing this game turning up on gamespot's listings. Also I was a little surprised no one ever wrote a review on this game. I know, it's an oldie but it deserves to be treated with respect. This was back in a time where computers were as thick as a loaf of stale bread and only had 64 Kb of RAM. Right, I played this one on the C64 the first time! I loved it... the humor is just great and the puzzle solving is way to crazy. For its time, this game was really eleborated. Saving the earth from mindbending aliens ruled by an elvis king with a guitarchord for stomach a grunch involved traveling a lot of different countries. Zak had to fly all over the world and the great colourful graphics were a good base for you own imagination... yep, back in these days you sometimes had to guess what those pixels meant to be. The intro music was fun, but nothing special. In the game itself, there's no music to be heard and besides some basic footstep and door sounds the only real thrill is the kazoo.
Nevertheless, this game was 3rd (2nd if you count out labyrinth) in the row of the great Lucas adventure series. It was full of obscure puzzles and in its time offered a unique way of game-play.
Later on this game was remade on the PC and Amiga - as far as I know off. I still like to play the 256 colour scumm version every year or so... This game has a great concept and sets the high standard for future adventures.
Zak Mckracken and the alien mindbenders was my childhood adventure and it was a really hard nutt to crack. English being my second language wasn't helping me a great deal either. I played this with my dictionary in my lap, trying to find a way to unstupify humanity and getting rid of deranged aliens. I know you can't compare this game with modern age ones. It's like comparing a brick with Jupiter. Nowadays all games look good if you would compare it with the C64 or 1988 Pc games... Yet, this was one of the most inspiring games ever to be released in its own time.
