Altered Destiny

Accolade, 1990

This wacky adventure begins with a humorous event: You are sucked into your television and into an alternate world by aliens bent on galactic domination. However, you are reluctantly recruited to save this world from tyranny. Like the early graphical Hugo's House of Horrors adventures, this is a text-parser game. Fortunately, this parser is more sophisticated. It recognizes a vast range of words and commands, so the interface avoids becoming a hindrance as you set out to save the universe. While puzzles can be difficult, they are all logical and enjoyable.

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

Capstone Software, 1994

The game is based on the famous cartoon movie of the same name, directed and produced by Steven Spielberg. The plot is exactly the same as in the movie: Fievel the mouse-child must find his parents in the strange new land called "America." As Fievel, you must solve logical puzzles, venture in dark New York alleys, evade vicious cat attacks and travel from the Wild West to the sun-baked desert in search of your missing loved-ones. Despite a few easy arcade sequences the adventure elements take precedence in the game, which is spiced up with excellent graphics and sound support for all major sound cards. Overall, An American Tail is an entertaining outing for every member of the family.

Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy

Trecision, 1998

An excellent Science-Fiction adventure game set in the year 2099, which casts you into the role of Joshua Reev, a former military operative turned private investigator. Hugh Martens, the mayor of Union City, who used to be your commander in military service, ask you a favour: to investigate a terrorist organization, which is after his political career. The previous agent named Ruby, whom Hugh assigned to investigate and infiltrate the terrorist organization, has disappeared without a trace. He asks you to take over Ruby's unfinished mission and also investigate Ruby's disappearance. The atmosphere in Nightlong is completely futuristic, set in a dark underworld of espionage, power and corruption.

The game has some breathtaking animated cut-scenes. The background graphics are still images but rendered in 3D, on which the 3D characters are superimposed and provide the player a very original feeling of the scene. Voice acting is quite nice but doesn't sync well with the lip's movement. The interface is point-and-click with a huge inventory that can hold a long row of objects, which can be scrolled sideways. Overall, the game is quite interesting and provides hours of enjoyment and fun.