Classic Games: Adventures

about | archive


[ 2004-October-12 17:24 ]

Recently, I've been playing some old computer games that I enjoyed when I was younger. I used to spend a lot of time and money on adventure games. I have fond memories of the Legend of Kryandia series, Loom, Sam & Max, and Full Throttle. In 1993 an adventure game called Myst became the top selling computer game of all time until The Sims (2000). A decade later, almost no one makes this kind of game anymore, as the Wikipedia entry points out. I picked up and played a couple of the old Lucasarts games, courtesy of ScummVM, and found them a little lacking. I chuckled at some of the jokes and enjoyed the excellent voice acting, but I was also frustrated by the mechanical gameplay. I no longer have the time nor the patience to figure out the ridiculous, illogical puzzles, but I still played them all the way through thanks to some walkthroughs. It makes me wonder if my tastes have changed because I am older, or because my expectations for computer games are different. Do young children still enjoy adventure games?