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Once upon a time, in a office quite a distance away from me, a guy called George Lucas (or perhaps it was his secretary, or his manager, or his business advisor) decided that he should start a company that made computer games. This company rose to honour and grace, and made many adventure games that made many people very happy, for instance "Sam&Max" and "Maniac Mansion". But those are quite other, and wonderful stories. Now, in the beginning, these games where not especially extragavant, and therefore they could be slotted into relatively small computers, such as the C64. That is how this game, "Zak McKracken", found its way into the C64.
As most of you may have guessed, you play the part of Zak in this game. Zak is a young and promising reporter for the "National Inquisitor", a publication whose headlines are almost as big as the waist-line of the editor. However, Zak is unhappy. First of all, his love life is about as lively as Elvis, and secondly, Zak wants to become a Pulitzer-winning novelist, something which is difficult when working for a tabloid as sleazy as all the members of The National Used-Car Salesman Association put together. But his editor convinces him to do one last story, about a vicious two-headed squirrel that has been terrorizing Seattle lately. Also, Zak is to check into the UFO sigthings on Mt. Rainier many years ago...
This game does nothing to hide its relationship to other Lucasfilm games. My experiences with "Maniac Mansion" especially helped me quite a lot when it came to getting through this game. However, having played most Lucasfilm games is no requirement for enjoying this game. The special Lucasfilm humour ("Oops..."), the good graphics and the good music and sound all mix up to a great game. As adventure games go, this is by far the best I have seen made for the C64. The only thing that let you down a little bit, is the seemingly endless flights around the North-American continent (but for those of you with the CCS-emulator, this is really not a problem).
Downloads: Music, Advert
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| GRAPHICS - 9/10 |
The intro sequence is impressive, maybe spare for Zak
in bed. The quality of the graphics detoriate a little
bit when you get into the game, but hey, there are a lot
of environments in this game that must be created, and
a high number of games would have been gaining a lot of
goodwill if their graphics had been as good as these.
| | SOUND - 9/10 |
Music is not a part of the game itself, but vital in the
impressive intro sequence. The sound FX are good when
you remember that they were made for the C64.
| | PLAYABILITY - 10/10 |
You get what you want here, provided that you want
challenges, puns, vicious two-headed squirrels and
a good C64 adventure game. "Zak..." really kept me
stuck by my machine for quite a while, and for a good
reason.
| | OVERALL - 9/10 |
As already mentioned, this game is funny, challenging,
intriguing and addictive. I really fell in love with
"Zak McCracken". This may very well be result of my
history of severe Lucasfilm games weakness (twice
admitted), but I think it is quite simply because this
game is very good.
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| COVER |
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; "Click to zoom!")
; "Click to zoom!")
