Zak had his mind bent some more by the alien mindbenders and coincidentally so have I been bending my mind while playing some ORUL on PICO-8. (the game has the tagline “bend space and your mind”).

I also realized that Zak McKracken hadn’t “perfected” the point-and-click format just yet. Items aren’t highlighted if you mouse over them. My first adventure game was The Secret of Monkey Island where this was implemented for the first time. So I just need to remind myself of that. I need to approach this game if it were a text adventure with graphics. That’s difficult for me because I have played just one such game in my entire life. I constantly need to think: “Let’s take a very good look around the screen at what is there to interact with”. This way I can enjoy it more.

Also, there still is the need for the manual and the backstory in the form of The National Inquisitor which became less the case with following games that took the player along the beginning. A printed copy of the newspaper on A3 format helps me to get me in the mood of the game. I realized that if I had the complete box with goodies that came along with Thimbleweed Park, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. To bad… Anyway, the guide helped me figure out how to open a panel in the hostel on Mars. I wonder what wonders I will discover next.

I’ve also tried Robots Rumble on the C64. Great fun with this puzzle platformer! I definately need to play this again.