Udvarnoky

Some extreme thread necromancy on my part here, but on the subject of you wanting Majora's Mask 3DS, well, Eiji Aonuma laughs at you. What the hell, man.

I wonder if the depicted animations are from the Moriarty version? Several of the backgrounds from that iteration survived the shipped product. Also, are you saying that the Raiders spoof in Sam & Max Hit the Road was CD-exclusive? I never knew that. I also thought it was great. Nothing about your statement makes sense to me! To anyone interested in anecdotes from the artists on Fate of Atlantis, we were provided with some by Bill Eaken and Anson Jew on Mojo several years back for our big retrospective feature. Jew clears up some misconceptions about his supposed "Art Deco" style clashing with the more realistic backgrounds in the doomed Iron Phoenix project. Basically, the jarring contrast was brought on by unreasonable tech limitations imposed upon him rather than a deliberate stylistic choice on his part. DOTT lives up to its reputation. The only qualifier I'd hang on it for someone coming off of Maniac Mansion is that it is in no way faithful to the tone of the original game, instead opting for a Saturday morning cartoon vibe and taking a meta approach to its predecessor (Maniac Mansion is a video game in the universe of DOTT). It's a pretty unique sequel in that sense.

Yeah, he's also a really cool guy. Apparently the team of Fate of Atlantis 2 (one of those ambitious fan game projects that are twenty-five years in the making and never get released) contacted him about the possibility of doing the voicework when the time came, and he apparently got back to them. It would be interesting to glimpse the alternate universe where any of the intended follow-up Indy games would have happened. Brian Moriarty (Loom) began heading up a Young Indiana Jones game, as implied by FOA's end credits, but it got cancelled when the TV show did, and also because there were apparently quality concerns. It was also allegedly more Myst-like than the studio's previous adventure games. The next attempt was the more well-known Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, which would have been a proper, graphic adventure sequel to the game. It got far enough along in development to get shown off at a tradeshow, but LEC gave it the axe when it found out that the game couldn't be sold in Germany, which was apparently a country heavy relied on to put their adventure games in the black, due to the use of Nazis in the storyline. (Other games, like Last Crusade, could work around this rule simply by swapping swastikas for some generic emblem and never actually using the word "Nazi," but Iron Phoenix's plot revolved around an attempt to raise Hitler from the dead, so there was no loophole to exploit there.) There were also problems with the art production. All that's available to see related to the game are some lovely Bill Stoneham backgrounds and Anson Jew's famous zombie Hitler test animation, which can be seen at 0:43 . After that there was supposedly a second attempt at a graphic adventure called Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny that collapsed before really getting anywhere. By this time 3D was in vogue and Hal Barwood responded with the actually-released Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. What's interesting about that is Barwood came up with a storyline involving Indy going after UFOs during the Cold War with Soviets as the villains before being told "from on high" not to go there, the reasons for which are obvious in retorspect, so he swapped UFOs for a technology beneath the Tower of Babel.

The scene where Indy argues with Nur-Ab-Sal in the throne room is such a nuclear reactor of great atmosphere. The wonderfully evocative environment with the Minoan-inspired architecture and the deformed skeletons, the excellent music and the intermittently processed voicework of the possessed Sophia...it's those moments that make you completely forget how dated the tech is, and it's a perfect example of why so many people consider Fate of Atlantis to be the real fourth Indy adventure, if not the only truly worthy follow-up to Raiders. I remember trying to make sense of why Crystal Skull disappointed me so much and what could have made it better, and having some kind of spookiness or stakes was definitely a big missing piece that would have improved the experience. The movie kind of flirted with the idea of the alien skull having some sort of psychic influence on Indy, but they never really went far enough with it to make that interesting or really justify the third act at all. They should have taken a page from Fate of Atlantis and have one of the heroes if not Indy himself get full-on possessed by the skull and the rest following him to the lost city out of concern. Instead you have John Hurt just kind of innocuously babbling and the entourage pressing forward to the kindgom for no decent reason.

In Fate of Atlanits, indiscriminately pounding the number keys is a sufficient strategy to win a fight. There's also the cheat sucker-punch key. Forgot what it is, though.

This is an appropriately awkward time to reveal that when we were talking about the Cobb death animation, I got weirdly obsessive about knowing who the animator was. I assumed Purcell since he seemed like a safe bet for all the grotesque stuff (exploding skeleton Indy, Bishop Mandible's decapitation) in those days, but I couldn't be sure. So I asked him. I hope you were all thrilled by this.

The location of the Lost Dialog of Plato in Caswell Hall is randomized, hence the seeming red herrings. Sometimes it's in that chest, sometimes it's in the attic urn, sometimes the cat and sometimes the overturned bookshelf.

I concur with the consensus. The Team path is my favorite, but play the others at some point. FOA also offers alternate endings, so there's an unusual amount of replay value here for an adventure game. Also, while I admire and encourage your conviction to play the rest of the games without walkthroughs, know that it's not like the games get reliably more sane in this regard as they get newer. You're definitely past the worst and can finally assume an absence of dead-ends, but you won't find another LEC game as easy as Loom, for example, and I consider the first two Monkey Islands to be a bit more commendable puzzle-wise than a number of later games from the same studio. The designers involved are as much a factor as the year of release. The puzzle design of Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road adhere to two pretty different philosphies, and they both came out around the same time. Just want to throw that out there - there are definitey stupid puzzles ahead. Also, holy shit you're about to play some great games.

The combat in Indy Fate functions the same but it's been dumbed down considerably. You can literally win every fight by key mashing. On top of that, there's a "sucker-punch" key that just knocks the bad guy out in one blow. At worst the fighting in this game can get tedious, but you don't have to worry about the sort of madness you had to endure in Last Crusade for sure.

Loom is definitely the easiest LEC game. Probably the shortest, too, although Full Throttle may have it beat there by a photo finish. It's quite ahead of its time in the sense that it was designed for most people to be able to finish it. At any rate it's an anomaly in the catalog, the only straight-up fantasy adventure game LEC ever did, and a real gem. Glad you liked it. To some extent the dicking around is necessary to induce the "F" thread. I don't think it's a specific set of things that increases your experience, but simply doing enough of them. Opening the clam and dyeing stuff are definitely among the things that can trigger it, but you need it to clear the waterspout. Actually, what you did was cast the sleeping spell on the straw. When the dragon snored she inadvertently snorted smoke and ignited the dry straw. And now his cameo in Monkey Island 1 will make sense to you! The Steam version of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is completely faithful to the original release, I believe. Enjoy it!

Perhaps you're right, it's been awhile since I played the CD version. But whatever version of events the CD version depicts, it only happens the one way. EDIT: I went watch it; you're right. The CD version basically conflates the original two possibilities.

I believe it's only included in the original version of the game.

The difficulty level merely influences how "decorated" the distaff is, thus making the notes easier to identify. There's really no reason not to choose the lowest difficulty. It's not like Monkey Island 2 or 3 where there are actual difference in the puzzles; the content of the game doesn't change. You'll be fine with standard though. Playing through the game in expert mode does reward you with a "new" (though I call it alternate) scene that amounts to an extra bit of animation, but we can just tell you what it is after the fact. I actually like the way the sequence plays without it better.

I thought that was the entire point of this thread. My personal preference for Loom is the original floppy disk version, for two reasons: the original EGA graphics are brilliant in the way they transcended their limitations (Mark Ferrari and co. did all kinds of crazy sleight of hand to pull off effects and generally make a 16 color palette look like way more) and of course accurately represent the game's presentation upon release (though that argument could have been made for Indy3 and Monkey1 as well), whereas the art update came years later. The second reason is that you get the game's original script. While the voice acting in the Steam version is excellent, the technology was young and apparently forced the developers to stuff it all as a CD audio track (rather than something more compressed). There were two consequences to this: music is embedded with the big dialog scenes rather than manifesting as standalone tracks, and the dialog had to be rewritten a bit in a condensed way (by new writers) in order to conserve space. Trivia: Orson Scott Card participated in this re-write. Finally, this version cuts out the great character close-ups (think Monkey Island 1) due to difficulties the artists ran into with lip-synching. Know that the game is still intact no matter which version you play, so there's no wrong choice, but I do sort of see the Talkie version as an "alternate" version that I love and recommend as a curio but can't ever view as definitive. The rare FM-Town version drops the voice acting but contains the original dialog and has (slightly better, even) VGA graphics, so objectively speaking it's still best one, but I always defer to the original, low-color artwork. And don't forget to listen to the !

Zeus, have you settled on a version of Loom?

And even if you did, there are awesome people.

I don't think it was a code wheel, I'm sure Monkey Island pioneered that one. I'd have to go consult my boxed EGA copy. I know the copy-protection got dropped for the Classic Adventures version as did Loom and Monkey Island 1's, so it's likely re-releases do not have it. Unlike the first two SCUMM games, those copy-protections came right at boot and presumably were trivial for a programmer to make get bypassed. (I guess they didn't think to do with Maniac Mansion what they did when they included the game in DOTT, which is simply keep the security door open.)

Actually, Last Crusade originally came with a real copy-protection where you had to key in values upfront a la Monkey Island. If you entered in the incorrect code the game would proceed but during the cutscene where Indy meets Donovan, Indy will fail to translate the grail tablet, effectively condemning you to a demo mode of sorts. The Grail Diary only functions as copy-protection incidentally. Like you said, you're supposed to reference it for the wall etchings in the catacombs (a description of the material, I believe) as well as the painting in the castle vault (this tells you whether or not the grail glows). With those two pieces of information and the physical diary you will know the correct grail to select at the end. Zeusthecat was able to accomplish it through trial-and-error, but in the original game, with its original interpreter, saved games are barred once you reach the grail temple. (Similarly, you couldn't save in Maniac Mansion once you reached the inner lab because "the meteor is now in control of your computer" or something.)

Huh. With all the songs being from the movie, you'd think they could have included it.

Ah, got it.

Wait are you unable to go back to Venice at all?

Right, many puzzles have variations, but there are still fail states (not merely deaths). They are naturally considerably less obnoxious than Zak, but there are a few.

toblix: You can definitely get stuck in Last Crusade.

Yeah and the studio made a notable graphical jump with this one too. Last Crusade pretty much has Monkey Island 1's interface except the "What Is" verb continues to linger.