| Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, The | Scott Adams and Phillip Case / Adventure International | 1985 | |
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A tie-in to the 1984 cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the
8th Dimension, you play the ineffably cool Dr. Banzai: radical neurosurgeon,
cutting-edge physicist, nemesis of nefarious criminal mastermind Hanoi Xan and lead
guitarist of new-wave sensation the Hong Kong Cavaliers. (Unfortunately, you'll have
to take our word for it, as the game doesn't make much use of these qualities.) As
in the wacky movie, your goal here is ultimately to overcome a potentially
planet-destroying bomb set by the Black Lectroids, inhabitants of Planet 10. Unlike
the movie, you don't accomplish this by overcoming the Red Lectroids from the 8th
Dimension with the assistance of Team Banzai and the Blue Blaze Irregulars - instead,
in a Commander Keen fashion, you wander an eerily depopulated town to procure the
necessary components (gasoline, sand, bauxite and "a special catalyst") to power up
your oscillation overthruster-sporting jet-car and transmit cancellation codes to
the bomb. Tiresome inventory management and Adventure International's characteristic
primitive VERB NOUN text parser (illustrated, on some platforms, with static images)
fill the game with stops and starts, making you sometimes forget in all the to-ing
and fro-ing that you're playing the part of such a fascinating individual, but
maintaining movies' pacing is a gentle art only being effectively engaged today, over
two decades after this trailblazing game's effort. See also: #Scott Adams Collection |
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