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I totally intend to play it sometime, hopefully soon.

A recent trip to my favorite thrift store uncovered a still-wrapped copy of a game called Internet Puzzle Adventure Treasure Hunt:

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I’m not sure if I arranged those 5 title words in the right order. It comes from the year 2003 and was published by a company named Lagoon Multimedia. I don’t believe they exist anymore. The URL on the box copy is www.puzzleadventure.com. Yeah, that doesn’t exist anymore, either. However, the Internet Archive has some records of it and it looks like the site did persist until early 2009.

The back of the box copy has 3 steps: 1) Open the box and solve the puzzle inside; 2) find the hidden password; and 3) begin the internet puzzle adventure. Here’s what’s inside:

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No CD-ROM. Just puzzle tiles and a manual. I guess that lack of system requirements on the box should have been a tip-off. However, “internet” seems to be an implicit requirement.

Other items, one of which is not yet represented in the database:

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• Mia’s Science Adventure: Romaine’s New Hat– long, strange title, but it does advertise itself as a game. 2 CD-ROMs, too. The back copy shows that there are at least 2 other games in the series, including a reading adventure and a math adventure. Companies mentioned include TOPICS Entertainment and Kutoka Interactive.
• Bumper Wars– I just noticed this was developed by Boston Animation, who also did M&M’s The Lost Formulas.
• Africa Trail– I hadn’t heard of this trail game yet.
• Lemmings Revolution– well-known franchise

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• Barbie: Swan Lake: The Enchanted Forest — Yep, I will never run out of Barbie games to enter
• Dear America: Friend to Friend — Not sure if this is technically a game or not but my curiosity was piqued by the cover copy boasting “featuring FriendLink Technology: Non-Online Chat”. Not sure if “non-online” is a synonym for offline.
• Infinity City: The Gigglebone Gang by Headbone Interactive; other titles chronicling the Gigglebone Gang include AlphaBonk Farm and Pantsylvania– nearly every name in this series seems strangely suspect.
• Rock Tour Tycoon — Embellishing my collection of odd “Tycoon” titles. “Dream it! Manage it! Rock it!” Also, “MP3 included.” Not sure what that means.

I have acquired 2 titles in some “Elroy” series from different sources:

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There’s a dedicated wiki for this series. The wiki gives me the impression that Elroy Goes Bugzerk and Elroy Hits the Pavement are the only 2 games in the series.

Other items, including 2 titles that originally came from fast food restaurants:

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• Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker: The Music Game
• Martha Speaks: Martha’s in the Middle — I don’t know which of those segments is the title and which is the subtitle. The disc is marked as 5 of 5 and was distributed by Chick-Fil-A restaurants.
• Pokemon: Gotta MAKE ‘em All! (Red) This appears to be a creativity tool rather than a game. A little searching reveals that there is also a blue version of the disc.
• Disney’s Treasure Planet: Etherium Rescue — distributed by McDonalds and appears to only be a demo
• Fun Bundle II for Mac — 4 games:
  • Zone Warrior — Maybe this game?
  • Glider Pro CD
  • Crystal Crazy
  • Step On It!

2 more ‘Tycoon’ games in this bunch:

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• Caterpillar Construction Tycoon: A simulation game sponsored by the construction giant (I never realized that they own the domain cat.com); published by Activision Value
• Midnight Outlaw: 6 Hours to Sun Up
• Prison Tycoon: Alcatraz– there are at least 5 games in the Prison Tycoon series and I have now collected 3 of them
• Fate: The Traitor Soul– part of The Fate Series; not sure how large this series has grown but I now have 2 titles that aren’t on record

There’s some good licensed schlock in this bunch:

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• Merrian-Webster Spell-Jam (Tik Games)– I find it grammatically odd that “Spell-Jam” is hyphenated, but far be it from me to argue with the dictionary people
• Fashion Craze (Viva Media)
• Sonny’s Race for Chocolatey Taste– a Cocoa Puffs game!
• Common Cents– a game sponsored by State Farm Insurance; the jewel case copy mentions Flash Player as a requirement which leads me to believe it started life on the web and was also published on CD-ROM; comes from year 2004
• Burger Island Combo (eGames)– a compilation of Burger Island and Burger Island 2
• Whitetail Fever– hunting game by Valu-Soft

Here are the items from this score that have no representation in the database:

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• Barbie: Team Gymnastics– yep, there are still Barbie games that neither I nor MobyGames know about yet
• Big Action Construction by Fisher-Price
• Get Ready for School, Charlie Brown!
• Puzzlemania CD-ROM from Highlights (as in, the magazine from your dentist office)

All of these items fall into the category of either “probably not or definitely not a game”:

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• ‘Tronic Phonics from McGraw-Hill School Interactive, listed as disc #11– might be a game
• One Banana: A Jungle Counting Book– very unlikely to be a game
• Location & Direction– lists ISO-9660 on the disc, even though it was published by 1999 (companies mentioned: Arc Media Inc. and Mars)– possibly a game
• Microsoft Cinemania ’95– certainly not a game
• Invention Studio from the Discovery Channel– build, design, and test your own inventions; there’s even a patent office section; might be a game as other titles in this series qualified (notably Team Xtreme: Operation Weather Disaster)
• Attactix: Battle Figure Game, Star Wars Starter Set CD-ROM, Series 2– I have no idea what to make of this; the lengthy title sounds like it’s a digital supplement to a tabletop game

And the stuff that’s already in the database:

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• Need for Speed: High Stakes (EA Classics release, and marked as “For sale in India only” and the price tag is “RS 399,00″)
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
• Planet Dexter’s Grossology– the jewel case copy purports to teach “Gross science that kids want to learn!” I’m happy if they want to play it, but I really don’t, so I am glad that it’s already in the database. The screenshots on record could stand to be redone, but I probably won’t bother.
• Tropico: Paradise Island

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• Mary-Kate and Ashley: Crush Course
• Gamefest: Pro Pinball Challenge: Fantastic Journey (disc 1 of 4)
• Supercow — didn’t expect this one to be in the database, but there it is, probably because it’s fairly recent (copyright 2007)
• Stone-Jong
• Eradicator from Accolade

Strange. However, a glance inside revealed a bevy of games. A coworker had learned that I collect any old CD-ROM games that people happen to have lying about. So he dumped this lot on me:

There were about 25 games inside. Sorting through them all, I found a single game that is certainly not in the MobyGames database yet while I found 3 more that don’t appear to be present. The vast majority of the games have cover art or media scans that are missing from the database, so there is plenty of work to do as always.

These are the games from the haul that are, or are probably missing:

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Grey Wolf: Hunter of the North Atlantic is no where to be found in the database. The other 3 are a bit sketchy. There are a lot of different Railroad Tycoon II games. But there are none that bear the specific title of “Railroad Tycoon: The Next Millennium: Special Edition”. Similarly, several Carmageddon variations are on record but none that specifically mention “Carmageddon: High Octane” which probably deserves its own record.

As for the final item in the photo, these are the Magic: The Gathering Games on record. Is this game already mentioned? I wasn’t sure, so I unrolled the sleeve:

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This marks the first time I have ever officially owned Magic: The Gathering cards. Anyway, this has the core game (which I assume refers to the traditional, offline game), plus the online game. This probably corresponds to the online game currently on record.

Here are some other miscellaneous acquisitions from the previous months, which may or may not be actual games:

Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa is probably the most interesting and truest game of this set. “King Solomons” [sic] has some pretty cover art and the system requirements listed on the back (486 vintage) intrigued me. However, a little investigation revealed that it, like the “FiveStar Casino” disc, is just an entry into online casinos.

Then there is VR Soccer ’96, notable for being bundled with 3D Rage hardware, and a Cosmi disc that takes some shareware games and shoves them on a CD-ROM.

Finally, we have the Planet of the Apes Limited Edition CD-ROM. This is a tie-in with the 2001 movie and bears logos of Blockbuster, Coca-Cola, and 20th Century Fox.

I investigated the disc assets to find any sign of an actual game but only found QuickTime movie trailers and featurettes. I started the disc in order to confirm this. However, the disc expects you to register online:

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I tried to register, just to see if the site was still online. However, Windows 7′s security facilities blocked network access by some NavBrowser.exe program and I was left with an error dialog prohibiting me from viewing the contents. I’m not in marketing but it doesn’t seem like adding this much friction to the promotional process is well-advised.

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I bring this up because I thought I had a similar situation today:

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This was disappointing in its own way. I had skipped lunch and thought that I had a delivery of delicious crackers straight to my desk.

Alas, inside was just a collection of 8 girl-oriented games in a package (which arrived in terrific shape) named 8 Great Games for Girls, published by Viva Media:

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A big, tough, manly game arrived separately as well– Supreme Commander. Of course, the latter is already well documented in the database, so there’s nothing I can add (except some cover art scans). That means I get to play slightly less masculine games once more (whenever I get around to video game historianism again), since only 2 of the 8 girls games are presently documented in MobyGames:

• Fashion Craze
• Supermarket Mania
• Diamond Drop Deluxe
• Doggy Daycare
• The Enchanted Unicorn
• Happy Tails Animal Shelter
• Horse Camp
• My Dream Job: Babysitter

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You’ll notice that it’s disc 4 of 4 in a Taco Bell promotion. It was created by Maxx Marketing in 2005 (according to the copy on the back). This is the same group that would, in the following year, create the Taco Bell Tek Kids series of games, extensively documented on this very blog. The fact that there are 4 of these discs and I only have one creates an irrational drive for me to complete the set. For the record, the box copy also lists a technical support hotline in operation between July 29 and September 15, 2005, implying that that’s when this promotion ran.

Sometimes I think that it might be a bit silly for me to endeavor to document these video games. Not because it constitutes ephemeral pablum of a pop consumer culture; that’s a debate for a different forum. But I sometimes get the impression that with so many people on the internet blogging and tweeting and facebooking and what have you, that a bunch of stuff like this will be passively documented and archived by default. Yet, I can’t find any trace of this game when I google for variations of the name (except for a copy from some Amazon seller). Indeed, googling for the Tek Kids series mostly yields results either from this blog, or from MobyGames (data submitted entirely by me), or data cribbed from one of those 2 sources.

So I guess I’m doing some good (for fairly loose definitions of ‘good’) by trying to document this junk.

To that end, Taco Bell has been keeping up their tradition by putting out some more CD-ROMs with their kids meals. In fact, this Atari promotion might still be in restaurants:

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This is a promotion with Atari in which 4 classic Atari games– Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, and Lunar Lander. Each cover states “The legend is back by popular demand!” I’m assuming this is a reference to the fact that they ran this same promotion 2 years ago, in the spring of 2010. I picked up the full set of CD-ROMs then as well, though I wouldn’t begin this acquisition log until a year later.

They switched up the cover art between promotions:

Actually, now that I post those cover art scans, I recognize another difference: Super Breakout vs. Breakout. I tend to doubt the difference between the 2 games is especially significant.

It looks like I already did most of the documentation work for those Atari games 2 years ago. I see that I already have cover art scans and screenshot sets for all 4. I guess I just needed to do the MobyGames write-up and tweak it 4 times, and make a post for this blog. I must have gotten too busy. But I hope to get back to looking at these games soon since I’m eager to see if these are exactly the same as the games from 2 years ago. The 2010 games were interesting technically in that they were developed using Adobe AIR technology (which I had a hand in at the time). I remember these not being a very, eh… performant showcase of the technology. However, a bonus, unadvertised feature was that they were able to run on Linux due to the (now discontinued) Linux support for AIR.

Oh, but there’s more Taco Bell goodness. Here’s a series of games distributed with kids meals in 2001:

The full title of the series is X-Games Xperience, and the corporate logos involved include Taco Bell, ESPN, and ESPN2. There are 3 games: BMX, Inline Skating, and Moto X. However, there is a fourth unlockable game– Skateboarding. I know because it looks like I had the screenshot sets all ready to go for this series as well (I must have been planning to write this one up at the same time as the previous set). Ah, the memories.

At least knowledge that these titles ever existed should be available, should anyone query the googles on the matter.

Leftovers from today’s thrift shop raid:

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• A demo for the PC version The Grinch, 2000
• Bounty Hunter, which (based on the back cover screenshots) appears to be a Global Star rebranding of BHunter, which finally expands the title out to what people assume is the full name anyway.
• SODA Off-Road Racing

See Also:

• My extensive coverage of the Taco Bell Tek Kids series
• My own write-up of the BHunter title

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So I have 3 games from this promotion (the others are 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures 2 and Dance Masters). These Taco Bell disc-based promotions have traditionally been in groups of 4 (though the earliest one was only 3). I finally found a Wiki page that seems to have authoritative information of this whole promotion (including a photo of the promotion copy). It seems there were 5 games and I need to keep a look out for 2 more: Frogger and 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures 2: Reloaded.

Anyway, the other game photographed is Lenny’s Time Machine. Copyright is 1994, platform is Windows 3.1, developed by Music Pen Inc. and published by Paramount Interactive.

Here’s a strange pair I picked up at the thrift shop today– 2 discs in a franchise called Elemen of Periodica:

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The 2 specific titles here are: Case of the Missing Doughnuts and The Missing Maze. Copyright 2001, Elemen of Periodica, LLC., an entire limited liability corporation for this enterprise. The domain is home to a squatter these days.

I wasn’t sure if they were audio CDs or CD-ROMs as they were both still newly wrapped. They’re audio CDs. Each comes with a story book, musical narrative CD, and 4 trading cards (I guess that copy on the front of each disc should have tipped me off that these weren’t necessarily games; but I probably would have bought these anyway).

Obviously, each disc revolves around the adventures of 4 of the Elemen, each of whom are based on a chemical element. Here’s a closer look at the contents of Case of the Missing Doughnuts:

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This one revolves around Nitro (nitrogen), Cop (copper), Silica (silicon), and Einstein (einsteinium). Einsteinium is the 99th element. I don’t know if they actually created characters for all 109 or so elements that had names as of the year 2001. It’s pretty hard to google this title as the search engine insists on correcting the name something involving “periodic table of elements”. However, I was able to track down this old page via the Internet Archive which indicates that there was a 3rd CD with 5 more characters. So, only 13 total elements were represented, presumably before the LLC ran out of money.

Here’s another unusual item I picked up at the thrift store today:

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By the look of it, I figured it’s another of those shady game controllers that’s loaded with dozens of classic game ROMs and connects directly to a TV. I couldn’t find any additional markings on the controller (though the inside of the battery compartment may have something when I unscrew it). However, take a closer look at the yellow and red connectors (click for larger image)– they’re both 1/8″ connectors. I know what to do with the red audio cable (which is dual-ring for stereo). But the yellow cable is also 1/8″. Not sure what to do with that.

Update: I found this same thing described in detail over at Benj Edwards’ Vintage Computing & Gaming blog. It’s Polaroid Instant Video Games. The original package comes with connectors to convert the 1/8″ connectors to regular composite cables.

This reminds me of another acquisition more than a year ago– the Sega Genesis Arcade Motion:

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Brand new and I still haven’t opened it. The thing looks pretty official, aping the logos of Sega and Genesis. It also mentions something about copyright and all rights reserved by Sega. Still, I have my doubts that this thing is legit. This item is on Amazon and some of the reviews provide more details: The box says that you can download more games and load them via SD card; one review notes that said ROMs come packaged in .BIN and .GENS files (indicating the presence of, or compatibility with, the GENS emulator). The same reviewer found it strange that a Genesis-compatible product blessed by Sega would have a 4-button controller.

Moving along, here are some more recent acquisitions, some of which are missing from MobyGames:

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In order:

• Capitalism II by Enlight
• Marine Park Empire by Enlight
• F/A-18 Precision Strike Fighter by Xicat Interactive
• Video Gambling by Lasersoft

And a few more acquisitions that are already in MobyGames:

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• The Complete Ultima VII
• Lamborghini: American Challenge
• Finding Nemo
• Disney’s 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue (Sega Dreamcast)

The first group is a series of games from the Army Men franchise:

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As the auctioneer helpfully wrote on the box art, the 3 discs are the only ones remaining from an original 4-pack edition. It’s a good thing the cover art is already scanned for MobyGames because this is probably unsuitable. Anyway, the 3 titles are:

• Army Men
• Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes
• Army Men: Air Attack

Then there’s this odd lot:

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This is a 3-disc set of G.I. Joe vs. Cobra. The discs state that they are PC ONLY (with a copyright date of 2003). The discs each state that there are 2 episodes contained within. It’s unclear if any gaming elements are present.

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• 3D Ultra Mini Golf Adventures 2 — I’m excited to play this since I liked the original courses so much
• Dance Masters — I suspect this is an accessory-free rhythm game

This next group appears to contain 2 games, but look closer:

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• Farm Frenzy Harvest — see? Not just one game; this is a collection of 6 games, messing with my master games spreadsheet once again:
  • Farm Frenzy 2
  • Farm Frenzy 3
  • Farm Frenzy: American Pie
  • Farm Frenzy: Ice Age
  • Farm Frenzy: Pizza Party
  • Farm Frenzy: Russian Roulette
• First Class Frenzy — time management game which I’ll probably enjoy, given how much I like Sally’s games

Here are 2 games that group nicely, if mysteriously. If the YouTube videos are any indication, these Star Shine Legacy titles are equestrian titles that incorporate some kind of adventure:

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The specific titles (which I only know via the online auctions) are:

• Star Shine Legacy: Secret of Pine Hill Mansion
• Star Shine Legacy: Mystery of the Soulriders

And 2 more items from recent auctions:

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• Monster Truck Rumble
• Safari Adventures (in English and Spanish)