My curiosity was satisfied this evening when I booted back into Windows and found the mechanism by which Snow Day: The GapKids Quest alerts you that it’s about that time to pay another visit to your local GapKids clothing outlet:
I was presented with the preceding dialog on startup. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to search in Windows’ Startup folder where there is presently a program called GapSDR.exe invoked every time Windows starts.
Remember that Taco Bell Tek-Kids Flash-Ops game? There were 3 more games in the series. Thanks ever so much to Maxx Marketing, the publisher, as well as their distributor, Yum! Brands, Inc. for graciously furnishing me with the remaining 3 games. It’s a heavy responsibility but I shall fulfill my duty to play through them and preserve their essential statistics for all time via MobyGames. Plus, I want to see that bonus game.
This episode of Tek-Kids Flash-Ops is titled Mission: Aqua Zone. It seems Dr. Havok is back to his old tricks (to be fair, since this is #1 in the quartet, this would be Dr. Havok’s inaugural outing). This time he has an underwater sub that doubles as a weapons factory catering to rogue nations. However, the mortal sin being perpetrated by this leviathan is that it is polluting hundreds of square miles of pristine ocean blue (nautical miles? The difference is undoubtedly important).
I can just tell that all of these games are going to have some kind of environmental message. This somewhat reminds me of some really cheesy Star Wars stories I read some years ago. Each of 6 stories between 2 books was a flagrant allegory for some environmental cause here on earth. I made it a game to figure out as soon as I could in each story what the message was going to be: Save the whales, save the rainforests, etc. Along those same lines, I will try to guess the environmental terror Dr. Havok plans to spread in the remaining 2 missions, Data Island and Sky Fortress. My wager is that the latter is pumping raw pollution into the atmosphere but I’m a little fuzzier on the former. When I think of an island, I think of water, but he’s already polluting the ocean in this adventure. The “data” part of the title may indicate that he’s polluting the internet somehow from some virtual island.
I digress. When I see the instruction screen it looks precisely the same as the one for Polar Mission, thus, I expect it to feature precisely the same gameplay. Wrong. It’s actually considerably tougher:
In addition to only moving left and right, you can also move up and down. However, there are essentially two things you’re controlling with the same set of cursor keys: Your swimmer and the target. They move in opposite directions and it’s quite difficult to keep them straight. It’s a good thing this all takes place in shallow water– that makes things more graphically interesting.
MobyGames has approved a number of my new Sega Saturn entries:
Another in the series of Super Target dollar-specials, Ski Jumping 2004 doesn’t really sound like it would be all that involved. This turns out to be the correct assumption. I’m beginning to believe that these dollar games are little more than AOL delivery vectors as evidenced by the typical dialog presented as soon as you pop the CD into the tray:
The game is all about ski jumping. Don’t get me wrong– it’s based on a quite nice 3D engine and the programmers obviously know everything there is to know about the raw physics of ski jumping and have modeled them accurately. There are plenty of customizable parameters such as mountain, weather, and night vs. day run. But at the end of the day, it’s still a game about ski jumping. If that’s your thing then this is definitely the game for you. I admit I learned a lot about the mechanics of ski jumping and the support structures and layout of the runs. But after about 10 minutes I was prepared to move on. Though not before configuring the most terrifying run I could possibly engineer:
Despite all that, I still couldn’t kill my player. The falls aren’t even that spectacular, at least not nearly as exhilarating as some I’ve been watching on YouTube today to bring myself up to speed on the sport and to verify the authenticity of this game.
Some other miscellaneous notes:
Yesterday’s Amazon Trail game, along with its ancestor, Oregon Trail, got me wondering how far the concept could be extended. Any reason that the same setting can’t be extended to an outer space quest? You find yourself at a space station at the edge of an exotic solar system and you have to choose from among several strange aliens and perhaps a robot to be your guide. Pilot your spaceship and explore different areas of different planets, photographing the flora and fauna and cross-referencing them in your guidebook, trade with locals, learn the ancient secrets of the solar system, wind up being visited by ghosts of ancient aliens imploring the other galactic species to not pollute the solar system. It could be educational, in warped, useless way.
Then again, the concept could work a whole lot better in an established Tolkien-type fantasy world. Peer-reviewed encyclopedias for such a quest surely already exist.
Here’s another game that I picked up in the dollar section of a Super Target store (along with one of every other software title on offer since, hey, they were only a dollar each and none of them are in MobyGames– thus, they shall all be highlighted here eventually). The box copy promises “A wild rainforest adventure that builds real-life skills” and proceeds to name those skills. I could plagiarize the list here, or I could let you figure them out as this review continues. The title seemed somewhat familiar and indeed, the game is the spiritual successor of The Oregon Trail. I remember being enthralled by that game when I had the brief opportunity to watch some friend’s brother play it on that family’s Apple ][ computer. Though I think my fascination was borne more out of a longing to experience some video game — any video game — at my young age vs. any particular gameplay strengths along that game’s eponymous trail.
Enough of the past, let’s see what’s on tap for the future, where future is roughly circa 1998, which I believe is when this game was first published. When Amazon Trail kicks off, there is a rapid FMV sequence where you enter into a museum and some Amazon artifact with a jaguar head comes to life. The jaguar head implores you to go explore the Amazon, its regional flora and fauna, as well as its indigenous peoples — both good and evil. During a nicely-rendered flyover of the river, the jag also mentions that I will seek out the ancient people and that they will have a message for me to deliver to the world about the Amazon. 100-to-1 says that it’s a message about rainforest preservation. Here’s the intro video:
So after this museum-induced trip, you wind up in Belém, port city at the mouth of the Amazon river. I find myself looking at a storekeeper and a ragtag selection of 4 Amazon guides. Why do I need a guide at all? Because I don’t even know how I made it to Belém in the first place. And, as each guide is quick to point out, the storekeeper will refuse to sell me supplies unless I have taken on a guide. I smell some shady business dealings here but the game doesn’t allow me to lodge a complaint with the Belém Better Business Bureau, so I proceed along the expected path and interview each candidate. It’s painful to watch and listen to any of them act as if they belong here. But I am convinced that they are supposed to emphasize unique characteristics within the game and I select the guy who looks like he could actually survive in the Amazon. Now the storekeeper will give me the time of day. Fortunately, there’s not much picking to do– there are 4 supply package deals that, if I were a guessing man, appear to be tailored to the advice of each of the 4 guides. I take my guide’s advice on the matter and I’m off.
The above screenshot showcases the main canoe screen, where you might spend entirely too much time if you don’t find other diversions. One such diversion is the book icon. That leads to a mini multimedia encyclopedia of Amazon-related knowledge. Birds, bugs, beasts, plants, people, first aid tips– each with pictures and pronunciation tips. I immediately develop more interest in this vs. the actual game — or most games in this experiment, for that matter. There is also a journal for writing. Ugh. This all makes it sound a little too academic even though I already know it’s supposed to be an educational game. I hope there won’t be a test on this stuff later.
Here’s another activity you can select from the canoe– exploring:
You are thrust into a patch of rainforest. Creatures prance back and forth (including a jaguar– should that be cause for concern?) and there are plants that just sort of hang there. You can take pictures and the game asks if you would like to file them in your photo gallery. Before it will do so, you must first correctly identify what you just snapped. A-ha! So there will be a test! It’s a good thing I just read that a banana is also called a plantain as the game allowed me to pick the bunch and add them to my fruit storage. Though it turns out this can also be gamed– you are always presented the correct answer along with 3 random wrong choices, so on the second chance try to remember which option you also saw on the previous round.
Back in the canoe, things are pretty slow-going. I keep checking the micro- and macro-level maps and it doesn’t seem like we’re even moving. Ostensibly, though, we are, and I even manually up the pace. Nothing much seems to be happening. I ask for a status report from the guide. What?! We’ve been at this for 20 days? We’ve already burned through half of our 100 lbs of fish? I don’t even like fish that much. And why are they measuring using lbs in Brazil, anyway? Well, let’s check out this fishing screen:
This is probably the most action-oriented segment that I saw. You use a harpoon from the supply lot to spear one of those aquatic silhouettes. Caught me a 2.7-pounder, I did. 2.7 lbs of fish-based nourishment for the expedition’s supply pile, that is.
So, I’m not sure exactly where the game is supposed to proceed from here. There is something about proceeding down the river, learning more about the culture and environment, avoiding snakebites, and also trading for more supplies. I wondered exactly what I’m supposed to trade with. My food for more food? Actually, it seems that one of the items in the general supply package was a quantity of something called “trading packets”. Novel.
I set the game on the easiest level available as is my custom for this experiment. I’m not doing this for challenge. I am doing it for a quick investigation and to gather data suitable for MobyGames, however, and to that end, I captured screenshots of all the credit screens. This sequence perhaps inadvertantly outlines the entire game as it credits the actors, their characters and at which junctures they appear in the game. Teddy Roosevelt shows up along the Madeira River.
Major spoiler: Yep, I called it. I found the ending FMV sequence and the spirits of the ancients descend to tell you to tell everyone else to, pretty please, not cut down the rainforests.
At MobyGames: