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Episode 294: Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Patreon)

Published:
2020-04-20 07:01:01
Imported:
2021-08

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It's time once again for another installment of our LucasArts adventure game series with what could be the only podcast episode ever created about the developer's least beloved (outside of Germany) game. Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders might be the LucasArts adventure that's aged the worst, but it's a fascinating case of a game trapped between the design styles of Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, and one that decided to take an evolutionary path that ended up being a dead end. On this episode, join Bob Mackey and Duckfeed.tv's Gary Butterfield as the two take apart Zak McKracken to see what makes it so different from the rest of the LucasArts catalog.

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Comments

Anonymous

Oh no you poor fools. Thanks for taking one for the team.

Anonymous

I said a little "yay" to myself in quaratine when I saw this come up in the feed. If there's anything I like better than good golden age adventure games it's bad and frustrating golden age adventure games.

Anonymous
>>35540295

Also - the "punishing backtracking" is basically right out of King's Quest II and its famous limited-uses bridge. Zak Mckraken's contemporary King's Quest IV is still cruel for sure, but in a far less deflating way.

Normallyretro

I would always see a demo of this at Babbage's. It always intrigued me along with the write up in an old Game players mag. Can't wait to listen.

Kevin Bunch

Gotta hand it to Zak McKraken though - great opening sequence and song!

Mike Mariano

Great discussion! Zak may not be easy to play but he's easy to love. I really enjoyed the early game—there are at least three different ways to get past the squirrel in the beginning of the game that leave you with different sets of items. I thought the whole game would be like that: low-challenge puzzles with a lot of variety and recombination. Instead it was a lot more frustrating!

Mike Mariano

Oh, AdventureJam is this week and a lot of people on Twitter are tagging in Mark Ferrari (@Mawkyman) when discussing pixel art. Just in the past few hours he has commented about Zak: Zak had to be all solid colors because dithering effects for shadows, etc. didn't have a compression scheme written for them yet and would basically take up a whole disk on their own. Three weeks ago he was tagged into a "four games that define me" chain and wrote about his own games: "Zak McKracken-a-t-A-M launched my career in pixels. Loom established my 'style.' Secret of Monkey Island seems to have made me 'a legend,' and Thimbleweed Park was likely my swan song. ...?"