Back then it was hard to get hold of these games in my part of Norway. No shops sold games, and the only way to get them was trading, "you get a game from me, i get a game from you". Getting contacts who had games could also be problematic. Most of the times you contacted people who wanted gamer pen pals in comic books or similar (the forums of pre internet age). Sometimes you struck gold and got in contact with a person who had hundreds of games, sometimes you got stuck with the guy who only owned a shareware copy of X-mas Lemmings, which where included in most of the Amiga 600 at that time.
Piracy was of course rampant. Some people might remember Amiga X-Copy...
There weren't really many gamers in my neighbourhood either, so if you got stuck in an adventure game, you risked staying stuck. I remember asking friends about what to do next on Monkey Island. No one could give me the solution, so i read through every game magazine i could get a hold on, with hopes of finding that one screenshot that could give a hint as to what to do next.
This seems very nice and nostalgic now, but it was a pain in the ass back then.
Adventure gaming had its heydays in the early to mid nineties, and "died" at the turn of the millennium. Nowadays, its roaring back in all its pixelated glory.
A company that deserve a lot of credit for making said genre important again, is Wadjet Eye. Starting out small in New York, using Adventure Game Studio to make their games, they quickly made an impact on the starving market that is retro adventure gaming, capturing the attention of the 30+ niche of gamers, who really wanted something both old school and new.
What really turned me onto Wadjet Eye was the release of Gemini Rue.
They took Cyperpunk, film noir, amazing story telling and mashed it together into the ultimate point n click adventure game. It`s a pretty easy game, but in games like Gemini Rue, it really doesn't matter. What you really want to know in this game is what happens next? Putting in some really difficult puzzle would be counter productive, and just drag you away from the story. I`m not saying that you cant have hard puzzles combined with a good story, but Geminie Rue manages to be easy, keeping the attention firmly on the story, and still give the player a sense of accomplishment each time they progress.
I see some writers using the word "nostalgic" a lot when they review this game. "Time to get nostalgic..." and so on. That isn't really fair to this game. Granted, its classic point n click, but it didn't give me any particular feeling of nostalgia. Instead, it stood on its own as an original adventure and a really damn good one too! In fact, most of Wadjet Eyes games hasn't given me that fussy nostalgic feeling. Only game i can recall right now that managed that was A Vampire Story. Quite a different game in comparison to Wadjet Eyes games.
Geminie Rue starts you off in the Gemini system. You are playing Azriel Odin, a mafia gun for hire, turned intergalactic lawman. In search for his brother, he lands on the planet Barracus, where a former friend and partner supposedly have info on his brothers location, and what happened to him. From the moment the intro ends, you immediately get that noir vibe. Barracus is a dark, rainy place. The people live in fear of a corrupt regime, and the mafia organisation "Boryokudan" pretty much run the place. It`s dark, chaotic and organic. The perfect setting for a conspiracy. Azriel Odin ads to the flavour with his dark voice, cigarette and trench coat.
Pretty early in the game you`ll be introduced to a new character, Delta Six. He is imprisoned in some sort of training facility of unknown location. You don`t know why he`s there, and he doesn't remember anything except for bits and pieces of fragmented memories telling him to get the hell out asap.
In contrast to rainy, dark and filthy Barracus, Delta Six`s facility is clean and runs in a orderly fashion. Everything is scheduled, mechanic and sterile. In some ways, even more scary then Barracus.
Telling you more of the story would be spoiling it. But i can tell you that theres an amazing twist which makes for some replay value. It`s fairly short, which is a drawback, but this isn't really a huge budget game. The puzzles aren't really great, but still better then the pixel hunting you get in some adventure games. I never really got properly used to the clunky interface, and there are some shooting mechanics that really don`t work that well.
Despite these fault, the game is a great one. And maybe the best point n click adventure game since Lucasarts and Sierra made their classics.You can get the game on gog.com , Steam and directly from Wadjet Eye.
I`ll conclude with the words "BUY THIS GAME", and leave you with a few more screenshots:
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