There's also a 256-color version of this game which was exclusive to the FM-Towns system, but it's supported in ScummVM.

Not enough hits!

Something that has gotten a little lost over time, I think, is the sheer scope of this game. As a kid, I was blown away that Zak McKracken allowed me to visit numerous locations around the world and even Mars. No other adventure on the C64 came close to that sense of exploration.

The guy at the airport is a Hare Krishna follower. They used to hang around airports in the 70s.

Waiting for Maniac and this one in ADG :o

Day of the Tentacle is the sequel to Maniac Mansion.

HUGE game 🎉 Awesome seeing you cover this title.

nice phone bill. I guess if you didn't phone phreak your dial-in connection a quite intimidating phone bill could quickly sum up back then. ^^

21:50 you already had a ticket for Seattle, dude! Your boss gave it to you! :)

12:10 Zak takes place in 1997 or so, IIRC. Hence the fancy TV without controls. Not sure about the year, but it was definitely set in the near future.

4:53 The face is Groucho Marx (old school comedian)

7:17 Yeah, that's why LucasArts' early adventure games aren't as well-remembered. It wouldn't be until Loom and Monkey Island 1 that they cemented their no deaths / no softlocks design philosophy that made them popular. Also, I do love how needlessly overcomplicated the cursor is in these early games. As you say, it just creates new confusions. Sierra's eventual solution of just putting a single bright red dot on the cursor's tip was a lot more elegant.

09:00 In Maniac Mansion things aren't highlighted either. In this regard the Scumm engine is quite the same between both games. I am not sure which version you played, but neither the original C64 and DOS version highlight while moving the mouse, nor the enhanced Amiga and DOS versions. You also have to use the What Is command, just like in Zak. They did away with this in Indy 3.

I don't think Maniac Mansion is on a timer. If it is, I never ran into it when playing. There are many script triggered events, that give you the feeling of time progressing in the game, plus there are some timing sensitive situations, yes. But those are all pretty clear. Like if you shut of the cooling to the reactor you have something like 30-60 seconds to do whatever you wanted to do and then restart the cooling, but other than that: It is pretty decent, albeit not the greatest game in terms of design, as it was Ron Gilbert's first adventure game. Zak has different issues, but is already a bit more advanced. The two are not related at all, but there are some in game jokes that reference Maniac, such as the poster in the enhanced version or the gasoline for the chainsaw. What is so great about Zak is that it is less linear than other adventures. You can travel around the world and explore, figuring out everything as you go. That was back in the day, as a kid, part of why Zak is so highly regarded. The terrible labyrinths and sometimes weird puzzles are less important in this way...

Blocks. This is one of the long sought-after pieces of nostalgia finally, FINALLY, put into place. Much appreciated, Gemini 😄.

The DOS version of this was a big part of my childhood, along with Maniac Mansion.

Maniac Mansion is a bit of a handful, coming from the perspective of later LucasArts games. Fangame "Maniac Mansion Deluxe" does a lot to pave over SOME unpleasantries, but you should expect to play a few rounds either way. Even if you get pretty far and find yourself in an unwinnable state, you can use what you've learned to plow forward to that same spot in mere minutes on a new save file. MM has a few BS dead-ends, and as a busy adult in [current year], I'd say there's no shame in checking a walkthrough

Zak McCracktro! :D

I think you could call this a "follow up" to Maniac Mansion.

Cydonia face on mars

I didn't know the game, but I really liked it. They took a game and made it a little more interesting, and one that would give you a reason to want to keep playing, to see what the next level would look like. The music that is matched to each level is actually a nice touch.

Poor Wizball.

Looks so fun🎉

The CGA graphcis don't look terrible. That's actually something worth bragging about.

I will say: two touches that I quite liked were that one could shoot bombs and crashing planes out of the sky, and that on death a little pixel-man goes cartwheeling out of the buggy. ^_^ Also, having spotted the box-art attached to this video, I am now sad that we didn't see any dinosaurs in actual gameplay. :(

7:34 While these days, an older and more knowledgeable me would hook a custom interrupt handler to INT 9 as you describe, back in the day as a learning teen I got acceptable results by using BIOS INT 16h. The BIOS kept its own buffer, and you could use INT 16h to read it out. If you looked at the scan code (which also indicate whether the key was pressed or released) rather than the ASCII codes (which don't), you could keep track of multiple simultaneous key actions quite easily. But of course this method could still miss very quick successive inputs. Unfortunately, as you say, a lot of programmers (even on some commercial games) didn't seem to know about any of this or understand how to use it to keep track of the complete current keyboard state, and would use other, sub-optimal methods.

1:52 "And sticks of TNT for…uh, sticks of TNT." Ah yes, the dynamite is made of dynamite.

Would be cool to see a tool assisted speedrun of this, it must have a few juicy explots.

Why would you be surprised at anything that High Tech Expression via Hapless Underpaid Developer made? They were known to be pretty naff, even back then.

I just got hit with nostalgia train. I think I was 2 or 3 years old when I tried playing this game and failed

I can give Hi-Tech Expressions this much credit: this is probably the thing most players would expect and/or want out of a game about Tom and Jerry. I don't remember the cartoon where Jerry went through side-scroller levels and jumped on the heads of enemies, but I do remember plenty where they beat the crud out of each other.

So about those postage stamps...

4:50 Wait, it can auto-detect joysticks but not CGA? That's even weirder.

I immediately thought about the MASH theme when it said it was going to the Korean War. Very cool! Though, my favorite C64 instance of a game having dubious rights to include music was Epyx's World Games, which featured Monty Python's "The Lumberjack Song" for the Log Rolling event. They so should have had an Easter Egg code where the bearded log rollers would swap their flannels and boots for "high heels, suspenders, and a bra."

Hi-Tech Expressions… the name alone makes me shudder. I’m still scarred by Mega Man.

I have no idea who came up with that storyline, wasn't me ( and I wrote the game ) . Either way, just shoot stuff :-)

Technically not a DOS game, but I would love to see a review for Killing Time. Especially now that a remaster has been released by Nightdive Studios.

Gameplay aside, love the absurd fan fiction insanity of the later levels. The Empire attacked Earth in A.D with robot scorpions, resulting in it's total destruction

Seems that the most important historic lesson here is that road quality never gets better.

Re the Star Wars tune, I believe it's called (the) "Imperial March"... I've coincidentally recognised the tunes up to this point!

The Vietnam stage plays "Ride of the Valkyries" which was also used in Apocalypse Now.

That buggy must be the ultimate weapon, it won all the wars and never needed an upgrade.

War never changes.

Yes, that was Suicide is Painless.

I jokingly started whistling the MASH theme as soon as it said Korea. I just about choked when it actually started playing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the US the only side that operated attack helicopters in the Vietnam war? Plus the music that plays during that section sounds like Flight of the Valkyries. Whose side is your buggy on, exactly?

Sexy voice ... :D

Watching this not long after coming off of Desert Bus for Hope, hearing the Imperial March, and instinctively going "Dawn Dawn Dawn Dawn Da-Dawn Dawn Da-Dawn..."

Good to hear that you're feeling better. Yes, a creative twist on Moon Patrol with different time periods. Yes... you caught the MASH theme! 😀 I don't recall the glitchy backgrounds, though... I remember it playing more smoothly on the original hardware. That's what's great about these early classic C64 games... very simple and fit into memory without annoying loading times.

Are my Google/Ctrl+F skills failing right now, or have you not yet covered Capture the Flag?