Introduction
Flight of the Amazon Queen is one of those little-known titles that managed to slip through production while people still thought graphic adventure games had a future. (Before the long gap between Sierra folding and Lucasarts giving up, and the recent revival, anyway.) It might as well have been made by Lucasarts - it's got the traditional Lucasarts humor, a very SCUMM-like interface (and I think they even use exactly the same font as Monkey Island-era Lucasarts games), and the familiar and very welcome no-death, no-dead end approach to game design. There are times when Indiana Jones himself would have fit right in. Unfortunately, Interactive Binary Illusions (Halloween Harry) had the game published by Warner Active, the video game distributor of Warner Music Group, which is the same Warner as Warner Bros. Never heard of them? Well, that's why so few people seem to know that this game exists.
gschmidl posted:
Oh, and if you want to play along at home, the game is freely available and runs on ScummVM
Our hero on this epic adventure is Joe King, a pilot for hire who always seems to find trouble wherever he goes. There are always beautiful women at the center of that trouble, and he's got an eternal friend in his mechanic, Sparky, to help get him out of the worst situations. He's also got a pretty tough punch. Those things may help him when, during the titular flight, the Amazon Queen is struck by lightning, dumping Joe, Sparky, and movie star Faye Russel in the Amazon jungle with few supplies and no way to contact the outside world. Oh, there's some civilization, but...
And then there's an evil scientist plotting to turn all the Amazon women into dinosaurs to create an army in the secret underground laboratory hidden within a lederhosen factory. There's something about a Crystal Skull, too, but that wouldn't be a Lucasfilm reference until about a decade after this game came out. His inventions may not be perfect, but you can tell he's the final boss because he's got a giant portrait of himself in his office.
And that's not to mention the pygmy tribe, the legendary lost temple, the imaginary gorilla... we're going to need a bigger stick.
Videos
| Part 1: Escape from the Copacabana | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 2: The Last Flight of the Amazon Queen | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 3: Welcome to Trader Bob's | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 4: Joe King: Fumigator for Hire | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 5: In the AMAZONS' DUNGEON | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 6: I'm sure the pun works in both languages | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 7: The Depths of Floda | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 8: Escapes are more thrilling when there's a challenge | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Interlude: Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sloth Island? | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 9: Knight Bote two Chiro | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 10: It's a Trap! Actually, Everything's a Trap! | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 11: When I said there was no death in this game... I lied. | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 12: Who Didn't See This Betrayal Coming? | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Part 13: Dinosaur vs. Robot | blip.tv | YouTube |
| Bonus Video: Cheesing it, without the cheese | blip.tv | YouTube |