Crazy Nick's Software Picks: Parlor Games with Laura Bow (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

It's another mecha-neko Monday guest post!

This item concludes my look at Crazy Nick's Software Picks. We've had a good time, so far, right? Well, a time, anyway. It'll all be over soon. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Nick brings us another pair of table top games for us to waste our time with. This time it's Yacht and Dominoes, presented by a lovely hostess, Laura Bow. (From yet another Sierra adventure game I haven't played.)

YACHT:

We jump right in with prerendered dice. I hope you like prerendered dice, because you'll see them a lot. They at least serve the purpose of distracting the player from that hideous, pulsating, colour-cycling background. It's a far cry from that nice tree in Robin Hood's Games.

Laura, being the computer player, gets a Yacht pretty much immediately. Watch as she laughs. And laughs. And laughs.

I curse her. I'd kill her if I didn't waste all my ammo killing Graham two weeks ago.

At least I've found the option to disable the pulsing background.

Her computer powers are no match for my own... computer powers. Look, I'm really smart. Smart for a cat at least.

There's a couple of things off about this version of Yacht.

First: It doesn't have Mario in it. Not everything has to have Mario in it, but it would have helped.

Second: It's only the player vs. Laura. There's no two player mode, and you have to watch her play her turn every time.

You might have noticed that there's no 'Three of a Kind' scoring line and Laura's 'Full House' has scored her 12 points... regional differences? It would help if there were a pop-up showing you how much your current hand scores against each line. Two thirds of the screen are wasted here.

If you must play Yacht, don't play this one.

DOMINOES:

I've established dominance. Even now, watch her recoil! Lacking good dominoes, she exacts selection. Now, with her recovered dominoes, she evidently yearns still. Let the endgame entail! Laura abstains, so our remaining gambit, 'three', ends. Scores show, winner: rapscallion neko.

Domino domination.

Wait, what? We're playing AGAIN!?

Looks like we're playing to 100 points. Damn.

Definitive domino domination.

Poor Laura must be really lonely. She's stuck here forever with only these two games to play with.

These Picks are noticeably worse than King Graham's. There's absolutely no need for the hideous Yacht game to exist, and you'd have to be some kind of hard-core dominomaniac to want to play single player dominoes versus the computer. It took me about half an hour to get up to 100 points and I don't think you can save your progress and continue later.

If you've got the technology necessary to read these words on your computer, then you've almost certainly got access to better versions of Nine Men's Morris, Backgammon, Checkers, Yacht and Dominoes. Let's leave these old Sierra games alone and stride onwards with renewed hope and confidence towards... the next game!

Pray it's not Picked by Crazy Nick.