Secret of Evermore (SNES)

Oh damn it's Super Adventures' 8th birthday today! I didn't write anything for the site all last year but I'm fairly sure those 12 months still count towards its age.

I gave writing about games a long rest because it became too much like work to me and I was so done with this site that I couldn't even get one post finished a week anymore, but I've managed to slowly regenerate my interest in playing games in the meantime thanks to my time off. In fact I've decided that the break I took worked out so well that I should take more breaks, more often. So this year I plan to take a two month break every two months!

Unfortunately this does mean that I have to give you two months of game articles each time or else I'm not actually taking a break from anything. So it is with deep regret that I inform you that Super Adventures is now back (for two months).

Developer:

Square

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Release Date:

1996 (1995 NA)

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Systems:

SNES

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This week on Ray Hardgrit's resurrected Super Adventures in Gaming I'm playing Secret of Evermore, which I'm fairly sure isn't a spiritual successor to Secret of Monkey Island.

All I know about it is that it's an action RPG on the SNES by Squaresoft... made in America... with music from Jeremy "Elder Scrolls" Soule. So that's a bit unusual. This was actually the only game ever developed by a Square team in the US, which sounds like a bit of a warning sign but probably isn't. They briefly considered making a sequel to the game in fact, until it was decided that it was time to jump ship from the sinking SNES.

The US only got one more Square RPG on the SNES after this, Super Mario RPG, and us folks in Europe didn't even get that for some reason. Evermore was only the fourth Square RPG to ever get a release in PAL regions, after two Mystic Quests and Secret of Mana, and the next game we got was Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation.

Okay I'm going to play the game for a couple of hours, write about what happened, then finish with a bit of a review at the end. Even though I've got no business reviewing a game I've only played a couple of hours of.

Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This year on Super Adventures, things are still pretty dead and that's not changing any time soon. Sorry about that. But I do have a surprise guest post by my cat-obsessed associate game critic mecha-neko for you to enjoy!

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Hello! I'm mecha-neko and I'm back for another Obscure-As-All-Hell Animated Cat Game August!

Say hello to Inherit The Earth: Quest For The Orb, also known as Erben der Erde: Die Grosse Suche (Inherit The Earth: The Great Search) in German.

Developer:

The Dreamers Guild

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, PC-98, Windows, Linux

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This is an adventure game that's been on the super Super Adventures adventure game wishlist for a long time, but it's only now that a copy has arrived in my paws. It's all about walking, talking animal-folk, so I'm certain I'll bump into a cat at some point.

I'm playing the original MS-DOS CD-ROM version as it makes producing these wonderful .gifs for you much easier, but the Steam version is identical, pixel-for-pixel, as far as I can tell.

Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2017

It's been a while, but I'm back with a brand new post for you, filled with old content you've already seen! It's the seventh annual Super Adventures Screenshots Animated GIFs of the Year, featuring some of the very best images from the last 12 10 or so months of my site.

I have to be honest, this is going to be a much shorter post than it's been in years past because I just didn't have many games to pick from. I've only made 32 posts this year and one of them was a message reassuring people that the site wasn't dead, followed by a list of games I promised I was going to write about and then never did. Well, to be fair I did manage to get around to half of them.

Speaking of things I'm not going to be writing about in the future, there'll be an important announcement at the end of this article and it's not good news. So be sure to stick around for that... or just scroll down and read it now and then scroll back for the screenshots afterwards, either's fine. All game links will take you back to the original Super Adventures game article, so don't worry about ending up on Amazon or something. Wait... I could've had Amazon affiliate links all over my site this whole time and made 3% on every sale! Oh no!

Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror - Remastered (PC)

Developer:

Revolution

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

Win, OS X, iOS, Android

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Looking back over the games I've played for my site over the last seven years, I've noticed a pattern forming: I've played a horror game for Halloween on every odd-numbered year, while even-numbered years have gotten games like Snake's Revenge and Saints Row IV at the end of October instead. Seems to me that I've got a bit of a tradition forming here... but I despise pointless traditions, so this year on Super Adventures I'm breaking the pattern by playing Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror - Remastered! I don't think I'll be seeing any ghosts or zombies in this one.

I'm torn here, because I really want to call it Broken Sword II, but there's clearly no 'II' in that logo up there. There was in the original game's logo, but they've taken it away for the Remastered version, because I guess knowing what order things go in only confuses modern audiences. Personally, I'm more confused by the subtitle. Is it referring to a mirror that's recently been used as a murder weapon? A mirror people that go out to when they fancy a quick smoke?

Wait, I forgot to mention that I'm playing the game on Halloween because it was released on October 31st, 1997, the same day as Curse of Monkey Island and the Blade Runner adventure game, so all three are twenty years old today! Well okay, technically this is only seven years old because I'm playing the Remastered version on Steam. I would've played my original CD version but I've lost it. I’ve checked shelves, I've checked boxes, I’ve checked other boxes buried underneath boxes, and it seems like the bloody game’s just vanished.

Funny thing is, when I bought the game the discs were already damaged and some of the video files wouldn’t copy when I installed it. Fortunately, when ScummVM came out there was a compatibility problem with the video codec so Revolution put revised cutscene files up for free and I could finally play this game I'd owned for years! I actually still have that install on my hard drive ready to go, but I lost half the files in a hard drive failure and now ScummVM won’t even recognise it.

It’s like fate doesn’t want me to play this game, and it doesn't care how much physical storage media it has to break to keep me from it.

Zool 2 (Amiga)

Developer:

The Warp Factory

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Release Date:

1994 (A500 1993)

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Systems:

Amiga, DOS, CD32, Jaguar

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Today Super Adventures has been struck by extreme serendipity. I've been playing Amiga games this month to celebrate the Amiga 500's 30th anniversary, but today is also the Amiga 1200's 25th anniversary! Also, and I didn't even realise this until someone else pointed it out to me the other day, this is my 1200th post on the site.

Seems like this is the perfect time for me to go back and replay one of the very first A1200 games I ever owned: Zool 2: AGA Version. I found it packed inside the same box as the machine itself, as it was one of the three games included in the 'Computer Combat' bundle. Shame I couldn't find the bloody code wheel that came with it ever again, after I took it out and left it somewhere. I had to play Brian the Lion instead, which kind of took some of the shine off my brand new computer.

Well that, and the fact that the A1200 turned out to only be a slight upgrade from the A500, with games that were typically the same except with obnoxious backgrounds added. It wasn't exactly the leap from NES to SNES. But I'm writing this to celebrate my beloved computer, the first I ever owned, not point out its numerous flaws, so I should get to pointing out Zool 2's flaws already.

Sensible Soccer (Amiga)

Developer:

Sensible Software

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, DOS

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Hey I've got a terrible idea, how about I play Sensible Soccer?

I haven't written about a sports game on Super Adventures for about five years now because I realised early on that they weren't working out for all kinds of reasons. These reasons include: I'm terrible at them, I usually don't know the rules, they don't give me much to write about, I often end up with a lot of empty green screenshots with tiny people standing around, and I hate them.

But I'm making a special exception for Sensible Soccer, on account of it being perhaps the most beloved Amiga game ever. It seems to have a spot reserved in every top 100 list right up near the top (unless they've chosen its sequel Sensible World of Soccer instead). Plus the spiritual successor, Sociable Soccer, is coming out soon, so it seemed like a good time for it.

Okay, I'll try to get this over with quickly, with as little whining as possible. I'll show a few screenshots of bland looking menus, a few of me losing a match, then we can both get on with our day.

Bob's Bad Day (Amiga)

Developer:

The Dome

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Release Date:

1993

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Systems:

Amiga

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Super Adventures Amiga Game Month continues with Bob's Bad Day! For some reason, this is the first game that jumped into my head after playing Bill's Tomato Game, funny that.

I have to level with you folks, this is not going to be a pixel art showcase and there won't be much going on in it for me to talk about. I'm pretty much only playing it as an excuse to show off the intro... though now that I think about it, the intro won't even work without the voices. Damn.

The important thing is that I'll be done with playing the game quickly and I'll not have much to write about afterwards, so I'll be able to move on to the next Amiga game and get that published before I run out of October. Theoretically.