I'm delving into my collection of adventure games, and in doing so find that Simon the Sorcerer tells us an awful lot about the genre in its heyday, and why that heyday was going to be a lot shorter than we expected in 1993. Or 1994 if we wanted Chris Barrie voicing the explanation of it.

How did I find the adventures of He Who Sorcers? And why did vintage magazines claim this was possibly better than Day of the Tentacle? And am I going to get every last one of the Internet People correcting my pronunciation of "Elvira"?

Frustrating puzzles:

0:00 A little bit adventurous
1:02 It was twenty years ago today
2:34 The gap narrows
4:11 A British game about a wizard
5:18 Day of the UScentric Comedy Reference
6:32 Those Monkey Island comparisons
7:45 Ron Gilbert's conclusion
9:15 Combinatorial logic
10:50 Handmade with love and MT32s
12:30 It wouldn't be Timberwolf without the blackboard
13:35 Cardinal sins of adventure gaming
15:57 Too much forest
17:35 An infringement of copyright
18:26 Shopping, 1997 style
19:34 The inevitable conclusion

Media credits:

Chris Barrie by ...some guy, CCBY 2.0
Scifi & Fantasy Weekender 2017 by bigashb, CCBY 2.0
Stock footage from Pexels
Some public domain imagery from Wikimedia Commons
Some CC0 sounds from Freesound

PC Zone and Computer Gaming World scans provided by the Retro eXo project.

CCBY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Yes, they could probably also show more colours with copper tricks. If it happened, you can tell me.

Bonus fact: Simon was apparently dreamt up by Simon on a long car journey, with a section along the M5 being a key moment of the character's creation. And we just played I Spy.

#pointandclick #adventuregame