Articles

By Randy Sluganski

THE STATE OF ADVENTURE GAMING - May 2002

ADVENTURE - THE GENRE THAT DOES SELL

Herewith posted for your perusal are the March sales figures as provided by PC Data. As usual these figures do not include online or overseas sales, both of which comprise a large portion of adventure game purchases:

E3 OR BUST

With any luck and my health permitting, I should be exploring the hectic floors of the E3 right about now. But fear not, even if I don't make it Valerie Davis and Ray Ivey will be scurrying about pestering companies for information. Sure, it's a breeze for anyone to acquire mainstream information on Lucas Art's or Dreamcatcher's upcoming releases, but we're masters at uncovering those hidden gems! And next week we should have our yearly E3 round-up available for your reading pleasure.

ALL HAIL SCORPIA

Remember Scorpia? Of course you do! For those who need a refresher, you can read an interview I conducted with the mistress of adventure or just pick-up any issue of Computer Gaming World before they went testosterone crazy.

For those who have fond memories of Scorpia, look no further than Just Adventure as we will soon be posting her past reviews on a weekly basis and will also be adding Scorpia's extensive catalogue of walkthroughs. Now I hear you saying to yourself, "C'mon Randy these are all reviews of older games." Well, let me ask you this, how long do you think it will take before I wield my irresistible charm to convince Scorpia to begin reviewing newer games for Just Adventure (hee hee)?

DIRECT-TO-VIDEO

How much longer do we have to wait before Hollywood wakes-up and instead of catering to the 12-year old mentality, films a movie based on Gabriel Knight or Tex Murphy? Sure they don't have the marquee value of Mario Brothers or Mortal Kombat, but you can stick the paper-thin plots of these movies and Final Fantasy and Resident Evil in a thimble. In fact, one only had to see the previews for Resident Evil to know it was a piece of crap. Even worse though is that an editor of one of the video gaming magazines recently complained that these video game movies would be better if only more money were spent on their production. He just don't get it, does he?

WE BUY THE GAMES JUST FOR THE BOXES

We were recently informed that our own Harriet Gurganus is to be quoted on the Zelenhgorm box when it is released! Not only that, but our review of Watchmaker is to also be quoted. We purposely do not write a lot of previews and have long been quite vocal about magazines and webzines that write 5 page previews of a game followed by a half-page review months later. For that reason, the few previews we do are intentionally short.

But it is also great not only for Just Adventure but also for the adventure community as a whole to see the name Just Adventure on a box in a retail store. Imagine how many people who have never heard of JA will now pick up that box and visit the site and imagine how much stronger this makes the adventure community. So Shakespeare we may not be, but make sure to read those box quotes!

SIMON SAYS, BUY THIS GAME

We are currently attempting a new approach to marketing adventure games that can't find shelf space at your local gaming store. We now have a direct link offering the long-awaited Simon 3D at a special price for Just Adventure readers. As an added incentive, each copy of Simon 3D sold through this JA link earns us a small commission that keeps our currently unhealthy staff with medical supplies.

We also have a link for you to purchase Watchmaker. We reviewed Watchmaker a few months ago and feel it should be in every adventure gamer's collection. Keep the adventure community strong buy showing support by ordering directly from the publishers.

AMATEURS NO MORE

One thing we neglected to mention in our previous 'State of Adventure Gaming' were the winners of the Amateur Adventure Awards. Well it's still not too late to check out the winners for yourself and get a heads-up on the people who will be developing games for us in the near future.

CHA..CHA..CHA..CHA…CHANGES

Yes, Just Adventure is undergoing a lot of changes and adding tons of new staff members. We promised a long time ago to cover all aspects of adventure gaming and we are working hard to do so.

Some readers have noticed an influx of reviews of console-based action/adventure games as we prepare to split Just Adventure into two separate, but linked, sites - console action/adventure and pc point-and-click. Plus, on the PC side, besides the wonderful addition of Scorpia, plans are also afoot to add an all-new Infocom section. Our collection of adventure game walkthroughs will soon be the most comprehensive on the Internet as will our links to downloadable, playable adventure games.

Some have also noticed that our newest reviewer, Robert Freese, used to write reviews for America On-Line. No surprise there, we only hire the best. So when you have a moment, how about dropping your favorite JA person an email and letting them know how much you appreciate the hard work they perform tracking down the adventure games and keeping the genre alive. Put your hands together for not only the best adventure staff on the Internet, but also one of the best webzine game staffs, period: Tom Houston, Harriet Gurganus, Valerie Davis, Adam Rodman, Robert Freese , Ray Ivey, Dawn Johnson, Joe Waddington, Cindy Kyser, Michal Necasek, Audrey Wells, Alex Tait, Matthew Desmond, Scorpia, James Korwak, Jeff Strand, Mark Walker, Jennifer Miller, Scott Jelinek and as for me, I'm Randy and I'm outta here!

Until next month, happy adventuring.