Sweeping inland from the ocean, passing over bobbing sailboats fixed to their moorings, you descend upon the quaint seaside village of Golden Creek, located somewhere along the coast in the northeast portion of the United States. Very picturesque and pleasant.

The village appears to be a typical fishing community, one that is quite commonly found up and down the east coast with docks, shanties, fisheries, the local grocery and mercantile store, some stately homes, the bank, Old Bob's tavern, and a lighthouse.

But ... right away you notice the big building that looks so out of place. It's quite large, pink in color, with a tower structure that rises above the village landscape in somewhat of a corkscrew fashion. Very odd and gaudy.

However, no time to be concerned about that, because you have an appointment to call on your uncle, whom you haven't seen in many years and whom you know little about, Uncle Tuck Pinkleton.

Thus begins the opening video sequence of Treasure Hunter. At this point, I must tell you that I played this game with three CDs but no manual and no packaging, box, or other marketing materials. Given the locale, if I hadn't looked at the credits at the start of the game, I might have thought that this game was made in the U.S.A.

Actually, though, I was made aware that Treasure Hunter was a historical adventure game, released in 1997 by Cryo Interactive with limited distribution. Oh boy ... I love edutainment games, and as I advanced into this game, it had all the look, feel, and joy of similar early Cryo historical adventure games, such as Versailles and Egypt.

I'll tell you up front that I really enjoyed playing this game and that elation prompted me to wonder and ask some questions.

Why couldn't I get any background information on Treasure Hunter?

Was this game ever distributed and, if so, where?

Can this game be purchased now, and if so, from whom?

Well ... the answers never were forthcoming. So, at the risk of being accused of assumption or speculation, I have concluded that Treasure Hunter probably had only limited distribution in Europe and no distribution in the U.S.A. or elsewhere. Questions about the availability of Treasure Hunter have gone unanswered, and I haven't been able to locate any source for purchasing the game. Dreamcatcher Games, who recently established an agreement to distribute Cryo games in North America, when asked about Treasure Hunter agreed to look into "back titled Cryo games" for possible future distribution. So we are left with a little hope if not immediate promise.

If you are thinking, "why write or read a review about a game when there is little or no opportunity to buy it" (as I originally thought), then consider this ... If you read the rest of this review and find that Treasure Hunter sounds interesting, you might want to write letters to Cryo and Dreamcatcher asking them to breathe new life into Treasure Hunter, either to release it in its 1997 form or to update it and release it as a year 2000-2001 historical adventure game. It is another chance to support the adventure game genre by strongly requesting access to a good game that should be made available to buy and enjoy.

Okay, back to Treasure Hunter.

You meet with Uncle Tuck, who explains that the big pink building is his Maritime Museum with over 5,000 square meters of exhibit floor space, but regrettably ... empty. It seems that Uncle Tuck's ill health and bad fortune have contributed to a lack of energy and shortage of the funds necessary to complete the exhibit. Uncle Tuck's solution to his predicament is to ask you to undertake a series of five treasure hunts directed at locating and recovering lost treasures from Spanish galleons and other ships that sank, often in storms, not only along the channel between the Bahamas and the Florida Keys, but also at other wreck sites from all over the world.

You are given Uncle Tuck's yacht to use as a base of operations, $30,000 for initial expenses, and the task of finding three people in the village who have something of importance to give and then bringing these items back to Uncle Tuck. Once successful at this initial task, you will be given some information about the identity of the first of your five missions to locate and retrieve the sunken treasure from a historical wreck.

Before embarking on each mission, you will need to find ways to research the history of the wreck, acquire funding for the exploration, and find and hire an experienced crew with the appropriate equipment to conduct the work. The process of historical research and gathering vital information that will lead to establishing the location of each treasure ship when it sank involves finding knowledgeable people, asking many questions, gathering evidence, solving puzzles, and using logical thinking to gain the proof that you will need to begin each of your searches for sunken treasures.

Once you have embarked on an actual search, you will experience the exploration through a series of slideshow presentations that will take the gameplay from setting sail, to discovery, to undersea recovery, to categorization of the treasures, and finally to placement of the treasures in the Maritime Museum.

The game's interface is fairly standard for adventure games and includes the ability to hold conversations, walk around, look at/examine objects, take/use inventory items, keep notes on a notepad, travel to destinations around the world by airplane, and use a personal computer for storing research information and contacting people by videophone. In addition, a drop-down main menu gives you restart, load, save, quit, continue, and change volume choices.

A built-in hint system will be activated at times when the game senses that you may be stuck or going around in circles. You will be made aware that the game has a hint available for you to use by seeing a flashing sign, but you will have to choose whether or not to use the hint. It will not be exposed to you unless you allow that to happen. Beware, however, the hints are really in the spoiler category.

The 2D graphics in Treasure Hunter are excellent, as might be expected from a game created by Cryo, even considering it was released in 1997. Movement through the game is viewed from a first-person perspective. As previously stated, there are a reasonable number of videos and animations, but many of the graphic sequences in the game use slideshows as the preferred way to view the evidence that is collected.

The music, sounds, and voice acting are all fairly good, but not outstanding, which is also typical of the Cryo games from this period.

Since Treasure Hunter is an edutainment game that is packed on three disks, there is quite a lot to the story, the five searches, and the history of the period from the 1400s to the 1700s, when Portuguese, Spanish, and English ships were used for conquest and plunder alike and pirates such as Redbeard, Blackbeard, and Henry Morgan sailed the seas in search of easy prey.

I know that I had fun playing Treasure Hunter and learned many new facts about the explorers, ships, weapons, and navigational equipment that became part of our world history during these times of discovery.

And at the end, I even got to take a tour of the newly opened Maritime Museum complete with its treasures. Very satisfying and educational.

Oh yes ... I almost forgot. There was a closing video sequence that was most unexpected and enjoyable, but you'll have to find the game or petition Cryo and Dreamcatcher to make Treasure Hunter available, because I just can't divulge the surprise.

Final Grade: A

System Requirements (minimum):

Windows 95
Pentium 90 MHz
4X CD-ROM
8 MB RAM
5 MB hard drive space
Sound card
DirectX