In Search of the Most Amazing Thing

The Good
Review Version: v2.0
Review Date: February, 2008
Review Length: 3 page(s).
Game Version: I have no idea.
Tech Specs Used: basic.com or gwbasic.com
Finished: No.
Last time played: Twas a long, long time ago.

Before there were DOS games, there were BASIC games. Er, or do I have it the other way around? It's pretty funny now, looking back where now I need an emulator to play DOS games, back then when using DOS, we had to use an “emulator” to play BASIC games in a way. Never really figured out what basica.com or gwbasic.com was for when I was a kid, only that it was used to play certain games that can’t be normally run on DOS.

Now, usually most BASIC games were pretty simple…at least those I have been exposed with. Most were usually text based with little or no graphics available. Out of nowhere, I had the fortune of playing In Search of the Most Amazing Thing. To my delight, it had FULL graphics, something quite odd for a BASIC game…or at least for me.

What is this game like? That’s the problem. To this date, I do know that its game play to a certain extent remains original. Traditionally, it would qualify as an adventure game although by definition that is entirely incorrect as compared to an “exploration game” but don’t let me start on genre issues.

The town of Metallica
The game plot and gameplay is divided into 2 major parts. The first is in the town of Metallica (with no reference to the original band), here Metallica is divided into 3 areas:

• The Elevator
  The first is the elevator, which allows you to travel up and down the city in order to gain access to other areas. The elevator is the only method of accessing other areas. Traveling up and down is accompanied by a slight ascending or descending PC sound, depending on which vertical direction you’re traveling.
• The Uncle’s Room
  The first place you’d probably visit is you’re uncle. He was once a famous traveler now retired. A graphical imagine of him sitting in his room is thus presented to the player. Here, the player starts the first “mini-game” of trying to wake up his uncle. If player succeeds in waking up his uncle up “nicely”, he will provide you with advice and an item which you can sell at the auction house. If you wake him up too fast, he may get angry and throw you out of the room…or in other cases a minor bug where he opens his eyes but doesn’t say anything, prompting you to leave and enter the place again. He will also throw you out if you already have an item from him at your disposal. There seems to be a large database on the weird items your uncle gathered while he was still adventuring. It was quite fun just to read the names of these weird exotic items, none of which I can remember, but most of them are usually silly like a polka dot flamingo feather more or less.
• The Auction House
  Here you present your one and only item to several odd looking aliens. They will then start chattering among themselves on the value of the item. I learned many new words to my English vocabulary from these aliens, among others the word Superb…which to this date I remember is the only game that uses this word in its dialogs. :p
• The Store
  Having gained money from the Auction House, the store provides items that you need to purchase to fully equip your adventure vehicle of choice, the B-Liner. It takes a while to collect enough money to buy all the items available in the store, and interestingly not all of them are useful. You need to check your B-Liner later on to actually see if something new was added or not.
• The Surface
  Actually you start here first, trying to fly to the entrance of Metallica. Since its anti-gravity, you can only move to a forward direction while to slow down, you need to move in the opposite direction you are flying to. On the next screen beside the entrance, is your B-Liner, an odd looking space ship with an equally odd name. In the B-Liner there are several instruments or more precisely “selectable graphics” to choose from. Can’t remember half of them, but I do remember this item called “the Musix” which seems to be an item you can draw upon, each line is accompanied by a sound. Thus, you get this idea that you draw a picture while creating a melody. Never figured out what kind of picture nor melody you’re supposed to create or how to find that out.

The Mire
The Mire is every other place outside the town of Metallica, or in this case, it’s known to us as outer space. The Mire is an empty space with visible longitude and latitude lines. Apparently the Mire is extremely huge even by DOS game standards. The visible longitude and latitude lines help you navigate the Mire in case you get lost.

The Mire itself besides the lines is pretty much empty. There are what seem to be clouds or possibly asteroids. If it isn’t moving, you can land you’re B-liner there and drill for fuel. Although oddly, you don’t seem to need fuel for flying in the first place, so I’m not quite entirely sure what fuel actually is for, except that it does decrease when you’re flying.

There are also Mire Crabs that disguise themselves as clouds/asteroids. Identifying a Mire Crab is easy. It’s moving towards you. The strategy in dealing with Mire Crabs is even easier. Move towards the opposite direction :) Fortunately Mire Crabs can be destroyed when they move or hit a longitude or latitude line, followed by an unpleasant PC sound death. Don’t quite remember what happens when a crab catches you, has something to do with you sleeping or something and the crab drains all your fuel.

After successfully dodging Mire Crabs and getting lost in the Mire without any actual coordinates, you may happen to come across tribes somewhere in space. These tribes have valuable information regarding the Most Amazing Thing and I vaguely remember you’re supposed to give or do something with the Musix to them. Never got further than that I’m afraid. May need to get back in to this game one day, tried once too, but it seemed to crash every time I entered the Mire.

The Bad
Well, I haven't finished the game yet (since I was too young back then) and the one I got later on had a bug in it which crashes big time...so that was obviously disappointing.

This game maybe was a little too big. The Mire is quite large...and getting lost there can be quite frustrating, especially if you don’t have coordinates. When you start adventuring you may realize that you’re totally not prepared. If you go adventuring too fast, you'll realize that you forgot to buy something back at the city or didn't bring enough money for trade and so on...and it's a long long way back to the city of Metallica.

The Bottom Line
For a BASIC game, it is above and beyond the call of duty. Compared to other games in its day, this is game is rare DaVinci artifact. I really, really need to pick up this game again one of these days.