Commodore 64

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Trivia

A poster of one of LucasFilm's early games, Rescue on Fractalus!, can be seen in the machine room next to the map of Earth. Like Zak McKcracken, it was also directed by David Fox.

This game employed a very extensive code program that required the game player to look up codes when they had to leave the USA (but not to re-enter the USA). A 4 picture code is necessary in order to continue, but if the wrong sequence was entered, it would be registered incorrect. After 5 incorrect entries in a row, Zak gets put into Pirate Jail and the game is automatically over.

There is another Maniac Mansion reference in the game: If you read the telephone inside the The Phone Company's office, it will read a four digit telephone number. If you phone it from Zak's house, you can phone the sales representative. He will think that it is Edna again. If you leave your phone off the hook, the sales representative will keep talking, allowing you to enter the secret room to obtain your stolen items if you don't have your hat and nose & glasses.

The copy protection for this game was written on a dark red paper so that it would be impossible to copy ( back then, copying in color was very VERY expensive )...

Another Maniac Mansion reference: On Mars there's a can of gasoline. Try to pick it up, and your character says it's for a different game. This is a nod to the red herring in Maniac Mansion, where there's a chainsaw in the kitchen but it's out of gas... and there is no gas in that game!

Zak was made with three different styles of graphics: the Commodore 64 multicolor style (low resolution using 256 characters and 16 colors), the higher resolution 16 color version that used bitmaps and finally the 256 color version (same style as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) which seems to have only been released in Japan on the Fujitsu FM Towns system.

One of the artifacts, the Blue Crystal, was designed to work on animals. The game designers made it possible to use on ALL the animals in the game, not just the ones needed to solve the game. Try using it on all the animals you run across, and explore your various command options. Be sure to save your game first, though...

During the scene on Mars, if you play the music cassette in the radio, the tune that plays is by Razor and the Scumettes. Razor was one of the original characters in Maniac Mansion, which was released before Zak. And yes, she was a musician in Maniac Mansion, with her band -- the Scumettes.

The game is getting to be remodeled, recreated, and adapted to higher resolution graphic and under Windows platform. A small team of people is working on its creation, probably 'cuz they like the game so much. The game will be totally free for download, unless you want with speech version, then you'll have to get the CD from their site.

More info at http://zak2.adventuregamer.com/

Contributed by MAT (35385) on May 05, 2000.

The SCUMM interface introduced in Maniac Mansion was also used in this game. This point and click interface in which you formed sentences with objects in your environment was revolutionnary as most other adventure games required user input on the keyboard.

The introduction theme is probably the best tone-based music I've ever heard on the PC speaker. It probably took a while for its creators to arrange it, so I understand why they didn't put much more music in this game. (Editor's note: The Tandy music is even better, as it's in 3 voices.)