Flight of the Amazon Queen

aka: Harpatkaot Malkat ha-Amazonot, L'Amazone Queen, Poljot Korolevy Amazonok
Moby ID: 352
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

Joe King is the hero of this point and click adventure. His plane is carrying actress Faye Russell when it crash lands in a remote jungle, and he must battle through 100 screens of adventure and puzzle. The game's feel is influenced by hammy B-movies, and the characters are quite stereotyped and comic. As standard in point and click adventures, a set of icons at the bottom of the screen allow you to interact with visible characters and items in the main view area.

Spellings

  • Полет Королевы Амазонок - Russian spelling
  • הרפתקאות מלכת האמזונות - Hebrew spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

105 People (91 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 83 ratings with 7 reviews)

Walks on the fine line between Monkey Island and Indiana Jones without falling.

The Good
"Flight of the Amazon Queen" is a decent comic adventure released in 1995 and developed by the Australian based team of Interactive Binary Illusions, who were also responsible for the very entertaining 2D-shooter "Alien Carnage" (also known as "Halloween Harry") prior to this.

The story takes place in 1949 and as the player you adopt the role of a pilot, who – in a quite desperate attempt to come up with a pun – was given the name Joe King. His little private business is getting dangerous, when he's assigned to escort the famous movie star Faye Russel to a photo shoot and his plane, the "Amazon Queen", crashes. The good: the whole crew (more precisely just Joe and his best buddy Sparky) and the passenger (Faye) all survive the accident. The bad: they are now trapped amidst the many dangers of the Amazon Jungle. Not to mention the unpleasant climate (quoting the hero: "Boy, is that hot...").

The relation between the two main-characters reminded me of the second Indiana Jones movie. Similar to the female lead in "Temple of Doom" (played by Kate Capshaw), Faye Russel is a sexy blonde and a bullheaded diva, used to a life in hygienic luxury and now stranded in the wilderness. Of course, she's very angry with the male adventurer who brought her in this messy situation and is giving him hard times in the beginnings. But in the course of the story – no big surprise – both come to like each other.

Soon after the initial events the main-antagonist is introduced. You will have to deal with a mad German scientist in best Josef Mengele fashion, who is hiding out in the jungle and planning to conquer the world. Along with this villain comes his army of brutal dumbheads, which appear to be former Nazi thugs (although this is never indicated clearly). Needless to say, that your primary goal changes from escaping the jungle to stopping the evil plans of these evil people.

True: the characters may be stereotypical and the story-line predictable. But this can be forgiven, as "Flight of the Amazon Queen" is a rather humorous affair, often close to a parody. The game world is filled with funny characters, among them whole tribes of tall pygmies and sex-hungry amazon women, as well as pairs of Christian missionaries and comic-book-collecting discoverers. The games tongue-in-cheek humor often resembles "Monkey Island", but stays a bit less absurd and over the top. One could say (as I did in the top-line), that "Flight of the Amazon Queen" combines the feeling of Indiana Jones adventures with the satiric approach of Guybrush Threepwoods. Even as it throws endless jokes at you (some more, others less funny), it still manages to keep its serious elements reasonably intact. And in doing so, the game succeeds in telling a light-hearted adventure-story and making you laugh at the same time. That surely is a nice thing to achieve, isn't it?

The similarities to LucasArts adventures don't stop here: interface and puzzles show the influence as well. Joe King is controlled via eight buttons, that allow actions like "use", "take", "give" and "talk". They are placed at the bottom of the screen alongside the inventory. Puzzles are of the traditional object-based kind, mostly logical and tending to be easier than in LucasArts adventures. Holding to the best traditions established on Skywalker Ranch, you can neither bite the dust nor maneuver yourself into any dead ends. Overall, the actual gameplay is nothing out of the ordinary, but very solid to say the least.

Graphically, the game comes in VGA and offers nicely drawn backgrounds and some fine animations. The MIDI-Soundtrack is quite inconspicuous, a little repetitive, but overall not bad. What really took me by surprise is the quality of the voice acting. From games from the mid-nineties I normally don't expect much in that sector. As many readers will remember, especially the not-so-big developers often had quite unprofessional (voice) acting during that time. But "Flight of the Amazon Queen" is one of the rare exceptions from that rule. From the accentuated mellow coolness of Joe to the furious outbursts of Faye everything in that department is very well done.

The Bad
As already mentioned, puzzles are mostly logical, but not always. There were cases, where I couldn't figure out any logical approach to certain problems. Also, I sometimes thought the game should have allowed multiple paths to solve some puzzles. For example, there is a situation, where you're captured inside a prison cell in a secret, paramilitary underground base. To get rescued, you have to attract the attention of Faye, who is searching the building for you. A logical solution would be to blow the huge horn you're carrying around. But doing so has no effect at all, although you produce a big noise. But if you get the idea to strike with a coffee cup against the bars of your prison, the case is solved. Strange puzzles like that are seldom, but in my opinion they shouldn't exist at all.

What I explained above, is a situation that occurred in the second half of the game. This is more or less symptomatic, as the second half suffers from a significant loss in overall quality compared to the first. It begins with your heroic infiltration of an ancient temple, peppered with deadly traps and the like. The game gets much darker in tone here, which at first is quite welcome after the comical excesses of the first half. But unfortunately this part is far too long and has some serious drawbacks. Firstly, the game becomes more linear, now quite strictly prescribing the order, in which you have to solve the puzzles. Secondly, there are long walks involved, as there is no map, which allows direct jumping to certain points in the temple (which is provided in the jungle). But the third and most important disappointment is the lack of interaction with other characters, which was one of the more interesting parts in the first half of the game. Even in the temple, you can talk to some creatures and persons, but they are far less than before.

Having completed the temple sequence, I was hoping that the game would return to its strengths one more time. But I became disappointed. The story quickly moves to the final act, which feels quite rushed and unsatisfying. In retrospect, the later parts of the game seem a bit hastily put together. It doesn't feel, like there went the same amount of thinking and care into it, than before.

The Bottom Line
When you strive for playing the judge over this nice little work, you have to keep in mind that the standards, it sets in its beginnings (and by which the later parts are naturally measured), are not exactly low. The second half is certainly a letdown, but nevertheless "Flight of the Amazon Queen" stays an enjoyable experience. Even the fact, that the game isn't to be called strikingly original, renders no weighty criticism in my eyes. Most point and click adventures of the time were heavily inspired by the works of LucasArts. "Flight of the Amazon Queen" is no exception, but at least it features an original setting. Furthermore, it performs very well in terms of always holding the difficult balance between comedy and serious adventure-story. The inhuman cruelty, with which the villain is depicted, not only delivers a fine motivation for kicking his butt, it also brings some darker undertones into the whole affair, where other comic-adventures are merely a collection of jokes. See it this way and there is nothing wrong in giving this game a chance.

DOS · by micnictic (387) · 2008

A solid and well-executed adventure.

The Good
This is a typical adventure that bears all the hallmarks of mid-nineties adventure games. It is a third-person, point and click with an Indiana Jones-esque storyline, and humour. It has been caste in the mould of LucasArts' adventures and features the Amazon as its locale, very similar to Amazon: Guardians of Eden.

The developers have focused on game-play a lot, including some strange (though mostly straightforward) puzzles, and no chance of being stuck in a dead end. The game engine is smooth and very easy to use with no strange actions need to progress. In this way the game has been very solidly constructed with clear crisp graphics.

Like all games of the burgeoning CD era, the game came in a 'talkie' version, which added some stereotypically hammy acting that neither adds nor detracts from the game.

The story is completely silly and purposefully so, trying to stop a mad doctor from creating an army of dinosaur people using the legendary powers of the Amazon. The title is a complete misnomer, it should have been called "Crash of the Amazon Queen" as that's all the titular plane does. Instead the player endlessly traipses around the jungle slowly unravelling the plot. Being a silly plot the game clearly focuses on humour and tries to inject a joke into everything, though they frequently don't hit the mark and fall back on bad puns.

The Bad
The plot is a little too throwaway with it's silliness, I felt Beneath a Steel Sky did a better job of providing a combination of humour and thought-provoking drama (for a game). The puzzles are good for not being completely obscure, but the story hardly leaves you guessing what will happen next and I sometimes found myself having to convey an item from one end of the jungle to the other for an obvious goal.

The Bottom Line
Flight of the Amazon Queen is a solid point and click adventure. The game-play and puzzles have been executed perfectly with clear art and good animation. The only disappointment is the 'by the numbers' plot and humour which fails to raise the game to a classic status, or above the LucasArts games it so desperately wants to be.

DOS · by RussS (807) · 2010

A-Game Cult Classic

The Good
Much like watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000, playing FOTAQ makes you feel like you're involved in something very special and secret; a cult classic, so to speak. The game's developers make no apologies in making you feel like you're in a B-Movie based game; everything in this adventure game is charming, from the German crazy scientist villain, to the Amazon women's captives wishing to remain in their clutches. The clever dialog adds to the atmosphere, featuring many puns and colorful jokes (an existentialist monkey that disappears when you tell him he doesn't exist is great).

The Bad
While the puzzles and item usage did seem logical after solving them, the process itself was a bit tedious, as it makes you try every item in your inventory - not fun. Some of Queen's multimedia charms are also its main shortcomings; Joe's voice for example, is spattered with a Brooklyn-numb nut type accent and it gets annoying fast (an unpleasant surprise after playing the silent version). Much of the supporting characters have equally annoying voices, but I guess the aim was to immerse us in a true classic B-Movie experience.

The Bottom Line
A truly enjoyable game dedicated to adventure game and movie fans that, while a little frustrating at times, will have you smiling on many an occasion.

DOS · by drbriefs (3) · 2004

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development

This game was developed about three years (a year and a half before signing publishing deal with Warner). Back in the early days it was an Amiga floppy product which eventually became four language Amiga/PC CD-ROM game with full voice. Most of the graphics were done using Deluxe Paint IV running on an Amiga 1200 with an accelerator board because the Amiga had the best version of Deluxe Paint at the moment.

It was originally written in AMOS BASIC on Amiga, but was eventually converted to C code instead, and later ported to PC computers. The tools to build the game were also written in AMOS. The game engine was called JASPAR for "John And Steve's Programmable Adventure Resource".

There were three additional tools called JOKER (building rooms, laying out objects and actors), ACE (cut scene editor) and DOG (dialogue editor). The engine and tools were written by John Passfield and Tony Ball converted the JASPAR engine to PC.

Freeware release

Flight of the Amazon Queen has been made freeware. The source code was kindly given to the ScummVM team, by John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis, who then made it fully compatible with their engine. It can be downloaded from ScummVM.

Inspiration

The games antagonist, Dr. Frank Ironstein, seems to be loosely based on Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as "Angel of Death". Mengele was an officer of the German "Schutzstaffel" (SS) and a physician in the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he conducted various experiments on the prisoners. Holocaust survivors gave detailed descriptions of his atrocious "researches". Mengele later fled to South America and was never captured. His person served as inspiration for villains in popular culture more than once. For another example, just watch Marathon Man starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.

Version differences

This game was also released on CD-ROM, that featured full speech.

Voice Actor

The voice of Trader Bob is spoken by Christoph Waltz in the german Talkie-Version on CD-ROM. He became very famous in 2009 as the SS officer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds or 2012 in Django Unchained as the bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. His name is wrongly spelled as "Christoph Walz" in the intro credits.

Awards

  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1996 – Best Adventure in 1995 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Apogee IV, B.L. Stryker, micnictic and xxxxxxxxxxx

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Related Sites +

  • Hints for Flight of the Amazon Queen
    This guide provides questions and answers to nudge you towards the solutions.
  • ScummVM
    Get "Flight of the Amazon Queen", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 352
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

iPhone added by Kabushi. Macintosh, Windows added by MAT. Amiga added by Katakis | カタキス.

Additional contributors: Roger Wilco, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, chromax, Multimedia Mike, Patrick Bregger.

Game added November 1, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.