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)

Truly one of the best games ever made.

The Good
I have to say, that I liked almost everything about this game. Mad scientist, the jungle, the amazons and the ancient temple. The atmosphere is fantastic and the humor throughout the game is absolutely great. The voice acting is good paying regard to the game's release year... it's 1995 however... Most of all I enjoyed the story. It's charming, and will leave a smile on your face at the end.

The Bad
There's very little in this game, that I didn't like. Maybe it could have been a bit longer? and the graphics (mostly because originally released to Amiga) were bit blocky. The most annoying thing about game is that it just won't work with any other operating system than DOS. No single "try-to-run-with-windows" attempts were ever successful.

The Bottom Line
Truly great, humorous, happy ending point & click game. Strongly recommended to all computer players. :)

DOS · by Antti Rantakolmonen (1) · 2006

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

A nice adventure game that can take on the SCUMM engine any day

The Good
I was a lover of Apogee titles back in the day, and one of these was Alien Carnage, which was made by a small Australian company called Interactive Binary Illusions. They only released two titles in their lifetime, with the other one being Flight of the Amazon Queen, a graphic adventure for the Amiga and PC.

You play Joe King, “pilot for hire” who owns the rickety plane “The Amazon Queen”. He has the job of transporting the actress Faye Russel to somewhere in the Amazon jungle so that she can shoot her latest film. A rival pilot named Anderson takes it upon himself to lock King up inside a hotel so that he can get all the glory to himself. King manages to escape, however, and catches up with Anderson just before he jets off with Russel. En route, the plane crashes into the Amazon jungle due to a lightning strike. There, King finds out that an evil doctor is transforming Amazon women into dinosaurs and using them to take over the world.

The setup program for the game is graphical, not text-based. The backdrop for this program is a bird’s-eye view of the Amazon jungle itself, similar to the title screen of Amazon: Guardians of Eden. You can select what sound card you use for sound and music, and those available include Adlib, Sound Blaster, and the Roland MT-32. For the MT-32, you have to select which port you are using. If you want to custom port, you are then taken to a text-based prompt, and returned to the program after you’re done.

Anyone who has played adventure games from Sierra and LucasArts will feel right at home with FOTAQ, with eight huge icons and the inventory above the main area. The icons represent common commands such as give, move, pick up, talk to, and use. Above this is text telling you what action you are carrying out. The inventory has four slots visible at a time. Arrows allow you to cycle between objects and it wraps around; keep clicking the same arrow, and it eventually loops to the start. Although it is much easier to play FOTAQ with the mouse, it is good that IBI caters for people without mice as well. Keyboard users can move the mouse with the arrow keys, and use the [Ctrl] and [Alt] keys to select commands.

Pressing [F1] will bring up King’s notebook, where you can perform various actions such as save and load a game, adjust text speed, turn the voices on and off (CD-ROM version only), change volume, and quit. There are 100 save slots; you select dividers on the right of them to get access to the next ten. I like how you can start typing away as soon as you access the notebook, and the game assumes that you want to save.

Most of the characters you meet are friendly, and each have their own personalities. I love the way a few of them tests Joe’s laid-back attitude. An example being when Joe gets locked up and he gets fed up with someone insisting that he takes his puppet. When you talk to characters, you will often get up to four dialogue choices. You need to select a specific one to progress through the game, although it doesn’t hurt to experiment for some interesting conversations; King will automatically come to the right one anyway.

Some of the hand-drawn graphics look amazing. They are on par with LucasArts games, and they depict the Amazon quite nicely. I like the pinnacle where you select where in the Amazon you want to go. Although the game features some close-ups of the main characters, sometimes I thought that this is a Leisure Suit Larry game, judging by the close-ups of women showing their cleavages. I like how Dr. Ironstein looks much scarier than the German doctor he is loosely based on.

There are two features that I quite like. If you have the comic book in inventory, you can read the comic in its entirety. You get to hear characters voice their own dialogue, and listen to some dramatic music plying in the background. Also, if you leave the game idle for more than five minutes, the screensaver is activated, and you need to press a key to wake the game up. I believe that a similar feature already exists in Sam & Max Hit the Road. The eleven-page manual boasts nice illustrations on every page, and the headings are quite amusing. It does not cover installation, but it tells you many details about the interface and the journal.

The Bad
It would have been great if IBI added the ability to access a map because walking all the way to the pinnacle becomes tedious, especially when you are navigating the jungle.

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Flight of the Amazon Queen is a very good adventure game on par with LucasArt games. The graphics and sound is great, and the game even has some nice features including a built-in screen saver and a comic book that you can actually read. It is too bad that we didn't get more adventures starring Joe King.

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2020

[ 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.