Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

aka: Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Moby ID: 305
Amiga Specs
Buy on Windows
$5.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

Zak McKracken is a tabloid reporter (and not a very good one at that). After having a psychedelic dream one day, Zak realizes that something is wrong -- space aliens are dumbifying the general public through the telephone system. Zak must stop this, but he can't do it alone. After finding a strange crystal, Zak manages to get the help of the anthropologist Annie and her friends, Melissa and Leslie. The four unlikely heroes must now figure out a way to destroy the dumbifying devices and save the Earth.

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a third-person puzzle-solving adventure similar in gameplay to Maniac Mansion. The player chooses verb commands (Open, Pick Up, Give, etc.; there are no Look or Talk commands) to interact with the game world. The game features up to four controllable protagonists; it is possible to switch between them at any time after they have been introduced, and also exchange inventory items if the characters are in the same location. The game can be described as a "globe-trotting" adventure, since the heroes are required to travel to different exotic countries and even leave the Earth for a while in order to complete it. Some of the puzzles are optional or can be solved in different ways.

The FM Towns version has VGA graphics with 256 colors and higher-quality music and sound effects.

GOG release comes with two versions of the game that install simultaneously. One is FM Towns version with updated graphics, while the other is marked as Floppy version which is the old DOS version of a game.

Spellings

  • Zak McKracken and the Alien Mind Benders - Alternate spelling
  • ザックマックラッケン - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Amiga version)

28 People (27 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

Created and Designed by
Scripted and Programmed by
"SCUMM" Story System by
Background Art by
Character Animation by
Sound Effect by
Original Music by
Amiga Version By
Creative and Technical Support by
Project Directed by
Lucasfilm Games General Manager
Production Management
Marketing Management
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 37 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 180 ratings with 9 reviews)

Martian Time Slip

The Good
One of the earliest games to use the S.C.U.M.M. interface, Zak McKraken & The Alien Mindbenders, complements Maniac Mansion quite well. This is however a mostly forgotten game, and that really is a shame.

You are Zak McKraken, a reporter for a National Enquirer type paper. Zak however, has dreams of one day being a novelist. Meanwhile, aliens are planning a coup on Earth. The plan to take over the minds of the inhabitants of Earth. As several college co-eds head off to Mars and make a shocking discovery.

Eventually Zak, will meet the girls, and they will have to save the world from the nefarious machinations of the alien mind benders! Like Maniac Mansion, in Zak, you have a group of characters to control. The girls, take a while to join you, and there are less in playable peeps in Zak.

Your adventure begins in San Francisco, and will take you to Seattle, Europe, and the red planet itself! Zak plays much like other S.C.U.M.M. games. You collect items and use them to solve problems, and as we have come to expect from a Lucas Arts adventure, it is a laugh out loud funny game.

It is a longer and often more difficult game than Maniac Mansion. But well worth the time and effort.

The Graphics are solid for a C64 game. And good in general. The sprites are large and well detailed. And the backgrounds are colorful, and often full of goofy things. All of which add to the games charm.

Sound takes a backseat here. Yet what there is does the job well.

The Bad
There is no save feature here. Which means you have to play the game in one sitting. Unless you have the ROM on a C64 emulator…muhahahahaha!

Why has this great game been virtually forgotten?

The Bottom Line
If you have not played this game, you simply must try to. Hopefully Lucas Fan Games will do a remake like they did for Maniac Mansion.

Commodore 64 · by MasterMegid (723) · 2006

One of the forgotten SCUMM games, but its still one of the best

The Good
Ive always been a big fan of the SCUMM games. It is definitely a great adventure. It takes you all over the world, and to Mars to solve the worlds stupidity problem. There are a few obstacles in the game, you really have to use your head in some instances. There are secrets in the game that are optional

The Bad
If you are playing the Commodore Version of this game, you often have to turn the disk over. And in the Alien Spacecraft, you switch it to the other side and back again. You can get stuck the first few times with problems like insufficient funds, once you kill someone, you cant beat the game.

The Bottom Line
I love this game, any SCUMM worshiper like myself should not forget to play and beat this game.

Commodore 64 · by Scott G (765) · 2004

Look behind you, a two-headed squirrel!

The Good
Zak is a newspaper journalist who works for the daily tabloid, The National Inquisitor. His boss asks him to write up two articles: one about campers being attacked by a two-headed squirrel, and the other about an UFO sighting that happened on Mt. Rainier 50 years ago. That night, Zak has a dream involving a girl, a map, and a machine. Back in his apartment, Zak agrees to draw the map from his dreams and finds out that some aliens known as the Caponians have beamed down to Earth to transmit 60-cycle hums through the phone lines, capable of reducing people's intelligence. Later on he finds out that he must build the same machine from his dreams, with the help from three other people, which will stop the Caponian's plans from going ahead.

Zak McKracken uses the same SCUMM interface seen in Maniac Mansion, so anyone who has already played that game is already familiar with it. The game can be played with the joystick, keyboard, or mouse; but I prefer to use the mouse since it is so much easier to control Zak. It is the second game that allows you to switch between three other characters throughout the game. Teamwork is essential, and death for one of them means that you'll get nowhere.

Maniac Mansion has the player exploring a limited environment, but this is not the case wth Zak. You may begin the game in San Francisco, but as soon as you have the opportunity to switch between three girls, you'll spend most of your time traveling to places like Seattle, London, Kathmandu, Cairo, Lima, Kinshasa, Bermuda Triangle. (You even get to explore the Caponian spaceship where you meet The King himself!), and Mars itself. It is also a nice touch to take control of other things and decide when it performs an action.

Now traveling outside the United States require you to input the code listed on a certain page in the manual. Normally, entering the wrong code in most games would cause them to exit to DOS. However, Lucasfilm has a knack of punishing people instead, more likely resulting in the ending of the current game. This already happened in Maniac Mansion when said mansion suffered a meltdown. Here, the player just gets thrown inside a Nepalese jail while you get to sit and hear a lecture about piracy, with no chance of escape.

Zak is often known for bringing humor to adventure games. You can almost do anything in this game and Zak will more often than not say something funny. There are two things in the game that made me laugh. One is when you use the broom alien twice, it will wake up and complain about the hard work. But the highlight is getting captured by the Caponians and placed inside a cage. Then you get to watch the commands disappear one by one, and you never see them again until you're released.

The game had about three releases. I still own the PC version with the enhanced graphics, which is much more colorful than a previous version released for the C64 and PC. I have yet to play the FM-Towns version, which has 256-color art as well as a digital soundtrack. It's a real shame that the 256-color version wasn't made available on PC.

Since Lucasfilm released Zak in 1988, and sound cards were not invented then, all of the game's sound comes through PC Speaker. However, the theme music is well composed and I enjoyed the background music when you arrive at the airport and explore the tribal village.



The Bad
There are too many mazes in the game. It was fairly easy to go around in circles and keep going back to the same location.

Also, when you get to a certain point in the game and you realize that you made a mistake, you just can't go back and rectify it. For instance, you have to get everyone on board a tram that takes you to a different section on Mars by feeding a coin into a machine, but if you happen to forgot someone, you can't go back and get them as the coin slot on the machine on the other end has been ripped out. For situations like these, you have no choice but to restore a previously saved game.

Speaking of saved games, the game can be saved but only in a numbered slot, meaning that you can't give meaningful descriptions.

The Bottom Line
Zak has all the aspects that were found in Maniac Mansion: multiple characters and a good amount of humor. As I mentioned earlier, three versions were released, with the enhanced version much more common. The ability to go around the world is neat, since you are not restricted to exploring one, bigger environment such as a mansion. Although the sound is through the PC speaker, most of the music in the game, as well as the sound effects, is excellent and beats the sound in other games around its time any day. So in conclusion, any adventure fan who loves a mix of exploration and comedy should get a copy of this game.

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2010

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
US version VS UK Version Edwin Drost (9295) Mar 10, 2017
A new Zak McKracken Remake Project Joey DiPerla Mar 3, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Copy protection

All versions of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, except for the FM Towns release, require the player to enter copy protection codes when leaving the USA, but not when re-entering it or when at an airport in another country. After entering five incorrect entries in a row, Zak is put into Pirate Jail and the game is automatically over. The codes were printed on dark red paper in order to make it harder to copy them.

Concept and inspirations

David Fox wanted the game to have a "New Age" concepts like spirituality, Karma, alien history and he spent a few days brainstorming with a spiritual author - David Spangler. They came up with a list of every thing that might fit into the game and tried to get it all in, including the Face on Mars, Mt. Ranier, Mayan ruins. Names of the female characters came from designer's wives and girlfriends while Zak's name was taken from the Seattle's phone book. "No, there wasn't a Zak McKraken listed - we just pulled a first and last name that worked." - said David Fox in the interview for Retro Gamer 27.

The game took only nine months to complete from initial design to the final version.

Fangames

The first fan project to enter development was "Zak McKracken 2", later renamed Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstars, which was started in 1996. Because a lot of people joined and left the team over the course of its development, the game progressed slowly, to the point where it disappeared completely in 2001. In 2005 it was re-announced as a new project, being re-developed from scratch. The project was eventually cancelled in 2008, however, as the developers felt that Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space, a fangame that had been released in the meantime, was good enough to warrant abandoning their own project. One of the game's official websites has been archived, allowing players to download the project's original German tech-demo, however their other, zak2.de, was lost due to the use of a robots.txt file, which actively prevented its archival. The New Adventures of Zak McKracken is an Adventure Game Studio remake developed by LucasFan Games.

Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space was started in 2001 by fans who thought that the Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstars project detailed above was dead. It was ultimately released in 2008

Zak Mckracken and the Lonely Sea Monster, an Adventure Game Studio remake was first announced for a July 2007 release, however it was subsequently delayed until 2008. After several years the project was confirmed to be abandoned in 2010. As of December of 2012, however, the original developer has resumed development.

Platform differences

The game 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 uses bitmaps and finally the 256 color version (same style as Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure) which seems to have only been released in Japan on the Fujitsu FM Towns system.

References

A poster of one of LucasFilm's early games, Rescue on Fractalus!, can be seen in the machine room next to a map of Earth. Like Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, it was also designed by David Fox. In the FM Towns version the Rescue on Fractalus! poster was replaced by a poster for Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, another game David Fox was involved with alongside Ron Gilbert.

During the scene on Mars, the tune heard when playing the music cassette in the radio is by "Razor and the Scumettes". Razor is one of the original characters in Maniac Mansion, a LucasArts adventure game released the previous year.

There's a can of gasoline to be found on Mars. If the player tries to pick it up the 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.

When reading the telephone inside the The Phone Company's office, it will show a four digit telephone number. This number can be called from Zak's house and a sales representative will pick up. He'll think that it is Edna again, a reference to the player calling Edna in Maniac Mansion.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • July 1991 (Issue 10) - listed in the A to Z of Classic Games article (Great)
  • Power Play
    • Issue 01/1989 - Best Graphics Adventure in 1988
    • Issue 04/1989 - Game of the Year 1988 (Readers' Vote)
  • ST Format
    • January 1990 (issue #06) - Included in the list 50 Games of the Year
    • January 1991 (issue #18) – #5 Best Adventure Game in 1990 (Atari ST)

Information also contributed by Daniel Albu, Kevin Carnes, MAT, Mirrorshades2k, Scott G, and Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe.

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Related Sites +

  • HighLand Productions
    Contains MIDI versions of themes from some LucasArts games, including Zak McCracken.
  • LucasArts' Secret History
    A multi-article feature about the game by the LucasArts news site, The International House of Mojo. The feature article includes an unscored review, short responses written by members of the site's community, trivia, and a transcription of the original hint book.
  • ScummVM
    Get "Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.
  • The Adventure Games Hall of Fame
    Short review, walkthrough and screenshots.
  • The Zak McKracken Archive
    The world's largest collection of Zak McKracken materials

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 305
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Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Olivier Masse.

Amiga added by POMAH. Commodore 64 added by Rebound Boy. Linux, Windows, Macintosh added by click here to win an iPhone9SSSS. FM Towns added by Terok Nor. Atari ST added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Trixter, MAT, Apogee IV, HeX-Omen, formercontrib, Chris Tolworthy, Zeppin, Cantillon, Lance Boyle, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Jo ST, FatherJack.

Game added October 5, 1999. Last modified March 27, 2024.