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

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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)

Classic Adventure Game - one of the best the Amiga ever had.

The Good
Flight of the Amazon Queen is a 2D point-and-click adventure game set in the 1940s, originally published for DOS and the Amiga at the same time in 1995.

The Amiga version featured lush music, bright graphics and an easy to use interface in a funny classic adventure game.



The Bad
The only thing I didn't like was the intro cut scene should have been longer to introduce the game with more background information.



The Bottom Line
It is 1949 and you play Joe King, pilot for hire with his small private plane. The game is a spoof of old timely radio adventure serials. Joe is scheduled to fly the famous movie star, Faye Russell, to a photo shoot in the Amazon jungle.

Of course, things never go according to plans. After an unfortunate turn of events they find themselves stranded in the heart of the Amazon jungle, where Joe will embark on a quest to rescue a kidnapped princess and in the process, discover the true sinister intentions of a suspiciously located Lederhosen company. In a rich 2D environment, Joe will cross paths with a variety of unlikely jungle inhabitants including, but not limited to, a tribe of Amazon women and 6-foot- tall pygmies.

This is a third person, point and click game with easy to use icons for action, a small inventory, and a brilliant map. The music is upbeat and changes with each location, and the graphics are imaginative and colorful, with careful attention to often-hysterical details (Aztec temple statues holding baseball bats!). And the short animated cut scenes used to advance the story are a pure delight to watch.

There are lots of great places to visit and plenty to do when you get there, with a unique challenge in each new location. The puzzles are crazy, absorbing and fun and are usually solved by clues you have picked up in conversations and/or with inventory items. Most are not too difficult and really add to the game.

It's a great game, an old style adventure similar to Indy and the Fate of Atlantis that'll give you hours of fun and leave you feeling good. We love it!

The humor, whilst not side-splitting is very much tongue-in-cheek and pokes gentle fun, with the net result that you play through much of the game with a smile on your face. It was this sense of fun throughout that made Flight of the Amazon Queen so enjoyable.

Many features contributed to the overall playability. The easy to use interface that went some way towards allowing me the freedom to decide what I wanted to do. The comic book style cutaway sequences were very well done and most effective.

If you enjoy adventure games with gentle, offbeat humor, then I am sure you will enjoy Flight of the Amazon Queen.

Amiga · by mike kelly (3) · 2004

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 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. Windows, Macintosh 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.