In Search of the Most Amazing Thing
Description
Your uncle, Smoke Bailey, was a great adventurer and explorer. In one of his adventures he found "The Most Amazing Thing", an item that holds the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately he lost it somewhere in the Mire. Now he wants you to take up the task and recover the object.
The Mire is a dangerous place, but your uncle has provided you a B-Liner as transportation as well as items you can sell at the auction at Metallica City, where you will use the money you earn to buy equipment for your travels. Good luck!
In Search of the Most Amazing Thing is a vast game, where gameplay is usually divided into 2 parts:
- Diplomacy
Diplomacy consists of how you find clues and information regarding the Most Amazing Thing. Early in the game, you only communicate with your Uncle Smoke to get items from him and sell them at the auction for the highest price. Later in the game when you're adventuring, you will meet numerous strange Mire tribes where you will barter your goods and knowledge for clues to the Most Amazing Thing.
- Adventuring
The B-Liner is something between a balloon and a beach buggy. The Mire is a very big place and dangerous place, but with the B-Liner you can drive or fly across it in no time. Beware the Mire crabs though!
You have complete control of the course of the game. There is no linear path that you must follow, making this game a new experience every time you play it, as each new game creates a random new world to explore.
Groups +
Screenshots
Credits (DOS version)
4 People (3 developers, 1 thanks)
Novella written by | |
Novella illustrations by | |
Novella dedication: to my daughter |
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Game programmed by |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 86% (based on 1 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 12 ratings with 1 reviews)
The Most Amazing Game in BASIC!
The Good
Review Version: v2.0
Review Date: February, 2008
Review Length: 3 page(s).
Game Version: I have no idea.
Tech Specs Used: basic.com or gwbasic.com
Finished: No.
Last time played: Twas a long, long time ago.
Before there were DOS games, there were BASIC games. Er, or do I have it the other way around? It's pretty funny now, looking back where now I need an emulator to play DOS games, back then when using DOS, we had to use an âemulatorâ to play BASIC games in a way. Never really figured out what basica.com or gwbasic.com was for when I was a kid, only that it was used to play certain games that canât be normally run on DOS.
Now, usually most BASIC games were pretty simpleâŚat least those I have been exposed with. Most were usually text based with little or no graphics available. Out of nowhere, I had the fortune of playing In Search of the Most Amazing Thing. To my delight, it had FULL graphics, something quite odd for a BASIC gameâŚor at least for me.
What is this game like? Thatâs the problem. To this date, I do know that its game play to a certain extent remains original. Traditionally, it would qualify as an adventure game although by definition that is entirely incorrect as compared to an âexploration gameâ but donât let me start on genre issues.
The town of Metallica
The game plot and gameplay is divided into 2 major parts. The first is in the town of Metallica (with no reference to the original band), here Metallica is divided into 3 areas:
- The Elevator
The first is the elevator, which allows you to travel up and down the city in order to gain access to other areas. The elevator is the only method of accessing other areas. Traveling up and down is accompanied by a slight ascending or descending PC sound, depending on which vertical direction youâre traveling. - The Uncleâs Room
The first place youâd probably visit is youâre uncle. He was once a famous traveler now retired. A graphical imagine of him sitting in his room is thus presented to the player. Here, the player starts the first âmini-gameâ of trying to wake up his uncle. If player succeeds in waking up his uncle up ânicelyâ, he will provide you with advice and an item which you can sell at the auction house. If you wake him up too fast, he may get angry and throw you out of the roomâŚor in other cases a minor bug where he opens his eyes but doesnât say anything, prompting you to leave and enter the place again. He will also throw you out if you already have an item from him at your disposal. There seems to be a large database on the weird items your uncle gathered while he was still adventuring. It was quite fun just to read the names of these weird exotic items, none of which I can remember, but most of them are usually silly like a polka dot flamingo feather more or less. - The Auction House
Here you present your one and only item to several odd looking aliens. They will then start chattering among themselves on the value of the item. I learned many new words to my English vocabulary from these aliens, among others the word SuperbâŚwhich to this date I remember is the only game that uses this word in its dialogs. :p - The Store
Having gained money from the Auction House, the store provides items that you need to purchase to fully equip your adventure vehicle of choice, the B-Liner. It takes a while to collect enough money to buy all the items available in the store, and interestingly not all of them are useful. You need to check your B-Liner later on to actually see if something new was added or not. - The Surface
Actually you start here first, trying to fly to the entrance of Metallica. Since its anti-gravity, you can only move to a forward direction while to slow down, you need to move in the opposite direction you are flying to. On the next screen beside the entrance, is your B-Liner, an odd looking space ship with an equally odd name. In the B-Liner there are several instruments or more precisely âselectable graphicsâ to choose from. Canât remember half of them, but I do remember this item called âthe Musixâ which seems to be an item you can draw upon, each line is accompanied by a sound. Thus, you get this idea that you draw a picture while creating a melody. Never figured out what kind of picture nor melody youâre supposed to create or how to find that out.
The Mire
The Mire is every other place outside the town of Metallica, or in this case, itâs known to us as outer space. The Mire is an empty space with visible longitude and latitude lines. Apparently the Mire is extremely huge even by DOS game standards. The visible longitude and latitude lines help you navigate the Mire in case you get lost.
The Mire itself besides the lines is pretty much empty. There are what seem to be clouds or possibly asteroids. If it isnât moving, you can land youâre B-liner there and drill for fuel. Although oddly, you donât seem to need fuel for flying in the first place, so Iâm not quite entirely sure what fuel actually is for, except that it does decrease when youâre flying.
There are also Mire Crabs that disguise themselves as clouds/asteroids. Identifying a Mire Crab is easy. Itâs moving towards you. The strategy in dealing with Mire Crabs is even easier. Move towards the opposite direction :) Fortunately Mire Crabs can be destroyed when they move or hit a longitude or latitude line, followed by an unpleasant PC sound death. Donât quite remember what happens when a crab catches you, has something to do with you sleeping or something and the crab drains all your fuel.
After successfully dodging Mire Crabs and getting lost in the Mire without any actual coordinates, you may happen to come across tribes somewhere in space. These tribes have valuable information regarding the Most Amazing Thing and I vaguely remember youâre supposed to give or do something with the Musix to them. Never got further than that Iâm afraid. May need to get back in to this game one day, tried once too, but it seemed to crash every time I entered the Mire.
The Bad
Well, I haven't finished the game yet (since I was too young back then) and the one I got later on had a bug in it which crashes big time...so that was obviously disappointing.
This game maybe was a little too big. The Mire is quite large...and getting lost there can be quite frustrating, especially if you donât have coordinates. When you start adventuring you may realize that youâre totally not prepared. If you go adventuring too fast, you'll realize that you forgot to buy something back at the city or didn't bring enough money for trade and so on...and it's a long long way back to the city of Metallica.
The Bottom Line
For a BASIC game, it is above and beyond the call of duty. Compared to other games in its day, this is game is rare DaVinci artifact. I really, really need to pick up this game again one of these days.
DOS · by Indra was here (20633) · 2009
Identifiers +
- MobyGames ID: 12117
- Wikipedia (en)
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Indra was here.
Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit added by Kabushi. Apple II added by Pseudo_Intellectual.
Additional contributors: Pseudo_Intellectual, Hoagie.
Game added February 15th, 2004. Last modified August 30th, 2023.