Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

The Good
1. Funny 2. Educational (sort of! - see below) 3. Non-violent 4. Great female characters 5. Suitable for slower players as well. My young kids have trouble with games like Monkey Island (because the sword fighting routines require a lot of reading) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (because it requires skill in boxing) but this game can be taken as slow as you like. Only the egg on the plane and the blue crystal have any time limit, and these are not too difficult to master. 6. Incredibly efficient coding. The whole thing fits uncompressed on one low density floppy. 7. Versions for all major platforms (at the time) and almost any speed of machine. Good use of the inbuilt sound card.

The Bad
1. A couple of the puzzles are hard for non-Americans (e.g. the waste disposal unit and mailbox are not familiar items in Britain), but this is probably true for any game. 2. The codes and all the travelling can be a little tedious (but not much) - like any adventure game, much of your time is spent travelling back and forth to try different ideas. 3. If you have an old game and have lost the printed codes, you cannot travel to most of the destinations.

The Bottom Line
Fun, hard to get killed, and easy to like.