Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (DOS)

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Description

Long Island is home to Mike Callahan's bar, which is, like many other establishments of its kind, a place for people to share their personal problems with the friendly all-knowing bartender and drown their sorrows in alcohol. One small difference between this particular bar and most others is the clientele: mythological beings, time travellers, and aliens all feel at home at Callahan's. So does Jake Stonebender, a traveling guitarist with a tragic past, inclined to help those in need. Chatting with the colorful patrons of the bar, Jake finds out that a few of them do need his assistance, and will proceed to help a vampire find his long-lost love, solve the moral dilemma of an alien whose pacifist thinking is not approved by the majority of his race, save the rainforest from destruction, and perform other good deeds that will perhaps prove to the Powers-That-Be that humanity can be allowed to exist.

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is a puzzle-solving adventure game based on Spider Robinson's series of stories about the unusual patrons of Callahan's bar. The characters in the game are taken from the first book of the series, though their stories are original. The game's world is composed of still screens viewed from first-person perspective. The interaction is point-and-click, with context menus appearing when the player attempts to interact with an object on screen. The puzzles are for the most part inventory-based, though a few revolve around word plays in English language.

Screenshots

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Part of the Following Groups

• Inspiration: Literature
• Protagonist: Musician
• Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System

User Reviews

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Critic Reviews

Game.EXE	Apr, 1997	100 out of 100	100
Adventurearchiv	Apr, 1997	85 out of 100	85
Computer Games Magazine	1997		80
Quandary	Jun, 1997		80
Power Play	Jun, 1997	70 out of 100	70
PC Joker	Jul, 1997	69 out of 100	69
GameSpot	May 23, 1997	6.1 out of 10	61
PC Games (Germany)	Jun, 1997	61 out of 100	61
PC Player (Germany)	May, 1997		60
Just Adventure	1997	C	50

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Trivia

Music

The game credits indicate that the name of the composer is Alan Kennedy, but the MIDI files extracted from the game are actually credited to Sierra composer Ken Allen (King's Quest V, Space Quest IV, etc). It sounds highly probable that "Alan Kennedy" was his pseudonym at Legend Entertainment.

Publisher

According to Josh Mandel, the relationship with publisher Take Two was problematic. They did market the game as a Western, which it is not, just because it had "Saloon" in the title, and released the beta version with a game-breaking bug instead of the final version.

Spider Robinson

As you can see from the game credits, Spider Robinson is responsible for a lot of the singing and guitar playing in this game. This is the same Spider Robinson who is the original author of the Callahan series of books on which this game is based. Jake Stonebender, the character you control, is also Spider's alter-ego and bears more than a passing resemblance to the author.

Strategy guide

In the strategy guide given with the original game, there is a huge section that just tells you about funny stuff in the game and how you can get to see them (although the entire game is very funny, they tell you about those that are hard to find).

Information also contributed by Kaminari, WildKard and Patrick Bregger

Related Web Sites

• Callahan's Crosstime Saloon Walkthrough by Quandary (Walkthrough by Rosemary Young and Gordon Aplin (1997))
• Crap Shoot (A humorous review on PC Gamer)
• Hints for Callahan's (Jason Strautman's hints for this game will definitely help you solve it.)
• Walkthrough by Crash (Question and answer type walkthrough)