It seems that Germans profoundly love adventure games. Is it true? If so, why?

Adventure/Lucasfilm Games
61

As for the whole pirating thing, get someone who was older than I was back then to explain it to you this is a subcultre that is specific to the Commodore and a bit more complicated.

As for the dubbing I think they did a great job on the Teenage Mutant Ninja(Hero as they were called here) Turtles back then. I´m not really sure what happened if Frank Zander just understood youth lingo or created it, maybe both but it just worked. Wayne´s World is comparable to Bill & Ted (though they left most english words untouched) and we knew nobody talked like that only when refering to the movie…Schwing!

The Bush reference is a good example because that went past by me too until I saw the original. They left the TV speech untouched (“This agression won´t stand”) and later he says “Diese agression läuft so nicht!” Which sounds a little awkward no matter if you know the original or not.

The strangest thing ever for me is Elvis southern german accent in Zak McKracken. Or Doug´s “bavarian” in TwP. Too bad Boris isn´t here, there´s quite a bit I´d like to ask him…

62

About pirating:
Monkey Island reached me as a pirated copy but when I liked the game so much, I wanted to really own it and have the box and all that which I got as a birthday gift later on and I replayed the game then. 120 Mark was a lot of money for me - it took a long time to save up so I could (together with my brother) buy Monkey Island 2 and Indiana Jones 4. Pirating helped in the way that I could try the game actually (no way to download a copy ;-))

The other titles I bought as a bundle that had MM, Zak, Loom, Indy 3, MI1+MI2 all together so I actually bought some of the games twice :slight_smile:

And I LOVE the dub of The Big Lebowski! I know some things appear left out but it all makes perfect sense and is hilariously funny. Because it is dubbed, phrases end up in your own daily vocabulary which usually is german and not english. People of my age instantly know what I mean when saying “Hey McFly - jemand zuhause?” or “Der Falsche Hase, Dude” :smiley: It just ends up in daily speech. And yes - also “Du kämpfst wie ein dummer Bauer” - always works and creates a grin among the right audience. I just don’t hear myself reciting english sentences from “Friends” - because I had to watch it in the original language since the dub was sooo awful… and that’s the thing: Many of the older dubs were just awesome - but there IS a lot of crap, also and then that movie or tv series or game is ruined which I totally agree to.

63

In my childhood Larry and Space Quest were very popular. I played them only at friends, but I think they played the Sierra games only for a few minutes too. :slight_smile:

64

Idk about this. During school, there was one other kid in my class, who played adventure games. The rest was more into RTS, shooters or sports/racing games.

65

When was that? I assume mid/end 90s?

66

during the noughties.

67

Well, then there weren’t much adventures around. Even in germany. :slight_smile: So it’s natural that adventure games weren’t popular.

68

There were quite a few

  • all the old adventure games.
  • all the new adventure games (Secret Files: Tunguska, Black Mirror, Runaway), Ankh, etc.
  • Escape From Monkey island, which incidentally was my first Monkey Island game and the FIRST adventure game I ever played. On the PLAYSTATION of all platforms :smile:
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69

I started with Maniac and then Zak when I was arround 8 or 9 years old on a C64.
I played both, the english and the german version, but can´t longer remember if I already had the german version for C64 or later on my Amiga only. I liked both. I also played Space Quest, Kings Quest and Police Quest back then.
I liked the LFG Games way more. But I wanted to solve the others too.

I can still remember how I sat there every day with the english school book of my three years older sister to figure out what was going on or in case of sierra, what I had to type.
When english started in fifth grade in school, I was already quite good :slight_smile:
But as soon as I had the german versions, I loved them. finaly I understood everything.

For me it has always been the mix of a good story, beeing challenged with that puzzles and OF COURSE the humor of the old LFG/LA Adventures. From Maniac to Monkey 2 and later. I loved DOTT and Sam&Max too. But DOTT a little more then Sam´n´Max. It was more “crazy”.

I can´t tell how often I played this games in my life untill now. Way too much or not enough. Who knows.

Why germans like them, I don´t know. Only that all of my closest friends loved them and a few still do.
Pirating? Was a big game back then. I had hundreds of copied disks on C64 and on Amiga and I went to the store every week to buy new empty disks.
I didn´t own Maniac or Zak at first. A friend of mine got Zak and we copied it (damn brown code site with black letters… needed some tries to copy that in a shop :smile: ) Much later I bought my own Maniac for Amiga and still have the disks. I copied Monkey Island at some point and that game was it for me. Pirates! Beeing one! Nothing before that was like that. I got sucked into the story, the game, the amiga - for hours. When part two came out I bought it immediately… 120DM… fxxxing much money for a child. I couldn´t wait. But I loved it too.
Indy, Loom, over the time I had them all some copied, some bought at first glance like Indy 4 and Monkey 2.
Much later I bought collection boxes with all the games combined in it.

Did I bring new answers to the threads main question why germans like adventures so much? No.
But I wanted to share.
:slight_smile:

My Hardware back then over the years, in this order, some at the same time:
Commodore plus 4 with datasette (broke really fast), C64, Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000, Amiga 500, 386 SX20, 368 DX40, 468 DX 100 and so on…
My Uncle was a crazy computer guy and worked with them, I got almost erverything until the Amiga 2000 from him or through is influence on my parents. :slight_smile:
And no, we weren´t near to rich. Nope. My mom worked at home and my dad was craftsman

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70

It’s interesting that PC/computer games back then were much more expensive then today. For the most games you have to pay round about 20 Euros (= 40 DM). Even if you add inflation, the prices for PC games are decreasing over the time…

71

Not every game was that pricey. As far as I remember, there was no other :slight_smile:
Lucas knew what it was worth or what people would pay, I think

72

When recently digging up old articles I found that the early LM games were around 70 DM

Nintendo games used to cost around 75 - 80 DM
CDs were like 30 DM (double CDs like the Beatles White Album went for exactly twice as much)
VHS Cassettes cost around 50 DM

But then again you could see The Rolling Stones in Munich in 1973 for around 10 DM.

Point is, I have absolutly no idea how inflagration works…

73

Yes, but most PC games had very high prices. The C64 versions were the cheapest (especially if they were on cassettes :slight_smile: ).

I’ve found an advertisement from june 1987. For the Infocom adventure Ballyhoo for the Atari ST or “Borrowed Time” from Icom you had to pay 80 DM. And for Zork I for the Amiga you had to pay 150 DM!

Source: http://www.kultpower.de/archiv/hefte/happycomputer_spielesonderteil_1987-06/big/happycomputer_spielesonderteil_1987-06_093.jpg

74

After Monkey IV I
got the first two games for christmas (used).
Played through the first game on christmas day, because it came on CD-Rom and at the time I couldn’t figure out, how to install it on the PC (simply copying the game to harddrive didn’t work). I remember my mom getting mad, because I spent the whole day in front of the screen :smiley:
sorry, I got OT, but the memories just came back… :relieved:
I had loaned the game from the library before, but the library didn’t possess the dial-a-pirate wheel, so I never got through the copy protection :angry: :smiley:

75

I remember DOTT as one of the first games (if not the first) with full German voice acting. That was a great thing for that time. Of course studios had to learn how to do translation/voice acting in a computer game.

76

One important lesson was hiring professional voice actors like using the voice actress who does Bart Simpson for Max(also you can hear the guy who was Donovan in Last Crusade and “Scully” in the Dig). There may be a few pros on DotT already but Bernard and Laverne sound especially amateurish to me.

77

Let this floppy / CD version comparison speak for itself.

Did the studio’s interns do the voice acting in the floppy intro?

78

Its the fine feeling on playing adventure-puzzles.

79

We also have to pay double-prices as in pre-euro times.

80

Super mega OT :given the original exchange rate of the ECU (the rate that established equivalences between the single state currencies and the new one), probably your salaries are doubled or almost doubled, too. And if it’s not, then there are heavy negative sides also for you in Germany. End of OT

1 Like