Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders playthrough and hints

I remember once that @RonGilbert was wondering from where the expression “point - and - click” came out. Maybe from that very page?

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That’s the favourite puzzle of David (and mine :wink:)

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I am able to finish Zak in about 3 hours, reading most of the sentences. I have played it countless times, because every time I restarted it, I founded something that I didn’t notice before.
Remember: you can die in Zak, but there are many ways to finish it. And you die because it’s your fault, I mean… you asked for it!
That’s one of the reasons because I state that Zak McKracken is the best LucasFilm game ever (Even more than Monkey Island)

When you are in trouble, try to figure out a way to resolve the situation.
Anyway… save often. In ScummVM you have 99 slots… use them!
Back then there were only 10 slots

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No one of my friends found the solution to this puzzle immediately. :slight_smile: Ok, Ok, it’s a puzzle chain actually and nobody read the newspaper back then. :wink: And I remember that one person had an IBM PC that was too old and thus too slow: The reactions of Zak were so slow that the stewardess was faster. :slight_smile:

Wasn’t it only one slot on the C64…? :thinking: Or was Zak the first version where they introduced more slots…?

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Yeah the speed of the C64 (and playing with the joystick) made time based events like fleeing from Edna in the kitchen and the airplane sequence in Zak really hard. Today it´s PieceOfCake.

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I expected a pun on your last words :wink:

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I honestly have no idea, why I wrote it that way! :flushed:

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Oh wow, so early in the game? I thought I was basically still in the tutorial phase, where the puzzles are fairly self-contained.

So you can’t ask for it by, say, bending the butterknife… or forgetting to?

Whoa, I didn’t know there was a limit! But yeah, I save every few minutes. It’s a built-in reflex on any game of a certain age. I’d also love to have more of it on more recent games though! See this good rant about the topic:

Drat, we’re (presumably) getting to the point where I should actively avoid the spoilers.

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Exactly. The knife has its importance. If you bend it, you can do certain things, which can help you. If you don’t bend it, you can use it in other ways. Both ways, you will be able to finish the game, but in different ways.

Well, maybe once each time you enter a new location, or before you feel that something could go wrong, would be enough :sweat_smile:

That’s what I mean, of course. Not literally every few minutes no matter what. :wink:

Well, I’ll suggest to use also de descriptions of the slots. I mean, since we all know there are dead ends, you’d better mark every big choice you make. If you are really stuck somewhere, you can go back to the nearest fork and act differently.

Speaking about puzzles, the plane routine wasn’t a problem for me back then. Or, I have to be more precise: the toilet paper-egg routine wasn’t. Unluckily, even if the stewardess suggests it, either I didn’t pick up the cushion or I didn’t notice the lighter under it. So I couldn’t light the cave, which is really a KEY puzzle in the game. I was stuck for years

Yes, but not in combination with “adventure”. He wondered who coined the term “P&C adventure” to denote a genre. But surely the term Point ‘n’ Click has some of its first uses here.

That’s why you needed to press the spacebar to pause the game, so you can move that cursor slowly.

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I may have never played this game before but it’s not my first rodeo. :wink: Not counting Labyrinth, I think Zak is the only LucasArts game besides Indy3 I haven’t experienced.

Admittedly I don’t always use the most descriptive names but most of the time I do.

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Argh, unwittingly stepping on my next blog post… That happens a lot in here!

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No way man! Once you leave that bedroom, you are in the big bad world!

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Blabbermouth!

Without that I would never have managed to start the biplane in Last Crusade!

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Ok, here we go. Time to read the newspaper. No idea if the details I pick out will turn out to be useful :stuck_out_tongue:

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