I played the original many times in the past, but not the remastered version. I think I would recommend this version as it's just modest polishing up graphics just like Grim Fandango. Didn't mess with anything else. (With Monkey Island 1+2 I still prefer the original graphics)

Full Throttle is a great biker related point & clickgame with a great story and great voiceacting and great characters and great most things. It's a little short perhaps, and perhaps the action sequences isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I personally like them. Another classic from Tim Schafer and LucasArts.

Grim Fandango holds up! I played through it around 2006 the first time, so this is technically a replay, but I remembered very little. This was still quite challenging to get through.

If someone has issues with the controls the Remastered version fixes this and you can steer with the mouse. The graphics are also improved, so don't doubt if you're not sure if you're to play the Remastered version or the original.

I think the concept for Grim Fandango is very original. The film noir setting gives it a special feel and atmosphere, and the game plays with the tropes and stereotypes in a clever way. The characters are good, although I sometimes missed more depth in some of them as well as in "the lore", but it's still good enough. The puzzles are well made, like LucasArts games almost always are, but are quite hard at times, but if you're patient it's never impossible.

It's a pretty long game, especially compared to Full Throttle. I can recommend Grim Fandango for sure.

Played this with a friend for a whole evening on 2 player on my Sega Mini. I always heard it was extremely weird. I can see how it got that rumour, because it's true. I don't think I've played a game that I could compare it to.

It's about exploring a map with these islands. with a lot of quirky characters and bizarre situations scattered around. You find small gifts with strange abilities.

Without always knowing what you are trying to find you'll eventually find something that makes you progress. An elevator taking you to the next stage, even if you can fall back to the last level if you are unlucky.

It does feel like exploration is the main theme. With 2 player the screen splits, and it does have a unique feel to it. I quite liked it. Very novel and weird game.

F*** this is terrifying. Help Wantes is a good choice if you’re looking for a good horror game on VR. I’ve seen my share of horror movies, but can’t remember feeling this anxious and scared about playing a game in ages. I don't have that much experience with the PC games before playing this. I was just originally just looking for some horror experiences when I got an Oculus Quest 2, and stumbled over the world of FNAF, which I was just barely familiar with from before.

The only catch with FNAF is what’s also could be considered one of it’s strengths. The jumpscares. It’s sort of built on it. Someone has critiqued FNAF for being a «jumpscare simulator». I don’t know if that is fair. The big question is if the jumpscares in FNAF are cheap or if they're a stroke of genius. I tend to lean towards the latter (to my own surprise, actually). In movies I tend to generally consider jumpscares a cheap tactic to scare a viewer, but in FNAF it’s usually not just random non-sensical jumpscares coming out of nowhere. They’re more like ‘elecrical shocks’ when you’re failing the task, which keeps you on your toes, and you can see coming, so it’s different than just cheap jumpscares. However, if you’re someone who can’t deal with jumpscares, then there’s more suitable choices in horror for VR.

FNAF are not just about jumpscares luckily. There's also something genuinely creepy with the universe, the music and sounds, and the characters, the secrets and the story aka «the lore». It’s just extremely well made. The games are also fun when you get into them of course.

My goal is to complete this game with all the minigames and secrets one day, maybe even the DLC, but I’m not sure if I can, but hey, I will keep trying.

Not Another Weekend is a good choice if you’re into the old point & click games from the 80s and 90s. I wasn’t 100% convinced at first, but it really grew on me. There’s just so many newer point & click games that tries to capture the feel of the old ones that it has become a bit difficult for all of them to stand out, but it slowly convinced me more and more that this is a very solid and unique game.

The game is set in a cheap hotel in 80s, and you play as Mike, the bellboy who hates his job and is whipped around by his awful boss. For some bizarre reason he keeps the brain of his uncle in a jar, down in the basement, who he believes is telling him to get all the guests at the hotel to leave, as well as all the employees who works there to quit. All within the weekend. Quite a task, and it might take some quite extreme measures in some cases.

It feels a bit like Maniac Mansion as you’re basically inside one building with lots of rooms. There’s a very unique gallery of characters, and the humor is very funny and things easily get a bit out there. A lot of cheesy 80’s pop cultural references to action characters like The Terminator, Steven Seagall and Jean Claud Van Damme. Oh, and Hulk Hogan. Maybe Turtles too. Kind of. A lot of quirky characters.

In the later stage of the game things get more eerie and mysterious and you get to reveal what’s going on in the hotel, but i won't spoil it.

I also notice it’s marked as a bit "lewd" on Steam, but it’s nothing worse than a South Park or Family Guy episode, and it’s all pretty silly.

The game is probably closer to LucasArts in spirit than Sierra. You can never die, and its built around comedy. If you like Day Of The Tentacle, ZakMacKracken, Maniac Mansion, and want a modern alternative, this one you should try.

As for cons I kind of missed voiceacting when the game started, but I quickly got used to it. The overall reveal when it’s said and done is also little bit odd, but everything else is so fun in this game it doesn’t matter. Check it out!

In my quest to complete the LucasFilm/LucasArts adventure games Labyrinth : The Computer Game (1986) was my very last stop before completion. I have been curious about this one for years.

If Maniac Mansion and ZakMackracken are the grandfathers of point and click adventure games, then this is more like like a pre-historic species of the genre. While one could perhaps argue its no more primitive than the oldest Sierra games (Kings Quest, Space Quest, Larry, etc), that is true, but those games really are similar the later ones in those respected series with its cursor and typing based interface.

Labyrinth neither looks or feels like later games by LucasArts, but it's interesting to see what they had before the SCUMM system. They refused to use typing, so you have a scrolling wheel instead.

It certainly feels like a relic from the past, but its surprsingly alright and I guess you have to take it for what it is.

The first part of the game is more like a text adventure, but when you enter the fantasy world (the Labyrinth) it becomes a graphical adventyre, and you can control your customized character around with a joystick. There's characters to interact with, some stuff to pick up and some puzzles, and plenty of places to explore.

If you have watched the movie it helps with the puzzles.

The thing that's perhaps most similar to LucasArts games is the humor, because it does have some funny humor and situations, which would be a staple in most LucasArts games later.

Beyond that its very quirky, feels a little bit dated, controls a bit wonky, and you walk a little bit slow - but still is undeniably charming if you get into it, and if you are into the history of the adeventure game genre it's a must to experience Labyrinth. If not, any other LucasArts adventure game is recommended before this one.

I played this on the real SNES console with a cart previously owned by Mr. Wuratti here on Backlogged. I also re-watched all the movies while playing this.

It's a game that strangely has packed the 3 original movies into one game. That is a lot. So you're playing thorugh the story of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Temple Of Doom and Last Crusade in order. It feels like they perhaps tried to chew too much at once here, but hey, damn ambitious. You kind of get 3 games in 1 here.

The controls are good and responsive, and it's mostly fun to play and use your whip to swing around and take out enemies. Music and graphics are also pretty top notch for the SNES era, I would say. No complaints here.

The difficulty level is a bit all over the place though. Some areas I would just breeze through, while others I could get stuck on for quite a while. You could flip a coin if the level was going to be easy or hard. The part where you have to drive the minecart and shoot other carts + to change the railing on tracks I remember as one I found as one of the most frustrating ones. Strangely the start level with the huge rolling boulder was also much tougher than most of the later game. So the difficulty seemed very unbalanced.

The game also has passwords, and gives new ones out pretty regularly. Almost too often. If it wasn't for that this game would be almost unbearable to play though.

Sometimes the bosses feels like pushovers and other times not. This made me feel like the game is possibly a bit unpolished, and that some corners had to be cut maybe. Which is a little unfortunate, as this could have been classic level otherwise.. Still, I definitely recommend it. Especially if you like Indiana Jones.

Being a mechanical sensation, Pinball machines had to compete with video games at the arcades and though developers tried to implement new functions maybe exactly the increasing cost for more complicated maintenance led to the cease of existence. There must have been a general interest in the gameplay otherwise as there constantly was software for home consoles and computers, trying to emulate the fun to be had with Pinball cabinets.

It's possible more recent computers are capable of an almost perfect recapture, but there's a reason even today enthusiasts are restoring Pinball cabinets and some of them are making them accessible through clubs and museums to work their charme as an attraction. In fact, just a few hours ago, in preparation of my next big arcade trip in May, I stumbled over the featurette for a new Pulp Fiction machine and looking at the details made me realize the fascination for physically moving parts again.

Creating a Pinball video game can't provide that amongst all the realism, but the further you go back in time, the bigger had been the problems to depict a realistic table at all. Pinball Dreams for the Amiga might have been state of the art during the era for instance, but how much reason is there to revisit this game today? I might simultaneously have been playing Revenge of the Gator on my Gameboy back in the day, because it was my option for a Pinball video game on the then recent mobile device and we could take from this that these games rather function as a status quo.

Some of you might already remember I was rarely playing Mega Drive games in the nineties, because most of us had taken the Amiga to SNES route, so you might anticipate with the question why on earth would I enjoy a game like Codemasters' Psycho Pinball that much in retrospect then?

The answer in short is: Because they've gotten something right.

I was just recently playing the Pokemon Pinball games and that Disney's The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy to reassure me enough in saying a good Pinball video game was created under the awareness it is not a real table. So what does that mean?

Well, I found Psycho Pinball, when I was looking for alternatives to Sonic Spinball, that had disappointed me with its gameplay/physics, even though I liked the idea. I could later find out that an almost similar concept with better execution would convince me in the form of Yoku's Island Express. But a couple of years ago, I was specifically researching hidden gems I might have missed due to my ignorance of Sega during the console war, when there also had been monetary reasons to focus on one platform only.

It seems Codemasters' Psycho Pinball had been a UK or European exclusive anyway, so a huge part of you readers might possibly have missed it too, back then. Codemasters had been known for their Dizzy games and Micro Machines already. They would then later move on to create the TOCA and Colin McRae Rally games, some of my absolute favorite racers on the Sony Playstation. They had actually published Advanced Pinball Simulator in 1988, so maybe another Pinball wasn't exotic in their roster, but let me assure you it's no comparison at all.

Knowing Pinball Dreams the selection of four tables in Psycho Pinball isn't much of a surprise. There's a horror, a western and an underwater theme, all three well thought through tables fun to play on their own, but mostly as training for the fourth, Psycho, that is a complete table, but will have portals to the other ones. Until now, I've probably played hundreds of hours on Psycho, quite a lot at first, but I wheel this game out every other month for years now.

Psycho Pinball for me has just the right amount of craziness on a more or less traditional Pinball layout, because it doesn't try to add too much, like for instance the aforementioned Pokemon Pinball, that's rather limited on the Pinball, so it tries to keep you occupied on the catching and developing of Pokemon, which is a nice touch, but something I'd rather pick up a Pokemon game for and not a Pinball game.

On the contrary, Psycho Pinball has got enough Pinball mechanics to explore the triggering of events on each table. And it totally has the physics for that, which is essential. As a Pinball wizard, you neither need a perfect body nor a perfect soul, but if one thing, you wanna have control. Tilting is a helpful option, but it even feels right to save the ball with the outermost tip of your flipper.

Whilst the scrolling is quite a decent emulation of your view following the ball, there sure is a learning curve from chaotic attempts of keeping the ball in play to increasing highscore chances intentionally. Complemented by minigames on the old school screen or inserts of simple platformer mazes there's enough variability to make the hunt for a score of at least 100000000 most enjoyable.

Psycho Pinball is also fast enough, which is a huge problem with a lot of Pinball video games in general. Often enough the scrolling, if there even is some, isn't smooth enough and the ball just doesn't behave right. In Psycho Pinball even launching the ball feels like you're actually pulling back a spring mechanism and every curve or bounce feels like it should be that way.

I'm avoiding the word authentic, because within the limitations of a Mega Drive Psycho Pinball does a great job at creating an illusion, but there's at least the cost of graphical brilliance. The squeaky score is something not everybody can handle, but I actually think it's quite appropriate thinking of it as an overdriven speaker at a noisy arcade. The graphics appear rather pragmatic, probably aware that too many fancy details would rather slow down the processor, but it is actually the speed and dedication to playability that makes you forget about that swiftly.

In fact, the clear design adds to the orientation during fast bounces and aiming for the Jackpot, emphasized by increased tension of the soundtrack when you've completed the letters for "Psycho", probably works best the way it is. Psycho Pinball even today is addictive and just playing it again, I didn't even realize an hour had passed instantly.

Aiming for the preset highscores is doable by the way, but will need some warming up, because Psycho Pinball doesn't throw points at you for nothing. I remember having played once on an ancient Pinball cabinet my then girlfriend's father owned and on that you hardly scored more than a few thousand.

With more complicated targets an upscaling in numbers makes sense, but scoring almost 3 billion for instance on my first play of the mentioned Little Mermaid Pinball for Gameboy Color was just as ridiculous as that one time I left credits in the Star Trek TNG cabinet, because I didn't manage to lose within the twenty or so minutes we waited for our takeaway food. Just like the person who had left some balls for me to pick up on. They probably didn't make much money with the cabinet at that diner.

That's just one of the many things Psycho Pinball does right, I guess. Scoring the first ten million as a beginner seems like a hard task, but the more you learn the mechanics, the better you get at combining events, increasing your bonus and scoring at mini games. It's sheer pleasurable excitement realizing to be in the zone to beat the next highscore and if there's one thing missing, it's a battery in the cartridge to actually save your success.

But that's not a very bitter pill to swallow in trade for the awesome game Psycho Pinball is. I can understand if you're not much into this kind of gaming or you're more after the state of the art simulation, that this isn't the game for you. But if you're interested in good Pinball games check it out. Especially for the Mega Drive, and I've been playing pretty much any Pinball there is for the console, it is as good as it gets.