![]() It may sound basic, but the opportunity to step out and explore things like this directly hasn't been available for Doctor Who fans before or since. You even get the opportunity to explore a chunk of the TARDIS and its control console at your leisure. It's a game that literally invites you to walk around the ruined halls of a Dalek City on the planet Skaro a crashed Cyberman spaceship in the Arctic Circle a futuristic underwater city. Some of the spectacle you can offer in a project such as this would of course go well overbudget for a BBC series like Doctor Who. "We can do things that can't be done in a television series-we can have amazing environments and amazing creatures that you couldn't do in television," claimed Cecil-and for the most part he was indeed right. Was this it? The motherload? Not only the revival-era Doctor Who game the world seemed so prepared for, but one that was in a safe pair of hands? Broken Sword is a well-deserved classic, and while it might be obnoxiously hard in places (as so many of those older adventure games often were), the narrative was filled to the brim with adventure and intrigue the likes of which is a stone's throw away from Doctor Who. All we'd had in the 5 years post-revival-a period literally screaming for any kind of modern Doctor Who game-was a bizarre Top Trumps tie-in for PS2 and Nintendo DS. That dream came to pass when years later, Charles Cecil-the architect behind the Broken Sword series-would go on to spearhead the first solid attempt at a Doctor Who game in 13 years. But these were the "Wilderness Years" of Doctor Who, when it seemed an artifact of the past and Christopher Eccleston's smiling Ninth Doctor grin was still just a glint in Russell T Davies' eye as he was hard at work on Queer as Folk. ![]() Perhaps 90% of Who stories could be adapted into adventure games-even if the solution to the puzzles would always be using the sonic screwdriver to "reverse the polarity"-it's interacting with the situation with a thinking cap on, observing and not simply looking, engaging. The point and click adventure game genre seemed the perfect fit for Doctor Who. Legends such as Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade to the wonderfully forgotten like The Adventures of Hyperman and Cyberia-yes, with a "c." So many point-and-click adventures that defined my childhood gaming seemed to share some of Doctor Who's clever, high-concept brilliance. It wasn't until discovering broader genres on PC a few years later that I started to see how it could happen. I also grew up on video games-the Sega Master System in particular-and the desire to mix my two obsessions was always there. No fan didn't want to go on those adventures, to explore a slew of strange worlds and historical settings alongside him, overcoming danger effortlessly with coolly-assured smarts. They'd face terrifying threats that would haunt my nightmares, but I'd always be safe in the knowledge that he'd have a plan – something cunning, daring, and oh so clever. Like millions of other kids, I was reared on re-runs of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker's performances as the enigmatic Doctor. Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is a near-perfect concept for a Doctor Who video game, let down by some unfortunate circumstances at the time. In all those years only one video game based on the show has truly flirted with success. The revival of the series has run since 2005 (after a hiatus from '89), coinciding with early internet fandom culture to transform a formerly cultish UK-oddity to a pillar of modern nerd culture.Īll in all, that makes it over 50 years old-a damn sight older than I am. Starting in 1963, it's one of the oldest science fiction TV shows, sprouting a cult following and reaching international pop culture status over the years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |