Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is an early point-and-click adventure from Lucasfilm Games in which a tabloid journalist uncovers an alien conspiracy that uses the phone network to dull humanity's minds, and with the help of three other playable characters travels between American cities, Mexico, Egypt, and other exotic locations around the world and beyond, including a trip to Mars. On the Atari ST the game uses the same SCUMM command-verb system as the studio's later titles, but the icon and inventory controls are somewhat rougher and less unified than in later games, reflecting the early stage of development of this interface.

The gameplay is built on linking multiple characters whose actions in different locations on the map must be coordinated, traveling by plane between destinations using purchased tickets, and solving puzzles that combine logic with the period's occasionally deliberately bizarre humor typical of the studio's early games. On the Atari ST the game offered colorful, if technically more modest, graphics compared to later LucasArts titles, and the musical accompaniment was sparse, matching the platform's early capabilities and the limitations of the hardware of the time. The game also worked with a simple map interface for planning trips between cities, which made it easier for the player to orient themselves in a fairly large and open world spread across several continents.

At the time of release, Zak McKracken was praised for its imaginative sci-fi humor and its large, interconnected world with multiple controllable characters, which was a fairly ambitious step at the time toward greater openness in the genre. Today it is seen as an important intermediate step in the development of LucasArts adventures between Maniac Mansion and the more mature titles of the late 1980s and early 1990s, even though its puzzles and logic sometimes feel archaic and less accommodating than the studio's later games, which noticeably benefited from its experience.

Why play it: For its imaginative sci-fi humor and large interconnected world with multiple controllable characters - an important intermediate step in the development of LucasArts adventures, even though some puzzles feel archaic today.