Some of my best gaming experiences; Actually, only a few of my best solo experiences during the last year of the 80’s and throughout the 90’s came from the amazing “Point and Click Adventure” genre. Also known as “Graphic Adventures”, each game was an absolute, deeply layered, immersive journey: I was disconnected from reality and tuned into a different world, allowing me to be someone else from the moment those discs were inserted. the moment he hit that ON/OFF switch and went to bed.

To escape my normal life as a kid at school, all I had to do was boot up, and I instantly became a pirate, a secret agent, a time traveler, a space janitor, a detective, an archaeologist, a wizard. or a king. Douglas Quaid had “Rekall”, I had my Amiga.

This was beyond “the book”; Point-and-click adventures allowed the player to delve into a rich story, but actually be the protagonist, walk like them, respond like them, interact with other characters like them, and make decisions for them; each time being rewarded with more arguments, puzzles and brain teasers. Before the integration of actual audio dialogue into games when they came on CD-ROM years later (which I think spoiled them); the much cooler generation of users of the limited capacity floppy was forced to read all the dialogue in their head (creating their own voices if they wanted) with a 16-bit soundtrack and sound effects to go along with it. It was a sublime experience.

I preferred Point’n’Click only

Often with intriguing plotlines and an intense need to solve the current puzzle; Players spent countless hours on the games without a break, playing all day, night, and into the early hours of the morning. With a tired mind, this could transform them into a trance-like, dreamlike state, as if the dream they were having was right in front of them but in full color, completely controllable, and lucid. These were the best dreams they had ever had. Everything beyond the 4 sides of the screen in front of them collapsed and nothing else existed except the adventure; the only reminder that they were still a human watching was the feel of their wrist and hand pointing with the mouse and the sound of clicks as they chose a verb and then an object.

It was a very personal and lonely experience; a journey that can only be thoroughly enjoyed when done alone. I once sat down with a friend, trying together to solve some puzzles in a certain game that was available at the time, at his house. I had the feeling that I was invading his experience, and he was definitely spoiling mine; this was an experience I wanted to have locked away in my own room, not his. It was akin to trying to sit down and read a classic novel at the same time as someone else, both looking at the same pages, one wanting to turn a page and finish it, and the other wanting to stay and take in the complexities. of the story and dialogue and apply your imagination to enhance the scene. We were just two different instances of that sprite in two different mindsets. On his screen was exactly the same animated collection of pixels, but I did not recognize this character, he was not the same one who was waiting for me at home. We had been through different things at different times; I built a relationship with mine, and here I was just a clone doing actions I wanted to save for later, it just wasn’t the same. Needless to say, I never tried to co-play a Point’n’Click again.

Graphic adventure piracy, before Monkey Island

It all started for me in 1989, my uncle had given me a bootleg (naughty naughty) copy of Delphine’s brilliant Future Wars; this whetted my appetite for the genre, however, since I only know (unbeknownst to either of us) a two-disc set, I was only able to complete a few of the puzzles before being asked to “Insert Disc 2”. Without the disc, I couldn’t continue, which was frustrating to say the least, but this had me hungry for adventure games – I needed to play more.

I used to order Amiga games from some sort of mail order catalog (can’t remember for the life of me what this was called, or why I was doing it this way, since I could probably go to a computer store in the city). However, I believe that this catalog contained games that were not widely known or distributed at the time, perhaps from abroad. Inside it was a small ad showing a game with a weird and exciting cover, like that of a cool 80’s movie or cartoon, accompanied by a captivating sales pitch – right there you had to find out what was going on in the manic mansion. And so it was ordered and the waiting time began (I seem to remember 14 – 28 days?). Every day was a “Has the mailman been in?” routine, until a warm and fuzzy Saturday morning finally arrived. I remember opening the big brown bag and pulling out that amazing box. On the front, a large, colored version of what was shown in the catalog, but on the back, a strange painted image of the stories’ antagonists: Dr. Fred, Nurse Edna, and Weird Ed. that inside the box there was a huge poster showing a bulletin board with all kinds of references related to the plot and the backstory of the characters really convinced him. Maniac Mansion Disk 1 was in, and I was going to go into Maniac Mansion.

Adventures for a time without adventures

With a firm desire to point and click, and as the 90’s arrived, many more titles followed one another; Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Secret of Monkey Island, Operation Stealth, Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Cruise for a Corpse, Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest , Dark Seed , Dreamweb, KGB… Some atmospheric and serious, some full of incredible wit and humor; they arrived fast and dense, each one taking me to a different place, time and life.

As the genre became popular and steadily topped the charts, it wasn’t long before sequels appeared giving us even more adventures and more time to spend with (as) our favorite characters.

However, as consoles took on more and more prominence with their gamepads, this meant the end of point-and-click (consoles don’t use a mouse, of course), and with game sales at an all-time low due to the amount of floppy disk piracy; this spelled the end of the Amiga. PCs continued the genre for a while, but the new generation wanted more shock value and graphically exciting games in real-time 3D; the whimsical innocence of Point and Click games as we know them faded and the adventures were seemingly over. Fast-forward about 15 years… Although it lacks authenticity in interaction (less like “point and click” adventures, more like “look then touch” adventures), in recent years, with the intimacy of devices From touchscreens to tablets, the point-and-click adventure made me come back and I was happy to see some classics re-released. It’s good to see the genre become popular once again, though sadly, for me, they’ve lost the charm that made the games what they were. Maybe it’s because the actual hardware that was used at the time to play them is missing; With little storage space, processing power, and graphics capabilities, the stories and characters really shined because they had to. Or maybe it was because of what else was happening (or not happening) off the computer screen at the time. In an age before the Internet, mobile phones, social media, MMOs, and instant digital entertainment, there were few places to transpose the consciousness of a child seeking real adventure. With such a lack of options at the time for escapism, the Point and Click adventure was a Point and Click away from an entirely different world.