[jaap]

Sentient looks bad
I just played the telltale CSI demo and the characters realy look bad, as if they're revived corpses.
Normality was 3d, but VGA, whereas all other games from that period were SVGA. (Going back from SVGA to VGA only works if the game is Full throttle & you're Tim Schafer )

Jaap

[ATMachine]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Hurts me to see "Zak" in here as well.

I never said the 320x200 version of Zak (the most common one) was ugly; it's really not. But the 160x200 version (the one in which Zak wears a green shirt) is just horrible.

[Sky Warrior Bob]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

Hold it there, mister! No style? Beg your pardon, it had a perfectly capable Indy-clone style.

And the game being craptastic? Well, a matter of taste, I still think it's vastly better than Monkey Island 2. There, linch me.

If you're talking in terms of graphics, I'm almost inclinded to concur. While I like the character designs of MI2, there's something about the water colored backgrounds that I find irritating. I wouldn't go so far as to call it craptastic, but I do like the look of Flight OtAQ a bit better.

And while I'm sure nobody will agree with me, I've never much liked the look of Cameron Files: The Secret of Loch Ness.

SWB

[LeisureSuitedLooney]

How about Necronomicon? The thing that got me was the animation when characters were talking. Their mouths looked like they were on hinges, and the insides of their mouths were the cavernous, dark areas. REALLY ugly. And just in general, the graphics were uninteresting, bland.

[JemyM]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

That reminds me... at least the late 3DO games had very awkward visuals, too. They used the same (slightly enhanced) enginge that was already outdated in 1996 for two more games (Might&Magic VI-VIII), and it's almost unbelievable that this game was powered by the Lithtech engine (NOLF1/2, AvP2).
But the gameplay was so addictive.

Lol... M&M... I actually played the eight one to the end... And if it would actually have been an adventure game, it would probably have made it to the worst games ever, only saved by the fact that it doesnt even seem to take itself seriously. And I have to agree that yeah, gameplay was still SOMEHOW very addictive...

[JemyM]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

I'm shocked! (Here I am, thinking you were one the few persons on this board with some........ TASTE!)

Im sorry, but I probably have to agree with him there... Flight of the Amazon Queen was among the few adventuregames produced by an almost unknown developer that still was both graphically and contentwise appealing to me.
Nostalgia

[JemyM]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

I never said the 320x200 version of Zak (the most common one) was ugly; it's really not. But the 160x200 version (the one in which Zak wears a green shirt) is just horrible.

Eek. I think I know which one you mean. I played the FM Towns version... but if this is the one you refer to (note the images listed as (Lo-res)) I agree. It almost looks like the c64 version.

[JemyM]

In a previous post I mentioned the bad habits during 1995-2000... I did not mention the habit of creating artwork on paper and then scan it into the computer, mostly because this was something Sierra did before 1995.

Since some have mentioned it though, I'd like to add that this habit helped to create some of the most gruesome games up to date, especially when they converted the graphics to Amiga or other low-color systems.

King Quest V (Amiga)
Space Quest IV (EGA)

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by AFGNCAAP

*pop*

© by Karmillo

You took the workds right out of my head!

[Captain Blondebeard]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

Hold it there, mister! No style? Beg your pardon, it had a perfectly capable Indy-clone style.

And the game being craptastic? Well, a matter of taste, I still think it's vastly better than Monkey Island 2. There, linch me.

Get a rope.

[ATMachine]

Originally Posted by JemyM

Eek. I think I know which one you mean. I played the FM Towns version... but if this is the one you refer to (note the images listed as (Lo-res)) I agree. It almost looks like the c64 version.

It is the C64 version, just ported over to PC with a modified color palette.

Originally Posted by JemyM

In a previous post I mentioned the bad habits during 1995-2000... I did not mention the habit of creating artwork on paper and then scan it into the computer, mostly because this was something Sierra did before 1995.

Since some have mentioned it though, I'd like to add that this habit helped to create some of the most gruesome games up to date, especially when they converted the graphics to Amiga or other low-color systems.

I don't know... I actually think that the EGA versions of VGA releases aren't too bad. The sprites and backgrounds were redrawn to look good in EGA, not simply downgraded to 16 colors by program. They could have looked a lot worse than they do.

You might want to check out my pages of screenshots of KQ5 EGA and SQ1 remake and SQ4 EGA, if you've never played those releases. Be warned though, on dial-up they take a LONG time to load.

However, I will agree that the Amiga conversions of Sierra's 256-color games (save KQ6 Amiga which actually is decent) are hideous.

[insane_cobra]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

I'm shocked!

You shouldn't be. It had everything MI2 had and more. The story was a charming pulp nonsense, humor was good, writing wasn't bad, the graphics and animation were both quite nice, it had some amusing mini-games, and puzzles, in my opinion, were better than those of MI2. I'll always remember the second act of MI2 as one of the most unpleasant adventuring experiences in my life whereas FotAQ delivered a smooth and fun experience from start to finish. Even its maze was fun, for heaven's sake, and it was in fact a puzzle so you didn't have to map it or anything. Although I did get stuck on several occasions, it never frustrated me, which definitely can't be said for MI2.

So yeah, I really think The Flight of the Amazon Queen is a better game.

MI>FotAQ>MI2

[AlejandroSV]

I was reading the answers about the ugliest adventure game ever made, and the Keepsake commercial kept taking my eyes from the posts. And I realized that keepsake may very well be a really ugly looking game that has no excuse for being. They had the technology; they had the artists (it does have great backgrounds) but they still made some really horrible characters, especially in the cut scenes. And that’s another thing, its lame enough when you make videos of pictures shows; they should at least try to make those pictures look decent. The characters where just horrible… and that’s not even considering they were not animated, just static ugly dummies. The other thing is the actor voices… but I guess this is not the post for that…

[wildcat]

Keepsake's cut scenes are awful, but the main game visuals are rather stunning in places I think.

[Brandon]

Not an adventure per se, but, really, three words: Betrayal at Krondor. Fine, it's not early 3D, it's very early 3D, but the low-res cardboard characters pasted on those ugly backgrounds aren't much prettier, either. I can't imagine anyone appreciating its visuals even back in 1993.

I appreciated its visuals back then. Heck, I still appreciate them. I'm all into the early digitization of low-res characters on painted backgrounds. To me it's just so classic.

Most of the games mentioned, I wouldn't consider visually unappealing at all. Flight of the Amazon Queen looks pretty good I think. And Monkey Island 2 looked awesome.

[AlejandroSV]

if you want to talk about early 3d think of alone in the dark 1, back from 1992. but the graphics were really not that bad... and it is also not quiet an adventure game.

I thought Alone in the Dark did a great job with 3D.

[insane_cobra]

It looked great for its time, especially the animations. And it's definitely an adventure game.

[Gordon Bennett]

Zak McCracken looked great for its time. The 160x200 version was, I believe, the first, and was optimized for the 8 bit machines it ran on. Actually, it sounds to me like it was probably developed for the C-64's multicolor mode, which is 160x200 in 16 colors, 4 colors per 8x8 attribute square, or possibly another machine with very similar specifications.

Sierra's Amiga ports were always a terrible disappointment. The 16 color games were a direct copy from their EGA counterparts, which looked absolutely dire when compared to, say The Secret of Monkey Island (almost certainly developed on an Amiga, or at least drawn in Deluxe Paint, as that's the only platform in which the filename "guy.brush" for a character graphic would be expected).

Sierra's VGA games weren't much better. At least they bothered with 32 color versions instead of simply porting the EGA graphics, but they still never looked as nice as other Amiga games. I recall wondering if they bothered to optimize the palette for each picture, or used the same 32 colors throughout. I don't recall at this time, I just remember that they looked like they were run through a color reducing filter and then used without any effort to improve the results.

I do recall that their games ran very poorly on the Amiga. Only Sierra games revealed standard Intuition gadgets while loading, which suggests to me that the interpreter was designed to multitask at the cost of performance. Given that their SCI games needed at least a 68020 and a hard drive to run properly, I am surprised that they didn't release proper 256 color AGA versions, or use HAM mode to maintain the full VGA palette.

For ugliness, taking time and hardware into account, I nominate the otherwise thoroughly brilliant System Shock. While not strictly an adventure, it can be made into one by adjusting the settings at the start of the game.

Unfortunately, it's almost painful to look at. The colors are so deeply wrong, it almost seems like they were deliberately chosen by a gifted, sadistic designer. The textures are poorly drawn, needlessly so. It's easy to dismiss this as the limitations of the hardware at the time, but that isn't the case. It's a design issue. It's still a fantastic game, but that is despite almost obnoxious ugliness of the graphics.