[Fien]

Oh no, I don't agree with you because we actually agree a lot. About games we like, such as Bad Mojo, Starship, Barrow Hill, for instance.

Nice link, Zorbie. Takes me to a Fall Tournament with no posts, no nothing.

[zobraks]

Oops, sorry! Here's a proper link to the forums.

[Matt Berkeley]

Oops! Sorry! Me too, zobraks (Zaphod Beeblebrox?).

[crabapple]

Originally Posted by Fien

On a similar note to the intriguing "keep your CD clean" stuff, I got another weird message back in 2003 when I first played GAG. In the game itself, no crashes. I thought it interesting enough to make a note of it.

This is beta-version
not for sale
if you purchase this copy
please call: [some London number]

What would be the point of that message, I wonder? I came across it more than once, only on CD2. (Yes, an official boxed GAG, nothing illegal.) Big white letters. But that was 8 years ago, I didn't see it once this time. Perhaps I hit some key on the keyboard by accident...

I assume it's along the same lines of the message I got the first time I turned right at the top of the stairs in the castle, continued down the hall, and tried to go through the door at the end -- I got a message that the game was still "under construction." But the message disappeared after backing out and going forward through the same door 3 or 4 times. Suddenly it wasn't "under construction" anymore and I was able to continue to the next room. I figured it was the developers' idea of a joke.

[Fien]

The Under Construction joke is undoubtedly part of the game (it has been mentioned in this thread and it's in the walkthrough). It is also limited to one specific location. But 8 years ago I saw the beta version message in several rooms and now I haven't seen it once. And nobody else has mentioned it.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by seagul

Did anyone mention the wonderfull voice of Gary?! I'm very attracted to men with wonderfull voices...

My friends and relatives call me James Earl Jones (and not only because I'm fat and have a black tan).

Originally Posted by Arial Type

I beat the rats game in 5 minutes this time, but I remember it was also a nightmare for me back in 1998.

I don't understand how it can be done (beating the rats, that is): I need (at least) 0,8 seconds to fire a slingshot and those $@#*&ing critters show for only 0,5 seconds. If you tell me to aim and wait for a single rat to show - it doesn't work because the rats don't show at the holes you aim at .
So how am I supposed to shoot a rat?

I'll try Harald's strategy.

Originally Posted by harald

it's great as long as you can just amble through. But when you hit a brick wall it's really solid.

My thoughts exactly, although that goes for almost every other adventure game .

Originally Posted by harald

The game suffers from a handful of really bad design decisions (IMO) that hurt my enjoyment of it.... I mean, the balloon puzzle - where was the sense in that?

GAG is all about nonsense, and if you look at it in that way - everything is OK and 'logical' (in GAG's weird way).

Originally Posted by Luna Sevithiainen

Spoiler:

you can also look down when standing outside Margo's room, and see a mat, and underneath is the combination. When the game expects you to look under the mat for the combination to come in, and when you are locked in, you look under the mat again to find the combination to get out, the drawing makes a lot more sense

What a great joke, and I missed the first part of it (didn't look under the mat outside the room, only checked the one inside the room, the one that flipped me a bird ).

Originally Posted by harald

And did anyone actually manage to hit any chickens?

I did. I think I stabbed two or three of them. It's not that I aimed much, mind you.

Originally Posted by diego

... the correct title is GAG and not Gag.
Graphic Adventure Game?

How about 'Goofy Adventure Game'?

Originally Posted by Fien

About the name GAG. The first time I heard the game mentioned was when Lakerz, from good old Four Fat Chicks, posted his list of rare adventures. That was many years ago, in 2000 I think. He used to say GAG stood for Girls Are Great, which makes perfect sense. I still think GAG simply stands for gag.

Is this the same Lakerz as on other AG forums? FFC is/was one of the most intersting AG-related places on the whole Internet.
Nice info.

Originally Posted by jan donkers

I have uploaded the making of pictures... try to make a clip of the ending and upload it to YouTube

Thank you very much for both the video and the pictures, JD!

Now, for the offtopic:

Spoiler:

Semifinals of the World Waterpolo Championship - Serbia:Hungary - 15:14

[Fien]

Originally Posted by zobraks

GAG is all about nonsense, and if you look at it in that way - everything is OK and 'logical' (in GAG's weird way).

Exactly!

Is this the same Lakerz as on other AG forums? FFC is/was one of the most intersting AG-related places on the whole Internet. Nice info.

Yep. I've mentioned both FFC and Lakerz before, and he even visited this thread once. Don't tell me you were also posting at FFC? I witnessed the competition, fights, feuds between the various forums almost from the start (GB, JA, FFC, AG) and I was always on FFC's side in the war with JA that now hardly anybody remembers. Did you know that the forum filter at JA won't allow you to post the words Four Fat Chicks? How childish can you get...

I think this community playthrough is drawing to a natural close. I'll post my final comments on GAG later tonight.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by Fien

Don't tell me you were also posting at FFC?

Unfortunately, I didn't.
I started frequenting forums only recently.

Originally Posted by Fien

I witnessed the competition, fights, feuds between the various forums almost from the start (GB, JA, FFC, AG) and I was always on FFC's side in the war with JA that now hardly anybody remembers. Did you know that the forum filter at JA won't allow you to post the words Four Fat Chicks? How childish can you get...

Hehe .
I would like to say I was too young to witness those Forum Wars, but that's not it - I simply didn't feel like visiting those places before. Although I became a member of most of the AG forums years ago.

Fien, you're a well of interesting trivia.

[crabapple]

Originally Posted by Fien

I witnessed the competition, fights, feuds between the various forums almost from the start (GB, JA, FFC, AG) and I was always on FFC's side in the war with JA that now hardly anybody remembers. Did you know that the forum filter at JA won't allow you to post the words Four Fat Chicks? How childish can you get...

I didn't know about the filter, but it doesn't surprise me. From what I heard, FFC split off of JA after Randy of JA found out that one of the people he'd trusted to manage the JA forum had been abusing members and deleting loads of posts from the archive (and possibly messing with the rest of the site -- I'm not sure). Maybe there was some sort of disagreement before that and the deletions were retribution. Many of the reviews that were formerly at JA were moved to FFC, and JA wasn't too happy about that. After FFC split off, the person responsible moved over there and was later accused of hacking/attempting to hack JA again. I had the impression that JA came on better terms with GB after that, with GB siding with JA against FFC.

I never had the impression that AG ever had a problem with any of the other sites -- maybe because it's based in Europe instead of the US -- though individual members may have had a problem with them.

It's interesting to explore the wayback machine and see what AG used to look like -- before they had to add the "s" to their web address. Here's what AG looked like around year 2000.
Wayback Machine web archive link

[zobraks]

The plot (in AG Forum Wars) thickens...

[skeeter_93]

Originally Posted by zobraks

I don't understand how it can be done (beating the rats, that is): I need (at least) 0,8 seconds to fire a slingshot and those $@#*&ing critters show for only 0,5 seconds. If you tell me to aim and wait for a single rat to show - it doesn't work because the rats don't show at the holes you aim at .
So how am I supposed to shoot a rat?

What I eventually did (after what seemed like hours) was pick a hole, I picked the closest to the bottom on the left, and hover just off it. I worked out how long to hold the button so it hit the right spot, and i would do like a swipe motion - hold down the button, pulling the cursor over to the hole at the same time. The only trouble is if I did it when I saw a rat poke out, by the time I did it the rat had gone. So I basically repeated the movement over and over again, trying to start it just before a rat came out. Took about ten minutes. It worked better than just clicking everywhere randomly while screaming at the rats which is what I tried for a long while.

[zobraks]

Skeeter, you're a genius! I couldn't hit a single rat before but when I did as you said I hit six in the first minute or two of the action. How? I started the game and positioned my crosshairs (approximately) here:


I already knew (from the numerous previous attempts) how long I'm supposed to hold the mouse button for hitting the closest rat (the sound of the strained rubber band was my best guide), so when I swiped to the hole and released the button I hit the rat in the second attempt! (BTW, I somehow expected the animation of the hitted rats to be more gory; seems like those flies had more blood in them than rats !?!?)

It took me less than five minutes (!?!?) to dispose of all the buggers, and now I have a saved game in the castle, out of the sewers, with all the castle puzzles up to that point solved.

Thank you so much!

[Fien]

I shouldn’t have brought up FFC and the wars. I didn’t mean to open a public can of worms, but reading your post, Crabapple, I realize there are still two camps. My apologies. I don’t agree with your account of what happened, that’s all I'm going to say about it.

[Matt Berkeley]

What I eventually did (after what seemed like hours) was pick a hole, I picked the closest to the bottom on the left, and hover just off it. I worked out how long to hold the button so it hit the right spot, and i would do like a swipe motion - hold down the button, pulling the cursor over to the hole at the same time. The only trouble is if I did it when I saw a rat poke out, by the time I did it the rat had gone. So I basically repeated the movement over and over again, trying to start it just before a rat came out. Took about ten minutes. It worked better than just clicking everywhere randomly while screaming at the rats which is what I tried for a long while.

Exactly what I did. And I do mean exactly. That hole. That technique. That level of abject despair! Exactly what I resorted to, yep...

Well except for the "trying to start it just before a rat came out. Took about ten minutes."... I just did it over and over without relying on any "trying" to do anything but just repeat the goddamned motions because I realized that there was no nothing going on here but utter blithering potshots... and yeah it only took about 3-5 minutes that seemed like eternity.

I think I counted that you have to kill 11 rats.

...

As for forum wars, it's bad enough that control-freakery, disingenuous whining and small-mindedness run rampant on serious boards, where you regretfully sort of expect it, but for these kind of things to happen on gaming boards? Yeah, I guess that's no surprise either -- just maybe more pathetic.And certainly much more laughable; because no matter where you are on a particular argument about games, please don't get really upset.

[crabapple]

Originally Posted by Matt Berkeley

I think I counted that you have to kill 11 rats.

I thought it was 10 rats.
However many it was was too many.

[skeeter_93]

Originally Posted by zobraks

Skeeter, you're a genius!

I know... Not really... Hehe, I'm glad I helped! And Matt had the same plan too!

[zobraks]

I guess it's time to summarize things.

GAG was a mixed bag for me: I liked the weird atmosphere and quirky humo(u)r, most of the puzzles (their difficulty and originality), playability (not often a game that old can be flawlessly played on newer OSs), Russian girls (Lucy was a bit overdressed for my taste , but hey! you can't have it all!). On the other side I did not like GAG's animals (flies, rats, roast ducks, farting crocodiles and specially - view-blocking penguins ), some bad jokes, unskippable action/arcade mini-games and pixel hunting. Gagboy was fun since there were a lot of unusual positions to discover and some usual positions didn't work (it's a thrill having a naked woman in high heels standing on your buttocks knees! ).

Fien, Arial and Jan gave us a lot of interesting facts about the game and its creators, there were a lot of good participants (specially for such an obscure game) and I enjoyed reading their comments which helped me and/or amused me. Although the game was short we really managed to post a lot (TLJ playthrough had only nine pages , mind you!), and there was a lot of quality off-topic too (I specially liked the Forum Wars trivia ).

This is my fourth playthrough (twice a GM, twice a player) in total and I enjoy each next one more than the previous . Thank you so much Fien for a constant promotion of GAG (who knows when I would have played it if it wasn't for you), for taking the Gamemistress role and superbly leading this playthrough to the very (happy ) end.

[lakerz]

[QUOTE=Fien;585812]Hiya lakerz! Why don’t you join us? Surely you remember enough of the game to comment on it. QUOTE]

My apologies Fien! I wish I could have joined in because of my fond memories of the first playthrough of the game. Unfortunately, work has been a cruel mistress the past month, and I haven't even been able to check out the message boards more than bi-weekly. It brought a smile to my face though to see you start up the play through and witness all these players laugh their way through the game's zaniness for the first time. Well done all of you!

Fien, did you ever make any progress on GAG 2? I remember after we finished GAG you got busy and couldn't start up GAG 2. I tried playing it myself but got stuck not too far into it. Forget whether it was a puzzle I couldn't figure out or a game crash.

I forget where I heard aboug GAG being an acronym for Girls Are Great. I thought it was mentioned in the game manual maybe? Or maybe not, heh.

[Fien]

Heh. Not what you’d call progress, no. But encouraged by your success with the Russian version of the first GAG I did try GAG2 and got stuck early on too. I remember I did something right by accident and then I wandered around for a long time, determined not to give up so easily. And then I gave up...

Did you see ArialType’s post about GAG2? http://forums.adventuregamers.com/fo...&postcount=227

However, I did finish the GAG 18+ you gave me. Easiest thing in the world.

[Fien]

And here is my summary. Late, I know...

I’m with Zobraks for the most part. I enjoyed the parody of the puzzles and non-puzzles (e.g. door code, password). The graphics were great for ‘97 and are still okay. Gary’s voice was fine and politically incorrect Lao made me smile every time; the others were flat, although Lucy looked like she had a lot of fun pretending to be an actress.

Things I liked best: Gagboy (with some reservations), the protective penguin, the intro with the FPS parody, the two doormats, dancing boobs, rising Myst ship, peeping through the telescope, chicken/duck, bungee jumping, security camera with Boogie and Woogie, Gary’s talking head in the guillotine, windable shark. Plus the nice animated white-on-black drawings.

Things I didn’t care for: The sewer and the rats were a pain. The developers are not good with verbal humor, which becomes even more apparent during a replay. Gary doesn’t have much to say, does he? Compared to other funny adventures I love (Zork GI, Starship Titanic, Space Bar, DoTT etc.) the GAG humor is immensely crude. Gill Bates, Doors ‘97, EvilNet and what’s with all the German talk and the obsession with flying. That and some childish jokes, like fucking flies and farting crocs are the weakest parts of the game for me.

It was fun to play GAG again with other people. Secretly I hope there will be more community playthroughs with less well-known games. Nothing wrong with BS, TLJ, GK, but it’s a great opportunity to explore free adventures, like Drascula, Lure of the Temptress and other games I haven't played.