[rudikoster]

I think an obscure game called the Gene Machine (The Great British Adventure) also needs to be in the top 100, and a review of the game would not be amiss!
Another one missing is Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths!

[Agustin]

The Gene Machine is most definitely Top 100 material. Maybe Top 50 even. A very well produced and designed adventure. Exciting storyline, challenging puzzles, wonderful locations, just about anything you could ask...

[diego]

Bring Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer in, as well.

As for The Gene Machine, i remember it being quite a solid title. I forgot most of the things though, but the duo of protagonists is hard to forget - you don't get many bearded Victorian gentlemen and poor, harrased but trusty manservants (well, you do, in Touché).

[harald]

I've seen many people lamenting that this game didn't make the top 100, so I can't resist stirring things up from the bottom of the cauldron. I was very disappointed when I replayed The Gene Machine recently. I remember really enjoying it when I first played it some years ago and now, I found an unexciting story with mediocre dialogue. (The voice acting was mostly solid, though.) The background graphics look like a twelve-year-old painted them with watercolours (but the rest of the graphics hold up okay), the music was awful and most of the puzzles were either uninspired or unnecessarily convoluted.

I remember thinking this was a funny game, but now I think the humour came across as awkward more often than making me snicker. But most of all; a steampunk game set in and around Victorian England really could have been so much better than this.

All that said ranted, I'd be okay with it making somewhere between #80 and #100 on the list.

[ozzie]

I thought Gene Machine started out well, but after you leave London for the sea the game fell apart for me. I dunno, it felt so unfinished, like the developer rushed the game out of the door, which was probably what happened. It lacked the wit and satirical undertones of its former moments, the music was inappropriate (especially the solemn notes for the otherwise exciting finale!), the sense of place was missing. I never felt that this adventure ever really started. After London I hoped for some kind of epic, but all the locations you're visiting are only briefly shown, never expanded upon, it just rushes by without much joy to have. I guess I hoped for some compelling characters, for some wonderful moments like in London, for example like in the Gentleman's club, in Whitechapel, at the house of your fiancee...but no, nothing memorable happens later on. Except for the finale, but that's far too little, too late. And even that moment isn't pulled off very well.
That's how I felt at least.

A damn shame. When I was young I got stuck on a puzzle in the rocket to the moon, so I never got to see the later stages. When I picked it up again many years later and progressed past this point, I was disappointed to see that it noticeably dropped in quality.
A damn shame too that the developers closed up shop after this game. This was definitely their best work, so I wonder what could have been.

[Arial Type]

Originally Posted by diego

Bring Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer in, as well.

Agreed, Touché is such an underrated title. Monkey Island of British gaming with a fine addition of Henry (and minus smooth design, but well). I would've easily replaced Simon 2 or Discworld 2 with it.

[rudikoster]

I am not familiar with the fifth musketeer! I am going to try trackking it down and playing it.

[Fien]

What Harald said. Overrated. I liked the graphics. The puzzles are extremely easy, which was very good for my ego because every once in a while I get the urge to finish an adventure without peeking in a walkthrough. The humor was for the most part predictable.

Touche is the better of the two games, but only marginally better. That awful manservant with his non-stop moaning about food got on my nerves.

[Jackal]

Touché was a great game. I might well have championed its cause a bit harder for a place on the list if it weren't so completely impossible to find anymore. (In fact, it probably always was.)

I honestly don't think anyone on staff has played The Gene Machine. Between us we got the huge majority of games covered, but there will always be a few that slip through the cracks.

[mbday630]

They were both great games. I have played them both in the last year, again, for about the 10th time each. However, with Gene Machine, right at the end of the game the game crashes and there is nothing I can do to get past it. But, until the crash, I enjoy every minute of playing it. Touche does get a little annoying to me, especially at the beginning, but, the puzzles were great and I think it is definitely a game that should have been in the top 100. I love those old games. I miss the old action verbs of pushing/pulling/open/close/consume/look/walk/talk etc. The smart cursors of todays games make them too easy, and it is more of a pixel hunt.

[MoonBird]

Agreed. Definitely in top-100

[rudikoster]

Originally Posted by Jackal

Touché was a great game. I might well have championed its cause a bit harder for a place on the list if it weren't so completely impossible to find anymore. (In fact, it probably always was.)

I honestly don't think anyone on staff has played The Gene Machine. Between us we got the huge majority of games covered, but there will always be a few that slip through the cracks.

Touche is available on [link removed]. I tried playing it in a DOS box but that didn't work. I have since discovered that it is supported by the latest version of ScummVM, and that it works. Three cheers for ScummVM