Adventure Gamers - Forums

Hi All,

I’m Liron, the producer of a new revamp edition of the classic adventure game Flight of the Amazon Queen and I’ve been working with John Passfield, the original game designer, to bring the game to modern platforms in time for it’s 20th anniversary!

The game is a point and click graphic adventure set in the 1940’s. You play Joe King, pilot for hire, tasked with flying famous movie starlet Faye Russell into the Amazon jungle for a photo shoot. Things take a turn for the worse and Joe finds himself up against a mad scientist intent on taking over the world!

Inspired by the classic LucasArts adventure games, Flight of the Amazon Queen has just been featured on the App Store in ‘Best New Games’ section worldwide.

Download from the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1082321063
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d…ojotouch.fotaq
Amazon Appstore: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CKLBD84

Check out the trailer:

Download the press kit here: http://mojo-touch.com/FOTAQ-PR_Kit.zip

Best,
Liron Barzilai
MojoTouch

[PRESS RELEASE]

Flight of the Amazon Queen: 20th Anniversary Edition available now on iOS!
25th March, 2016 - MojoTouch and Red Sprite Studios are happy to announce the launch of the 20th Anniversary Edition of the classic point and click adventure game: Flight of the Amazon Queen - which has been featured by Apple on the App Store in “Best New Games” worldwide.

Remastered for mobile, the 20th Anniversary Edition features improved graphics rendering, full voice acting, a highly praised touch interface, high definition menus and loads of bonus material.
Please visit

for the video trailer.

The year is 1949 and you play Joe King, pilot for hire, tasked with flying famous movie starlet Faye Russell into the Amazon jungle for a photo shoot.
Unfortunately, things don’t go to plan and Joe finds himself stranded in the heart of the jungle where he must rescue a kidnapped princess, brave a dangerous temple, encounter fearsome Amazonian warriors, and uncover a mad scientist’s plan to take over the world!

It’s up to you to deal with the imminent threat of world domination … but be careful, or this may be the last Flight of the Amazon Queen!

“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since the game was released. The work MojoTouch has done is amazing, the game looks like it was made especially for a mobile device.” said John Passfield, designer and programmer of the original game.

“It’s exciting to bring this classic game, with revamped experience, to a whole new generation of fans.” said Liron Barzilai, producer and developer of the 20th Anniversary Edition.

Available on Apple’s App Store:
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1082321063
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d…ojotouch.fotaq
Amazon Appstore: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CKLBD84

The game features:
- A classic graphic adventure based on the much-loved LucasArts adventure games and the adventure films of the ‘40s
- Explore over 100 exotic locations and interact with over 40 wildly individual characters including, but not limited to, a tribe of Amazon women and 6-foot-tall pygmies
- Witty dialogues packed with sassy humor will make you laugh out loud
- FULL voice-acting including the talents of the famous British actress Penelope Keith, Actor William Hootkins who played Red Six(Jek Porkins) in Star Wars, Brad Lavelle, Tom Hill, Enn Reitel, Jon Coleman, Debbie Arnold and more!

20th Anniversary Edition features:
- Totally new, much praised, game play controls that were built from the ground up for touch-screens.
  *  Hotspot based - no more pixel hunting!
  *  All-new slick icons and animations.
  *  For more details, please see our tutorial video:

- A stunning new HD graphic mode that upscales the game beautifully to high-resolutions
- Completely new game menus and save/load system
- Music options: MT-32 or Original Adlib
- Optional retro settings: play with original graphics and even the original controls (mouse pointer)
- A lot of extras:
  * ‘The Making of’ booklet (35 pages)
  * Interview Mini-Game featurette with Commentary by Game Creator
  * Original US and EU manuals
  * The Official Playing Guide (97 pages)
- Multiple languages (ALL included without additional payment):
English voice acting, with the option for adding subtitles in English, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew
German voice acting with or without German subtitles
French voice acting with or without French subtitles

Download the press kit here:
http://mojo-touch.com/FOTAQ-PR_Kit.zip

Critics and fans quotes:
“A great game, that’ll give you hours of fun and leave you feeling good. We love it!”
-Mr. Bill’s Adventureland

“Walks on the fine line between Monkey Island and Indiana Jones without falling.”
“A well-executed adventure.”
- Leading MobyGames reviewers

The 20th Anniversary Edition produced and developed by
MojoTouch http://www.mojo-touch.com a professional software house for mobile world, founded in 2008 at Tel-Aviv, Israel by Liron Barzilai.
Licensed from Red Sprite Studios, http://www.redspritestudios.com - the original Australian-based game developer.
LucasArts, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and Star Wars are registered trademarks of Lucasfilm Ltd.

For further information on this release, please contact MojoTouch at: http://mojo-touch.com/contact/

Wow, for detailed scenes like in the first screenshot (and pretty much the rest of the game), the extremely heavy filtering really isn’t a good fit.
I can’t imagine anyone preferring it over the pixellated graphics. (Which I see are an option, at least)

That said, the original game’s an old favorite of mine - good to see it getting some attention.

Ah, here we go again… (See this and this.)

I urge MojoTouch to please stop making this smoothing filter the default setting. Not to mention advertising it as “HD” when what it actually does is destroy detail that was present in the original artwork, not add detail.

Making such a setting the default promotes ignorance and is disrespectful to the talented people who made the artwork for the original games. Until such time as MojoTouch makes the original graphics the default, I will continue to recommend that people not buy MojoTouch products and instead that they get the PC or Mac version of Flight of the Amazon Queen, which is available on GOG for free. Sure, you won’t be able to play the game on your iOS device, but at least you won’t be paying money to support the aforementioned promotion of ignorance.

If you have an Android device, you can also use the GOG version of the game in combination with ScummVM for Android to play the game legally and freely on your Android device (instructions here).

It must be great to be producer. Find any old game, slap on ScummVM HD filter and sell.
Where do I sign?

Save your money guys and get for free on GOG

Oh, and can we talk about the aspect ratio? The original art has a 16:10 resolution, but was meant to be displayed using non-square pixels; it was intended to be displayed at a 4:3 resolution. If you take the original art and display it using a current monitor, it will look squished.

And to make things worse, it looks like this “HD edition” squished the graphics even more to make it fit on the iPhone’s 16:9 screen. So art that was intended to have an aspect ratio of 1.33:

gets displayed with a 1.78 aspect ratio:

and ends up looking ridiculously wrong (weird filtering notwithstanding).

For fuck’s sake…

Thank you all for the kind and heart-warming words.

Although already written, let me summaries:

A. ‘Original graphics’ mode CAN EASILY BE SELECTED at any given time. The ‘High’ mode is the default just because it what most users want, as we have statistics (from our previous releases) that shows very small percentage of users select ‘Original Graphics’ mode. And also because it is preferred by the original creators of the game and also by us, the team that made the new ‘20th Anniversary Edition’.

We know it have disadvantages that some will consider major, but we don’t state the game have HD or Remastered graphics.
You can consider it as “The Special Edition” treatment for ‘Star Wars’ that many fans didn’t like (we too!) – but George Lucas did invent Star Wars, so he got to have a say
And unlike Star Wars releases, we are offering the Original graphics as well.

B. Although iPhones have modified aspect ratio, iPads doesn’t have this issue.
  But if enough users will let us know they like to have black bars at the sides of the screen – we will add this as a feature for future update. Please drop us a note at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with the subject “FOTAQ – I like to have Original AR on iPhone”.

C. I know some just like to write nasty comments, but anyway I like to state that we invested a lot in this new ‘20th Anniversary Edition’ and you can’t even compare it to the public ScummVM experience on mobile.
Even if you don’t like the scaling we use (which is not available at all with ScummVM), you can still enjoy the new highly praised touch interface, high definition menus, auto-save, multi-language support and loads of bonus material.

Will there be PC (Windows) version?

lirbar - 27 March 2016 03:18 AM

Thank you all for the kind and heart-warming words.

I won’t defend the swearing, but if we seem frustrated, it’s because in the past you and Sir^Knigget often responded with marketing speak and Sir^Knigget even claimed no detail was lost from the filter. Such responses often make it seem like we’re talking to stubborn walls.

But I acknowledge that you’ve taken harsh (though completely valid) criticism in these various threads, and so far you have not responded rudely. And I acknowledge that after we pointed out the problems with the fan-made so-called “enhanced” score to Simon the Sorceror, you came back several months later to let us know that you changed the default to be a recording of the original Roland MT-32 music. If that’s true, I appreciate that and will say thank you now, since I missed your comment back then in order to say thank you at the time.

lirbar - 27 March 2016 03:18 AM

A. ‘Original graphics’ mode CAN EASILY BE SELECTED at any given time. The ‘High’ mode is the default just because it what most users want, as we have statistics (from our previous releases) that shows very small percentage of users select ‘Original Graphics’ mode.

That is likely because of default bias, not because users necessarily prefer the look of the game with the smoothing filter turned on. Default bias is precisely why I object to your making a smoothing filter applied to the graphics the default setting, and it is why I call doing so the promotion of ignorance. You are in a position of responsibility where you determine whether most people will see the game as it was intended to look . . .  or not.

If you weren’t using this smoothing filter as the default, I think personally I at least would find it easier to be supportive of you re-releasing these games on iOS. It would be nice to be able to concentrate on the other features you mention. Instead, I think there’s a reason the filter has been the single recurring topic each time you have come here.

lirbar - 27 March 2016 03:18 AM

And also because it is preferred by the original creators of the game and also by us, the team that made the new ‘20th Anniversary Edition’.

I will take your word for it that the creators of the game that you have talked to “preferred” the smoothing filter, but I wonder if they are just humoring your apparent belief that you cannot successfully market an old adventure game to the mobile market so long as it has visible pixels in the screenshots, as if that were the main hindrance to sales and not the fact that this genre is niche.

Also, with all due respect to John Passfield whom you mentioned above, he is not credited with the art for Flight of the Amazon Queen, so he may not be the ideal person to be asking about what makes the game look best. Have you asked Steven Stamatiadis whether his actual, personal preference for how he wants the game to look is to have the smoothing filter turned on?

lirbar - 27 March 2016 03:18 AM

B. Although iPhones have modified aspect ratio, iPads doesn’t have this issue. But if enough users will let us know they like to have black bars at the sides of the screen – we will add this as a feature for future update.

Yes, for the same reason of presenting the game as it was intended to look, I think you should consider correcting the aspect ratio on iPhone. Preferably by default but at least as a secondary option. When it comes to this issue I can understand that the iPhone’s small screen is not ideal—old PC adventure games port better to tablets with larger screens to work with—but regardless of the challenges, the squished art you show now for iPhone looks bad. Black bars on the sides throughout the game might be better than the squishing, even granted the loss of some precious iPhone screen real estate.

Or if you really want to do the iPhone port right, you could add black bars to the sides of just the cutscenes, and then remove the persistent user interface elements during gameplay in favor of a radial menu so that the scene art would better fit the iPhone’s wide screen, a la Day of the Tentacle Remastered (ignore the graphics upgrade itself and just focus on what happens with the user interface and aspect ratio). I am well aware that this is not a simple request and would take programming effort, but porting value like that is what you are asking to be paid for, so I am just telling you what I as a customer look for in a good port to a mobile platform versus a bad port. You can decide if it’s worth it to you.

Hi All,

Thank you again for all the feedback - will take this into account for future updates.

The game is now available also on Android !

Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d…ojotouch.fotaq

Amazon Appstore:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CKLBD84