Review Plan 9 From Outer Space Developer: Gremlin Interactive Limited Publisher: Konami Corporation Genre: Adventure Release Date: 1992 Platform: Retro Review by Randy Sluganski April 29, 2005		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Greetings my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives . . . playing games. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown…

As any aficionado of cheesy horror films is aware, the above is taken (albeit, with one small alteration) from the opening monologue of Ed Wood’s classic Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Is Plan 9 From Outer Space still the best-worst movie of all-time forty-six years after its release? Yes, yes it is. Sure there have been worse movies, but Plan 9 was an honest and genuine attempt to make a serious movie and failed miserably. Many of you are aware of its now ‘famous’ scenes: a night chase turns to day and then back to night again, a hubcap on a string doubles as a flying saucer and cardboard tombstones are blown over by breezes. And the dialogue…it is Shakespearean in it’s grandiose awfulness.

While a game based on the movie would probably be loopy, the developers – Gremlin Interactive – an Irish company that later developed Normality and the now-classic Realms of the Haunting among others - smartly decided to go a different route. The plot is based on the premise that Bela Lugosi’s double has stolen the original Plan 9 35mm film reels with the intention of inserting himself into extra scenes and - shades of Ted Turner! - colorizing the film (In reality, Bela Lugosi passed away during early filming and a double – Tom Mason who bore no physical resemblance at all to Lugosi and was a dentist in real life – filled in for almost all of his scenes). As the movie studio’s Private Detective, you must now travel around the world in search of the six missing reels and then actually screen the film frame-by-frame to ensure that Lugosi’s scenes have been left intact.

If this all sounds like a hoot, well, it is and it isn’t. While at times amusing and clever, Plan 9’s appeal relies too heavily on tongue-in-cheek humor – such as placing Tor Johnson in different occupations - that only makes sense if you have seen the movie and are familiar with its history. It’s biggest fault though is something that is common to many games of this period – there is an endless amount of backtracking that only serves to make the game more frustrating and boring and which serves to disguise what would otherwise be a very short game.

Released in 1992, the first obstacle you face after loading the game is the dreaded copy protection. Woe to you, if you’ve misplaced the instruction booklet, for you cannot begin unless you first enter the exact word from a specific page, paragraph and line of the instruction booklet.

Now Plan 9 From Outer Space is, like Dracula Unleashed, one of those games that has taken me over a decade to finally complete. Not that the game is especially difficult mind you, but the graphics can be so pixilated or jagged that it is difficult to identify small objects and if you don’t run your cursor over the exact pixel while you have examine highlighted in your menu then you are doomed to endless searching. For the most part, the graphics are very colorful and detailed, but it seemed that whenever there was something of importance to find, that particular object would be hidden in a jagged blur.

But, in the case of Plan 9, my difficulty in getting past the first few screens was because I never once thought to examine the desk in the producer’s office. And why would I, when you looked at the desk all it said was desk, why would anyone believe that there was a drawer in the desk that held the key to the screening room unless the look feature gave me some sort of clue. And back in those days, I would never, ever think of using a walkthrough - never! But now, I am old(er), time is growing short and I figure its about time I finished some of these games that have been cluttering my office for the past 10+ years.

Gameplay is your basic inventory-based and the interface allows you to create commands from a list of verbs such as Hit, Use, Drop, Talk, etc. The puzzles for the most part are fair, but there are a few that can be real head-scratchers. For example, there is a reel of film hidden in a cave in Rio de Janeiro guarded by vampire bats and the only way to get rid of the bats is to give them a photograph of their beloved hero, Bela Lugosi. The problem with this puzzle - besides its silliness - is that unless you have found the Lugosi photograph earlier (and due to jagged graphics, it is difficult to identify) there is no clue as to how to be rid of the bats and, if you did find the photograph but didn’t add it to your inventory, you must now backtrack through a time consuming sequence to retrieve the photograph from a house in Hollywood and then return to the cave. But even if you have the photograph in your inventory and can’t figure out the solution, it is simply a matter of solving it by trial-and-error by clicking everything in your inventory on the bats until the puzzle is solved (not that this is how I solved the puzzle, mind you, my advanced intellect, sharpened by years of adventure gaming led me to an immediate solution :) ).

Another frustrating obstacle - and also one of the main problem with some of these classic adventure games - is that if you make one misstep and have forgotten to save, then you are basically screwed.

In Plan 9, for example, if you drop any of the rolls of film from your inventory or, as I did, the key to the screening room thinking it will reappear at its original location (as it is so stated in the instruction booklet!) well, you better hope you followed the ‘save often’ mantra for you are then unable to continue your game and must restore from a previous save point.

But the most frustrating - but also most innovative – part of the game is at the very end when you must use a VCR-type machine to view actual scenes from the movie and restore them frame-by-frame. Kudos though to the developers for including such a complicated sequence in a DOS game.

Still, there is a lot of fun to be had from this game. From robbing Bela Lugosi’s grave to running with hippies, the developers have imbued the game with a sense of adventure and humor and as an added bonus, U.K. copies of the game were packaged with a videotape of the classic ‘B’ movie.

I wish I could tell you this was a great game. Heck, I wish even more that I could tell you this is a horrible game that is fun to play, but after all is said it just balances out to be an average adventure game representative of the early 1990’s.

Finally, if you are, like myself, an aficionado of vintage games, then you will be thrilled to learn that like new copies of Plan 9 From Outer Space can be purchased from Eli’s Software Encyclopedia and his amazing warehouse in Scranton, PA.

Final Grade: C+
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