It took me a mere thirty minutes to find Revistronic at the E3 as
I walked right past them at least four times until, finally, I stopped
and asked someone the location of the Revistronic booth and was pointed
to an area not six feet from where I was standing (most likely the
reason I dislike mazes in games so much is because in real life I
have absolutely no sense of direction).

If I could pinpoint a
specific time that the E3 turned from work to fun for me this year,
it would be my meeting with Revistronic
as they were truly some ‘wild and crazy guys’ and their
approach translates nicely to The Westerner.

I met with the Madrid
team of Pablo Martin (Revistronic Chief of Operations), Oliver
Mendez (Planeta Deagostini Press Communication)
and Hernan Castillo the talented creator of The
Westerner. Hernan
understood very little English and I understood very little Spanish,
but you never would have known from the way we were both laughing
and enjoying each other’s company.

These are people with
long memories (Yes, Randy, we remember you, you are the one who
gave 3 Skulls of the Toltecs a grade of C- and
complained of ‘slipshod writing’ and ‘flat jokes’).

3 Skulls of the
Toltecs (the prequel to The
Westerner) was never released in North America
as numerous publishers believed that American
gamers would be offended by video game images of drunken Indians
(It’s nice to know that these publishers are doing such a wonderful
job of protecting our morals; its now more socially acceptable to
blow someone’s head to smithereens in a fragfest than it is
to face the dilemma of mistakenly judging an entire nationality by
an exaggerated cartoon game image).

The Westerner is a sequel to 3
Skulls of the Toltecs a 2D cartoon, Western adventure released in 1996. It starred Fenimore
Fillmore, a fumbling, happy-go-lucky cowboy whose aim with a six-shooter
leaves observers ducking for cover. When I asked Hernan why after
seven years he had finally created a sequel to 3 Skulls of
the Toltecs – instead of feeding me a bunch of artistic integrity hoo-ha – he
instead slowly rubbed his fingers together indicating the universal
sign for money. You gotta love his honesty!

Hernan must be planning on keeping his coffers bursting, as he was
kind enough to provide Just Adventure with the exclusive information
that a sequel to The Westerner is already in development and will
be titled Wanted: Fenimore Fillmore. He also informed us that he
is well aware of the astronomical rates that a boxed copy of the
original 3 Skulls of the Toltecs fetches on Ebay and he has been
known to sell a few from his private stash to raise some capital.

In our review of the Spanish
version of The Westerner,
we complained that the game’s biggest obstacle was not the
puzzles but the ‘bugs’ and we are glad to report that
Revistronic claims that the ‘bug’ problem has been cleaned-up.
We are also glad to report that over 100,000 copies of The Westerner have already been sold in Europe.

The English demo we have
of the game is not the full version, but is more than enough to
get a taste of what to expect. The 3D graphics
are very reminiscent of Lucas Arts, sort of a Monkey Island in the
Old West. The colors seem to burst from the screen and there are
some wonderful shading and sun effects present. The mouse-controlled
interface is the basic ‘walk’, ‘speak’, ‘look’, ‘use’,
etc., but you will also be able to ride a horse, draw your six-shooter
and even drink a sarsaparilla. The game is played from a 3rd-person
perspective, but you always have the option to allow Fenimore to
examine his surroundings from a first-person point-of-view.

While many of the locations are stereotypical of the old West, the
situations Fenimore often finds himself in are not as he will not
only compete with a crazy gunfighter robot, but will also need to
break into a nursery school to get his stolen six-shooter back from
an underage thief. In the interim, Fenimore is faced with the daunting
task of sauntering through a rough-and-tumble town armed only with
two toy guns. If there is one thing that The Westerner has plenty
of its enough humor to fill a ten-gallon hat.

Revistronic has taken great care to ensure that The
Westerner can
be enjoyed by all adventure gamers regardless of the age of their
system thanks to a process named PICTuRE. PICTuRE can simultaneously
draw more than 150,000 polygons on the screen and reproduces facial
expressions identical to the ones in 3D cartoons. What this means
to the average consumer is that The Westerner can be played on a
Pentium II 500Mhz system with only a 16 MB accelerated graphics card.
Pretty impressive!

There is though still
one obstacle to your playing The Westerner;
thanks to the cancellation of Sam
n Max 2
combined with the low sales figures of ‘cartoony’ games
like Runaway and
Tony Tough and the Night of the Roasted Moths,
many North American publishers are now hesitant to take a chance
on this wonderful game. Still, I have no doubts that eventually we
will see this game in North America and when that day arrives, then
kiss your horse goodbye and load your revolver with blanks because
The Westerner will be riding into town and he’ll be aiming
for your funny bone.