Her Interactive
Articles
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by Randy Sluganski |
Nancy Drew: A Retrospective |
What a long, strange trip it’s been. Not that anyone would confuse Jerry Garcia with Nancy Drew, but his tag-line seems more suited to the eternal teen-age sleuth who – for almost 75 years – has entertained more than four generations of fans.
While Nancy has conquered almost every medium imaginable from books to movies to television, our concern here is with the Nancy Drew computer games phenomena.
Her Interactive – the developer of the Nancy Drew games – may just be a small blip on the maps of Bellvue, Washington, but in the adventure – and now the mainstream – gaming community, but Her Interactive has had a large influence on gaming habits.
This company’s name has become synonymous with dependability as hungry gamers look forward – and are never disappointed – to two new Nancy Drew games every year. Even more remarkable is that each game is progressively better than the previous. This commitment to excellence can be attributed to Her Interactive CEO Megan Gaiser whose never-ending devotion to creating intelligent games for women gamers has finally – and rightfully so – thrust her in the spotlight.
What is most amazing though is that both the image and the mental picture we have of Nancy Drew has remained almost unchanged for almost eighty years. Sure, her methods of deduction have been somewhat modernized as she now uses computers and cell phones to help obtain information, but she still searches for clues the old-fashioned way by exploration and questioning of suspects. But it is that image, that silhouette of Nancy slightly stooped over peering through a magnifying glass that is most instantly recognizable to not only daughter and mother alike, but also an elder generation of grandparents.
So what began as a computer game series designed for girls ages 11 and up, is now a cultural phenomena that attracts both male and female, young and old with sales that total close to 1.5 million.
While there are numerous excellent web sites devoted to Nancy’s litany of books and other memorabilia, we’ll be delving into her history of adventure games that begins with…
