I have a gigantic heap of unplayed games in my bedroom closet, and
since I was out of newer games, I started digging through the older ones and came
across Koala Lumpur. My good game-choosing instincts must have completely
failed me that day because out of the great heaps of classics, this is the one
I picked. Hating it almost from the get-go but ever the intrepid adventurer, I
decided to see it through to the bitter end just so I could review it for you,
our dear readers.

The story starts out with Koala Lumpur (who is, you guessed
it, a koala) (but I bet you didn’t guess he’s a Buddhist bear in a purple fez)
seeking enlightenment. He finds a piece of a scroll, and by reading it comes frighteningly
and perilously close to unleashing the greatest of evils (which is trapped behind
a gigantic door) on the world. The greatest good, behind a door on the other side
of the corridor, tells Koala he must find the rest of the scroll and put it back
together to prevent the evil’s escape and attain enlightenment for himself. She
presents him with a familiar to aid him in his quest–you play as that familiar,
a common housefly that doubles as the cursor. In seeking the scroll pieces, your
first stop is the home of a genius Dingo (who is, you guessed it, a dog) (but
I bet you didn’t guess he’s an inventor who wears an explorer outfit, complete
with pith helmet). He turns out to be trapped in the refrigerator that doubles
as a safe, and your first task is to get him out. From there, you travel to the
land of lost dogs, ruled by a green wooden puppet, Dingo’s old girlfriend’s house
(she is a tiger with a woman’s body dressed in a white bunny suit), and the spaceship
of a six-year-old girl genius who captures the fly, Dingo, and Koala to keep as
playmates. One or more scroll pieces are found in each of the four locations.
Is any of this making any sense? I thought not. Believe it or not, though, that’s
the way the story goes, and there is never any justification for any of the strange
elements of the plot–they just come out of the blue. The plot was just pure gobbledegook,
and I give it an F.

The interface is fairly easy because you,
the player, are both fly and cursor. You just click on whatever you want to interact
with, and with your amazing insect muscles, you can lift some pretty gigantic
items. Whatever you can’t handle, Koala zaps into submission with a sort of a
magic dingleberry that sits atop his fez. Koala’s fez also doubles as the inventory
storage area, so when you pick something up that you need to save for later, you
click it on the fez, and you click on the fez again to retrieve something. The
puzzles, however, are another story: they range from ridiculously easy to incomprehensible
(I was going to say they range from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there really
weren’t any sublime ones). In the dog/puppet world, the main puzzle involves navigating
a maze (my second-least favorite kind of puzzle, sliding-tile puzzles being my
least favorite). In the tiger/bunny world, the main puzzle comprises answering
questions with the right responses to please the tiger/bunny, who is also a psychoanalyst.
And last but not least, the main puzzle in the six-year-old genius space nut girl
is to free your ship from some tractor beams, which entails the absolute most
hideous arcade sequence I’ve ever encountered in any adventure game–you must
traverse not one, not two, but three tunnels while avoiding laser beams that zap
you back to the beginning if they hit you. Discovering these so near the end of
the game was sheer misery (I truly, from the bottom of my heart, detest arcade
sequences in adventure games), and they almost stopped me dead about a month ago.
I thought I could probably complete one of them, but then to be faced with two
more after that, well, just the thought was agonizing. However, a couple of days
ago, I got a brilliant flash of insight and searched the Internet for cheat codes
(you know how in some games, you can just type a word or number to skip a puzzle
that you don’t want to do?). There were no cheat codes, but one fellow had written
a walkthrough that gave great strategies for completing each of the three stupid
tunnel puzzles, so I followed his advice. Lucky you, dear readers, because I was
then able to complete the game and thus my review, and now you can profit from
my experience and not bother with this game. Not a one of the puzzles made much
sense, and there were the tunnels and the maze, so I give this category an
F also.

The graphics weren’t bad. They were your standard, run-of-the-mill
cartoon animations. The colors were rich, the backgrounds were fairly well-drawn.
The cut scenes, and there were a lot of them, clashed in style with the game-playing
part of the graphics–they sometimes looked as if they were drawn with colored
pencils. Even considering this, my only real gripe with regard to the graphics
was that, while the copyright date is 1997, you must switch your monitor to 256
colors before Koala Lumpur will even launch. Graphics get a C.

The
music was also run-of-the-mill, but the voice acting was simply horrid. Koala
Lumpur sounded like a stereotypical, no, that’s not the word I’m looking for …
a caricature of an East Indian gentleman, what was once known as a wog
in the days of British Empiricism. I am a not very politically correct, middle-aged
white woman, and even I was slightly offended. The Dingo Dog actor affected an
Australian accent (dingos … Australia … get it?) that was also grossly exaggerated.
The actors were all too loud, due more to bombastic attitude than actual volume.
But I saved the worst for last: you are a fly, and what do flies do? Why, buzz,
of course. Incessantly. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam. Why was there no fly swatter
for Koala to do away with his pesky little friend? From time to time, I thought
I had swimmer’s ear–I must have used about 50 Q-tips over the course of this
game, to no avail, of course, and sometimes when I went to bed, I dreamed about
buzzing. Partly because of the bigotry but mainly due to the buzzing, I give
this category an F.

Overall, this is one game I can’t in good conscience
recommend to anyone. My final grade is an F-.