As the resident reviewer of historical adventures (often referred to
as edutainment games) at JA+, it seemed appropriate that I would be selected to
play a new interactive, sea-faring adventure/edutainment game entitled Search
for the Golden Dolphin.

Search for the Golden Dolphin was produced
and published by Cinegram Media, Summit, New Jersey, in association with Mystic
Seaport–The Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic, Connecticut, which coincidentally
is only about one hour’s drive from my home and well worth the trip.

Since
this game is most definitely an edutainment game, it is important to note that
valuable support and nautical accuracy was also provided by Peter Stanford, president
of the National Maritime Historical Society and Richard Bailey, Captain of HMS
Rose, a replica of a 1750s era British light frigate.

Search for
the Golden Dolphin is the latest addition to Cinegram’s Digital Treasures
series of CD-ROMs that have previously focused not only on great maritime history
and adventures of life at sea (such as The Amistad Incident, Tall Ships, and
Romancing the Wind), but also great American art, as represented by their
earlier release of the CD-ROM, Norman Rockwell: The Man and His Art.

It’s
always interesting to read what the creators of an adventure game intended when
they developed a game and, I think, it is especially of interest when the game
is edutainment. Hal Denstman, president of Cinegram, was the creative force behind
the idea of making this game, and Fred Van Lente wrote the script. Here is some
of what these gentlemen had to say about the development of Search for the
Golden Dolphin.

“Despite some cannon fire and skirmishes at sea,
we’ve gone to great lengths to stress intellectual stimulation over the CD-ROM
shoot-em-up game approach,” states Denstman. “The challenges presented
in Search for the Golden Dolphin require imagination and the ability to
be innovative, not mindlessly clicking a mouse to eliminate the bad guys. And
we created exciting 3-D environments for our protagonist to dwell in; scenes that
evoke, with incredible accuracy, the life and times aboard the awesome 18th century
wooden combat ships. We’ve also included a comprehensive resource section and
historical time-line to aid the participant in solving the mystery of the Golden
Dolphin while learning more about this epic period in history.”

Van
Lente explains that “the first-person aspect in the creation of Nathaniel
Thorne as hero, protagonist and avatar of Search for the Golden Dolphin affords
an ideal multi-media environment for presenting the epic saga of Thorne and relating
his challenges to find the elusive privateer vessel. There’s lots of opportunity
for character development and the creation of wonderful mind-games that lend vitality
to this work.”

Now that we have an inkling of what the developers set
out to accomplish, let’s unveil the story of the Golden Dolphin and find
out if they were successful.

The Story’s the Thing

It’s the
Caribbean in 1799, and you assume the role of Nathaniel Thorne, Lieutenant in
the infant United States Navy aboard the U.S. frigate Declaration at a
time when America and France are locked in naval struggles for control of the
West Indies. In addition, pirates prowl these islands, stalking unwary merchant
ships, and all that stands between these privateers and their plunder are the
ships of the U.S. Navy.

Nathaniel was born into a sea-faring family with
strong convictions and traditions, but he is now confronted with the news that
his father, a naval officer, has been captured by the French and is dying on an
enemy prison ship. Your mother gives you a medallion, the Thorne medallion, which
she explains has a mysterious link to nautical secrets that will help you achieve
great heights in your career at sea. The medallion is actually your link in the
game to the Chart Room, which will be explained later.

Given the circumstances
of your father’s plight and your mother’s pleas, there is little choice but to
enlist in the Navy and begin your adventure. You soon learn that your father’s
capture and probable death are the result of the traitorous activities of one
Nehemiah Marks, who became a nemesis for the U.S. Navy when he sold out to the
French. Every thought and action must be directed toward bringing Marks to justice.

From
your first meeting with the dying commodore of the USS Declaration, a U.S.
Navy fighting frigate, you are presented with increasingly difficult assignments
and challenges that will determine your future as a naval officer, impact greatly
on the success of the U.S. Navy’s encounters with the French navy, and ultimately
lead to a long-awaited confrontation with your father’s traitorous opponent, Nehemiah
Marks.

The story is told in eight chapters, brimming with conflict and
cunning encounters that are fought with courage, skill, and cannon throughout
the islands of the West Indies. When you learn that Nehemiah Marks has taken control
of the USS Golden Dolphin, which was your father’s command, you embark
upon a deadly game of nautical cat-and-mouse as you attempt to locate and recapture
the Golden Dolphin.

To recover the Golden Dolphin and reach
your passionate and determined objective of settling the score with Marks, you
will have to master complex sailing skills, solve clever puzzles, and interact
with a variety of unusual salty characters. Only by virtue of your success in
accomplishing the tasks assigned to you by your commanders will you progress through
the ranks from Lieutenant to Captain and gain the experience necessary for your
ultimate face-to-face meeting with Marks and the long-awaited satisfaction of
requital.

So … shiver me timbers, matey. Gather your sea legs under you,
get ready to cast off, unfurl the sails, prime the cannons, sharpen your wits,
and embark on an “edutaining” nautical adventure.

The storyline
kept me involved and interested throughout. The characters were realistic, well-portrayed,
and believable. I enjoyed the progression of the story and found it to be very
well written. If I had to categorize this game, I would place it more as a strategy/adventure
game rather than a traditional adventure game. Nonetheless, the story deserves
an A.

The Gameplay

The game is played from the first-person
perspective and uses the familiar point-and-click interface to find hot spots,
where the mouse pointer will change shape and thus indicate what kind of activity
can be accomplished. The mouse shapes and activities include:

• Compass–indicates
  direction of movement;
• Medallion–your connection to the Chart Room (documentation
  and resources);
• Mouth Bubble–speak to a character;
• Open Hand–take
  or manipulate an object; and
• Closed Hand–use an object. Objects can be
  used with other objects on the main view screen.

The navigation bar,
which appears at the bottom of the view screen, can be readily accessed or hidden
away, as desired. It contains all of the important tools you’ll need to proceed
with the game. These include the Thorne Medallion, which will send you directly
to the Chart Room; the Captain’s Log, which is Thorne’s personal journal of events
and thoughts; the inventory window, which holds your inventory items (you need
to be choosy, because there are only three inventory slots); the menu button,
which takes you to the main menu; the help button, which explains the game functions
(in case you forget?); and the down button, which hides away the navigation bar
and opens up the maximum view for the game screen.

The Chart Room contains
all of the historical, scientific, and geographic information that you will need
to progress through and complete the adventure. There are several buttons that
are available and will open up encyclopedic listings of not only information crucial
to the gameplay but also, for those whose interest has been aroused, resource
information, chronological listings of dates and events from the early days of
the U.S. Navy, an accurate, authentic ship “walk-through” of an 18th
century Navy man-of-war, and other reference listings for related books, movies,
and places to visit.

When starting a new game or returning to the game,
you will find the main menu, which provides the player with the following choices:
continue game, new game, load previous game, save, Chart Room, web link to Cinegram,
credits, help, options for volume of music, sound effects and speech, and quit
game.

Overall, the game interface is controlled primarily by left-clicking
the mouse and moving around the screen, which should be comfortable for any adventure
gamer, and there were no bugs, so I am giving gameplay a rating of A.

The
Graphics

Search for the Golden Dolphin’s designers have used
beautifully detailed 3D renderings to reveal the inner architecture of these early
naval warships. Indeed, you will get to explore five fully rendered, 3D tall ships,
each with unique layouts and features. These ships were modeled from the original
plans of the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides), HMS Victory, LaArmistad
(a Baltimore clipper ship), and the British frigate HMS Rose, so the
authenticity is marvelous to behold as you wander around each ship.

More
than 1,700 locations are presented in 3D, which really means that they are 3D
pictures on the screen. Supplementing these pictures are more than 50 animation
sequences, which mostly are used to feature the action portions of the game (i.e.,
cannon fire, sails flapping, explosions, fires, etc.).

In addition, there
are over 100 full-motion video (FMV) segments in the game, which are used whenever
you need to speak to another character. Interestingly, you are never able to see
an FMV character while you are walking around the ships, but you are able to see
the 3D rendered characters who are part of the still pictures and have no interaction
capabilities. As a result, you simply come upon these FMV characters, who appear
out of nowhere to your great surprise. You are therefore frequently hunting for
characters to interact with as often as you are looking for inventory objects.
Very curious. To complicate this visual/graphical phenomenon even more, as you
traverse a ship’s deck or a room, your ability/inability to see or engage an FMV
character is dependent upon which direction you were approaching from. In other
words, if you walked across a deck from, say, port to starboard, you wouldn’t
see/encounter anyone, but if you immediately turned around, an FMV character would
“load in” and appear out of the thin air (so to speak). I found this
feature to be a bit unnerving and would rather have seen a still-life character
(that I could see) change into an FMV character for interactive purposes.

There
were also numerous times while exploring the ships when I could literally walk
through walls or furniture. This is another unrealistic graphical presentation
that needs to be fixed by Cinegram, if they are inclined to develop a sequel or
another sea-faring adventure game.

The graphical attention to detail in
the recreation of the naval ships is obviously very authentic and well-done, but
the presentation of the FMV characters and the ability to walk through walls did
not measure up to today’s game standards (at least for me), so I have reduced
my rating somewhat and given the graphics a score of B.

The Music,
Sound Effects, and Voice Acting

The background music for Search for
the Golden Dolphin consists of original compositions that seem very suitable
for this unique period in U.S. naval history. The music is soothing when it needs
to be and up-tempo at times that call for the blood to race a little more quickly
through one’s veins. I liked having the ability to lower the volume of the music,
when I needed to, in order to more clearly hear the speaking of the FMV characters,
who sometimes were hard to hear/understand, given that they were often speaking
with French or English accents. Subtitles would have been welcome, but that option
was not available in this game.

The strongest part of this game category
was the sound effects. Whether it be the cannon fire, explosions from direct hits
on enemy (or your own) vessels, flapping flags, or surging oceans, the sound effects
were wonderful.

The more-than-100 FMV segments in the game feature “professional,
historic re-enactors” who are obviously at ease with the acting requirements
for this sort of game. The body movements and voice acting as a whole are very
well-done, and other than some out-of-phase lip-synchronization, this part of
the game is among its highlights.

The aural presentations for Search
for the Golden Dolphin always complement the progression of the game and are,
for the most part, very pleasing and never intrusive. So, for these reasons, I
feel that the music, sound effects, and voice acting deserve an A-.

The
Puzzles

With but one exception that I will get to shortly, the puzzles
in this game are very well-designed, challenging, and effectively integrated into
the progression requirements of the story.

Often, you will need to access
the Chart Room in order to research the documentation for clues on how to accomplish
the nautical puzzles, because they are based on performing activities or functions
that require knowledge of how it would have been done on an 18th-century sailing
vessel. You will truly enjoy the thrill of learning how to set a course using
charts, select the proper signal flags used for inter-ship communication based
on a code system, use an “octant” (an 18th-century predecessor of the
sextant) to set a course that will avoid detection, and determine the proper way
to load a cannon without blowing up your own ship.

Of course, there is also
an array of inventory-based puzzles to challenge the player, including how to
get provisions for your ship and how to raise money that is needed to pay for
information that is vital to your quest of finding the location of the Golden
Dolphin.

Now, it’s time to reveal that this game contains, as its final
puzzle (the one that you need to accomplish in order to finish the game), the
cursed timed puzzle. I mean … after you have used all of your cerebral processes
to the utmost to proceed through a series of sequential, mind-bending challenges
and arrived at the climax and conclusion of the story, where retribution is about
to be handed out, you are confronted with an abominable timed puzzle. Maybe it’s
just me, but I abhor timed puzzles. They just through me into a tizzy, frustration
sets in, and all the enjoyment of the challenges in a game goes fleetingly away.
Boo … boo!

The introduction of the timed puzzle came close to totally
ruining the game for me, because I never could get past the time allotted for
transporting my leaking bucket of water and, therefore, was unable to finish the
game. If it weren’t for the wonderfully conceived puzzles that preceded it, I
would have been totally overcome by disappointment and negativity. In the hope
that Cinegram may think twice about ever again inserting the dreaded timed puzzle
into a game, I am presenting the puzzles with a rating of C.

Final
Grade: B+

In retrospect, I mostly enjoyed Search for the Golden Dolphin
(except for my disappointment at the end). Cinegram Media is to be commended
for the excellence of its game development efforts and for recognizing that some
of us gamers like adventure games in general and appreciate historical edutainment
games in particular. The strengths of the game definitely outweigh the weaknesses,
so I can say, without hesitation, that there was a substantial level of enjoyment
for me in playing Search for the Golden Dolphin.

As a first venture
into the interactive adventure game genre, this is a noteworthy, if slightly qualified,
success (in my opinion), so I would encourage Cinegram to make more historical
“edutainment” adventures in the future. Who knows, they could become
a sort of American version of Cryo.

Search for the Golden Dolphin may
be further evaluated for consideration to purchase and ordered at Cinegram’s
website.

System Requirements:

PC:
Windows 95/98
Pentium 166 (minimum)

120-150 MB
32 MB RAM
16-bit with 2 MB RAM
4X CD-ROM drive (minimum)

100%Sound Blaster

Macintosh:
System 7.1
or higher
Power PC 120
120-150 MB
32 MB RAM
16-bit
4X CD-ROM
drive (minimum)
16-bit audio