The State of Adventure Gaming

By Randy
Sluganski
May 1999

Pamela Anderson Lee

I recently
read in an article in the Wall Street Journal that there are more searches
done on the Internet every day for material (pictures?) of Pamela Anderson Lee
(Baywatch, Barb Wire) than any other topic on the World Wide Web. She is
mentioned on or the subject of over 150,000 web sites and is the object of over
9,000 queries a day! Some businesses have even injected Pamela Anderson Lee’s
name on their sites just so their company name will come up during a search. We
at Just Adventure wanted to assure you, our dear reader, that we would never stoop
so low as to gratuitously include Pamela Anderson Lee’s name on our site solely
for the reason of acquiring more hits. Rest assured that our higher moral standards
and commitment to adventure gamers worldwide would prohibit us from ever abusing
the name of Pamela Anderson Lee in such a despicable fashion. Our heartfelt apologies
go out to Pamela Anderson Lee for the misuse that her name, Pamela Anderson Lee,
seems to encourage among those with little or no principles.

Is Anybody
Listening Out There?

A fellow co-worker (yes, I do have a full time
job) asked me if I had ever played Silent Hill. A few hours later, after
I had modestly explained to her that I was the editor of the most prestigious
adventure site in the world and she had begged to read my review of Silent
Hill, she asked me why there were not more of those “adventure type,
puzzle games” on the Playstation. Seems she does not own a computer, but
she and some of her friends would love to have more adventure games to play on
their consoles. Are you listening, Sony and Sega? There is a whole market out
there that you are ignoring! Why, I would guess that even Pamela Anderson Lee
would love to have more adventure games to choose from on the Playstation and
Dreamcast.

E3 Diaries

Yes, starting next week my infamous E3
Diaries will return! You can be privy to my innermost secret thoughts as I explore
the dark side of the convention in search of the elusive adventure game. JA will
also have a live link (courtesy of our friends at Eidos) to the show, so you may
even see me wandering around in search of free food. (If you see someone who looks
like Fabio, well, that is not me–I will be the guy standing next to him with
the glasses and graying hair). I promise you that we will have more exclusive
and updated information on new adventure releases then any other site on the web
or my name is not Pamela Anderson Lee, oops, Randy Sluganski. Be here later this
week and I may even let a few facts slip about our exclusive E3 contest.

Hard
Drive in Need of Viagra?

Just so you don’t think that the staff of JA
is getting lazy, I experienced a hard drive crash on one of my computers that
wiped out three reviews I was working on, an interview, and my saves on four games
in progress, not to mention all of my contacts and personal emails I had received.
If I did not respond to an email you sent me from April 18 to April 26, rest assured
it is nothing personal. Everything is now back up to speed and we will be once
again updating the site on a daily basis during the weekdays.

With a
Little Help from My Friends

I just wanted to give some unsolicited plugs
to the other adventure sites on the Internet that are helping to keep the adventure
genre alive whilst the embers burn low (and, no, Pamela Anderson Lee is not making
me do this!). These are people who, like the JA staff, love adventure games and
are not afraid to voice their opinions. Over at Quandary, edited by Rosemary Young and Gordon Aplin, there is
always an interesting read by our friends from “down under.” Quandary
has been around since 1995, and Rosemary and Gordon’s love for the adventure genre
shines through. Adventure
Review, edited by Philip Jong (aka Doogie Howser), is another excellent site
for adventure gamers. How Philip, who is a fourth-year medical resident at the
University of Toronto, finds time to edit a site devoted to adventure games and
anthologies is beyond me, but his effort makes a heart warm. Over at Interactive Fiction, Stephen Granade always has more than enough
insights and interesting reading to keep you interested for hours. Lovers of both
text and graphic adventures are welcome. Finally, over at Games Domain, Barak
Engel and Steve Metzler keep the rooms at the Traveller’s Inn occupied with their excellent updates of all
things adventure and RPG. The above sites are not the only adventure-related sites
on the Internet, but they are the best.

Wishy-Washy

Someone
on the staff recently asked me why JA seems to receive letters that basically
say, “JA sucks.” There is never any coherent explanation as to why and
what we suck (please do not insert any Pamela Anderson Lee jokes here). After
assuring the staff member that for every negative letter we receive at least 10
positive emails and after theorizing that 14-year-old, prepubescent boys should
not be permitted to surf the Internet without adult supervision, I offered the
following: take a look at our editorials. They are chock full of opinion. We take
sides. Now go to some other sites: they are wishy-washy. Their major bone of contention
is that genre-crossing may be evil or that companies that release games that need
patches are bad or some such drivel. We don’t expect everyone to agree with our
opinions, but we do hope to encourage intelligent conversation. Someone actually
refused to write for us because we are controversial and publishers and distributors
read the site and may get the wrong idea! Whoa, is this person a future PR shill
or what? In fact, this person’s attitude is exactly what is wrong with the computer
gaming industry as a whole.

Well, that’s if for this month. Not much new
on the adventure front, but be here next week for our E3 updates!