A pleasant surprise a
few years back, Tony
Tough & The Night
of Roasted Moths was a laugh-out-loud cartoon adventure
that paid homage to the early Lucas Arts classics. But, truth-be-told,
even though the game received rave reviews from websites and magazines
alike, it just did not sell. But thankfully Tony’s back and
this time he has gone retro in more ways than one.

Tony Tough
in a Rake’s Progress is a prequel to the first
game as we help a 13 year-old Tony solve his very first case. The
game follows one day in the life of Tony as he investigates alien-landings
and ancient Indian-cultures in his hometown of Washington, New Mexico
during the early 1950’s.

But the graphics are also retro, for though they have progressed
from 2D to striking 3D characters, the high-resolution graphics are
presented in an Art Deco-style that pays tribute to the American
small-town paintings of Edward
Hopper and it works for the graphics
alone are reason to purchase this game.

Thanks to Christopher
Kellner, the International PR Manager for German publisher dtp (Digital Tainment Pool), I had the pleasure
of playing a lengthy portion of the game and, largely due to the
talents of Stefano Gualeni, Tony has lost none of his charm. If anything,
he is funnier than ever, though the sometimes “smart-ass” humor
coming from young kids may be off-putting to some.

The prequel is again a point-and-click interface with inventory
objects, but now we have real-time shadows and lightening effects,
real-time weather changes and lots of interactive objects. The developers
are promising over 30 rendered locations and over 20 characters,
most of whom, you can be sure, will be slightly eccentric.

The developers, who are
Italian, have done a wonderful job of recreating a 1950’s look and feel. Now they just need to find a North
American publisher (dtp holds the worldwide rights to the game),
but that shouldn’t be a problem, as Tony seemed to make quite
an impression on the publishers I spoke to at the E3.

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