Simon the Sorcerer

The Good
Simon is often placed in situations that many younger gamers would surely find humorous: bellying up to a bar, uttering minor cuss words, or sassing elders, but adults also will not be able to suppress a chuckle or two at the numerous double entendres and political snipes (though the Dan Quayle joke is a bit dated). Simon is a 12-year-old boy who wants nothing more than a Gameboy for his birthday. Instead, a stray dog with a strange book in its mouth shows up at the front door during his birthday party. Simon's parents don't have the heart to tell him that the dog is not a birthday present and allow him to keep it as a pet. The book is forgotten in the attic. Much later (as we see in a wonderful opening scene), Chippy (for that is now the dog's name) discovers the trunk in the attic that contains the book, and Simon is soon thrust into a world of fantasy and magic sporting the required raiment of all magicians, a ponytail and a pointy hat. What follows is a mix of Fractured Fairy Tales meets Monty Python as Simon must rescue Calypso the wizard, the only person with the power to return Simon to his home world, from the clutches of soon-to-be arch-nemesis Sordid. This game contains much of the one-liners and juvenility so familiar to fans of the Monkey Island series. In the few instances where the characters are fleshed out, it is more because their personalities are developed through extended give-and-take with Simon. In the tradition of a comic book, where the villains are always more interesting than the heroes. Puzzles are well thought-out and progress from the simple to the difficult. The inevitable to-and-froing is eased by providing maps that allow you to visit any location with a simple click. The menu interface is representative of the period in which the games were originally released. Simon the Sorcerer has a list of verbs available at the bottom of the screen, such as Walk To, Give, Pick Up, etc., that allow the player to choose an appropriate command.

The Bad
The only thing this game actually lacked was a decent Out of Europe launch, if this was the case maybe there would have been a longer adventure game life for all of the classics. However, saying that, this game did lack explosions!

The Bottom Line
I would describe this game in a few words: This game is the best of the whole Simon series and is more than capable of beating the first two Monkey Island games. This game is one of the true great classics that not many people have played, and too few have given word of mouth too.

This game has amazing graphics (for the time) Which is why it is such a cult classic of adventure gaming. The storyline is expertly done by Simon Woodroffe. And it is packed full of British humor!! this game will have you laughing at double entendres, and innuendos while also laughing at the 12 year old's apparent Manhood dilemma, of having to cuss at older people and get sarcastic comments out to very old powerful wizards!

The Good
Simon is a teenage boy living at home with his parents. He gets distracted when his dog Chippy starts wandering out of his bedroom. He follows the dog up the ladder to the attic where Chippy discovers a book called Ye Olde Spellbooke and shows it to Simon, who, showing a lack of interest in it, decides to throw it on the floor. This causes a portal opens and Simon and the dog enter a new dimension. There, he realizes that he must rescue the wizard Calypso from the evil sorcerer Sordid.

In Simon the Sorcerer, you will meet characters that can help you or hinder you, and most of these characters are based on fantasy and myth. During your travels, you'll encounter goblins, dwarfs, trolls, devils, and witches – the same type of characters from The Lord of the Rings. I enjoyed the parodies from different fairy tales, including Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and especially The Three Billy Goats Gruff, in which the troll refuses to be thrown into the water because the actual story says so.

Gamers who have played adventure games from LucasArts will feel comfortable with Simon's interface, which is split up into two sides. The left side consists of twelve commands. The most common ones are Walk To, Pick Up, Talk to, Open, and Use. The rest of the commands are unusual and consist of Consume, Wear, Remove, etc. Your inventory is displayed on the right side.

Simon uses 256-color VGA to display graphics. The game features amazing environments that include forests, snowy mountains, swamps, and castles. The characters and the different objects that you have to manipulate are well done. I can even say that the graphics are even better than those in a LucasArts game.

There is humor in the game. Since it is impossible to die in Simon, you are free to experiment with the commands and use those with objects in each scene, and it is likely that whenever you do so, Simon will produce a somewhat funny response. For example, farm animals such as pigs and ducks can be seen throughout the game, and if you try to Talk to them, he will say “I'm not Dr. Doolittle, you know.” If you enter the dwarf cave, you are asked for a password by the head dwarf. If you get it wrong, he will keep on saying “No, try again.” until you get it right. Too bad you don't have that going on in real life.

The sound is excellent as well. Whether you play the game with MT-32 or Sound Blaster enabled, I enjoyed listening to almost all of the music, especially those that included some beats. The sound effects are slightly better than what you hear from a few adventure games. I enjoyed listening to a crow that sits on top of the well in the witch's house. The crow doesn't even produce a crow sound at all. The voices are great and the characters are funny to listen to.

The Bad
The main problem this game has concerns the inventory. For example:

• A postcard that you carry throughout the game allows you to save, load, and quit games. This is annoying if you have quite a number of items sitting in the inventory, resulting in the postcard being invisible unless you scroll down. The same can be said with the somewhat-ancient map that you use to travel between locations. I don't think that there was anything wrong with putting a huge button in the middle of the interface that is labeled “MAP”.
• When I ended up having heaps of shit sitting in inventory and decide to save and load a game, the scroll arrows were gone, and the only way that I could make them appear was to click on empty space.
• When you pick up items, they are added at the beginning of the inventory, rather than the end. This can be annoying when you are near the end but have to scroll to the beginning in order to use it on something on the screen.

Calypso is mentioned at the beginning of the game, as well as throughout. Yet, he doesn't make an appearance in the game; not at the beginning, not throughout, and not near the end. I only know his existence by voice. I had to play the second episode of the series to see what he looks like.

The Bottom Line
Simon the Sorcerer is an adventure game similar to the ones that were created by LucasArts around the same time Simon was made, which is 1993. It features nice graphics and sounds, and, if you have the CD-ROM version, the different characters are funny to listen to. Since you can't die in the game, the user is free to explore with different commands, and use those commands with items that are seen on screen, more often than not causing a funny response from Simon. The sequel is a bit better than the original and does away with the commands. The ending leads in to that sequel.

The Good
This game was fantastic! One of the best point-and-click puzzle games I have ever played. It was hilariously funny with loads of toilet humour, and English humour. Although the characters look a bit old compared to todays gaming standards, the story line is one in a million, and although the puzzles aren't overly easy, they are very logical when you think about them. It's very user friendly with a fast map to get you around and a postcard to save/load/continue/quit the game. The game didn't crash on me once and i loved the fact that you could never die!

The Bad
Moving around the game could get a bit tedious, as the map didn't offer every location that you had to go to, sometimes spending 10 mins or so trying to find the place you were last at. Places are also very hard to find, as the game gives you no indication which way you can leave the screen, paths (sometimes completely invisible) can lead up, down or diagonally off the screen. Sometimes the inventory would dissapear also until you left one screen and went on to the next then came back.

The Bottom Line
You undertake the roll of Simon, who magically goes through a porthole in his attic, to a land of goblins, woodcutters and mystical talking trees. He is out to help a mysterious wizard named Calypso, and in the process, become a wizard himself. He doesn't appear to miss home very much? Venture through forests, mountains and strange villages that inhabit talking snowman and two headed shop-workers. A great adventure for kinds and adults a like!