Be Excellent To Each Other

Interesting... (Aren't those black and white early Mac graphics evocative, by the way? Well, they are to me at least.) I haven't played the series but as remember they played like illustrated text adventures, with mostly static backgrounds. So yes point and click, but unlike the more familiar later style, you don't 'see' your in game character and move them about from a third person viewpoint. I've always wondered if the Frankie Goes to Hollywood computer game counts as some kind of proto-point'n'click adventure, as the main murder mystery segment more than superficially resembles aspects of the genre, with a clumsier pre-mouse interface.

It depends on where you're from, really. Everyone I knew played the Sierra stuff loads, the Lucasarts stuff we barely saw (I had a glimpse of Zak McCracken on my friend's C64, and people raved about Maniac Mansion when it was ported to the NES, but that was about it for quite a while)



In order of quality, I'd have to say the Police Quest games:
-the first was the best, as it had the most varied and believeable collection of cop work. Traffic patrols, domestic disturbances... good stuff.
-the third was the second best, as it had the modern setting combined with the point and click interface to make doing the forensics less painful (click the inventory, click the scraper, click the dent on the parked car, as opposed to typing all that out) but went all funny and downhill with the weird cult murders stuff. And when the hero (the unfortunately named Sonny) announced to the judge that he was convinced the weird cult was operating a crack house in the northwestern part of the city... well... that was the first I'd heard about it.
-the fourth is allegedly very good, but a combination of a crappy PC and the fact I got utterly stuck (and the ridiculousness of accidentally clicking the 'use' icon on a female officer resulteing in a game over for sexual harassment charges)
-the second tried far too hard to be an OTT 80s cop show, what with the scuba diving section, 'revenge list', airliner hijacking, bomb defusing, jet-setting, sewer-exploring (really) nonsense of it all. Though being able to snog your girlfriend so much that she drops her knickers then and there was quite pleasing.