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''Plan 9 from Outer Space'' is a point and click
adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...
adaptation of the film of the same name. It was developed at the Irish office of Gremlin Graphics for the
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
and
Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
, and was released in
1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...
. The game was published by Gremlin in Europe and by
Konami , is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company, video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machin ...
in the United States. A DOS version was also developed, though only released in the US and Europe. Two editions of the game were made available at retail; the more common version was packaged with a VHS copy of the film, while a rarer version contained only the game.


Background

The game is inspired by the 1957
Z-movie Z movies (or grade-Z movies) are low-budget films with production qualities lower than B movies. History and terminology The term "Z movie" arose in the mid-1960s as an informal description of certain unequivocally non-A films. It was soon adopte ...
''
Plan 9 from Outer Space ''Plan 9 from Outer Space'' is a 1957 American independent science fiction-horror film produced, written, directed, and edited by Ed Wood. The film was shot in black-and-white in November 1956 and had a theatrical preview screening on March 15 ...
''.


Plot

The game starts when the producer notices that the film has been stolen by Bela Lugosi's double. The player must carry out an epic search of the locations where ''Plan 9 from Outer Space'' was filmed to find the six missing reels. From the back of the DOS version box: :Plan 9. The critics hated it. Bela Lugosi died during it. And his double has stolen it. :Lugosi's replacement is still bitter after 33 years from critics' reviews dubbing his only movie "The Worst Film of All-Time". Even though he remained faceless, he intends to bring glory to the cult classic using more footage of himself and ... colorizing it. As the studio's Private Eye you'll search over 70 locations, find the 6 reels and screen the film, frame-by-frame, to ensure that the warped actor did not cut Bela from the flick. Using actual digitized film footage, you'll sweat each scene, examining Plan 9 with slow motion, freeze frame, fast forward and rewind. It's up to you to preserve its original awfulness.


Reception

''
Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...
''s
Charles Ardai Charles Ardai (born 1969) is an American entrepreneur, businessperson, and writer of award winning crime fiction and mysteries. He is founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of pulp-style paperback crime novels. He is also an early employe ...
criticized the game's "cheap" user interface and mediocre graphics and sound, which made him uncertain whether various continuity errors were accidental or intended to satirize the film. Ardai stated that "''Plan 9'' is a genuinely, intentionally funny piece of work, which puts it several notches above the movie (in my opinion) ... thoroughly enjoyable", and funnier than ''
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders ''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders'' is a 1988 graphic adventure game by Lucasfilm Games. It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after ''Maniac Mansion''. The project was led by David Fox, with Matthew Alan Kane as the co-desig ...
''. He added, however, that as "a licensed product, parasitic on an original work ... its smirking digs at this rather pathetic relic of a movie ... sometimes has the tone of a schoolyard bully taking cheap shots at a defenseless victim". Without the sincerity and "guilelessness" of Wood's film, "In this respect, the game attains a degree of cheapness that even the movie didn't reach, which is quite an accomplishment". The game was reviewed in 1993 in ''
Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
'' #190 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.


Reviews

*'' Amiga Action'' (May, 1992) *''
Zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation Positional notation (or place-value notation, or positional numeral system) usually denotes the extension to any base of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (or ...
'' (Jun, 1992) *''Joker Verlag präsentiert: Sonderheft'' (1993) *''Amiga Joker'' (May, 1992) *'' Amiga Computing'' (Oct, 1992) *''
CU Amiga ''Commodore User'', known to the readers as the abbreviated ''CU'', was one of the oldest British Commodore magazines. With a publishing history spanning over 15 years, it mixed content with technical and video game features. Incorporating ''Vic ...
'' (May, 1992) *'' ST Format'' (Nov, 1992) *'' Amiga Format'' (Oct, 1992) *''
Amiga Power ''Amiga Power'' (''AP'') was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. Philosophy ''Amiga Power'' had several principles which com ...
'' (Oct, 1992)https://archive.org/stream/Amiga_Power_Issue_18_1992-10_Future_Publishing_GB#page/n29/mode/2up


References


External links

*{{moby game, id=/plan-9-from-outer-space, name=''Plan 9 from Outer Space''
Plan 9 from Outer Space review from
Zzap! ''Zzap!64'' was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64 (C64). It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact. The magazine ...
1992 video games Adventure games Amiga games Atari ST games DOS games Gremlin Interactive games Konami games Point-and-click adventure games Video games based on films Video games developed in Ireland Ed Wood Single-player video games