''The Dame Was Loaded'' is a first-person

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 storytelling, interactive story, driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

and

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

created by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

n developer

Beam Software Krome Studios Melbourne, originally Beam Software, was an Australian video game development studio founded in 1980 by Alfred Milgrom and Naomi Besen and based in Melbourne, Australia. Initially formed to produce books and software to be publis ...

(now Krome Studios Melbourne). It was published in 1996 by

Philips Interactive Media The Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-I, later CD-i) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, data storage format as well as a hardware platform, co-developed and marketed by Dutch company Philips and Japanese company Sony. It w ...

Gameplay

The game is a detective

film noir Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of Ameri ...

set in the 1940s. It combines live action cinematic's with pre-rendered point-and-click gameplay much like previous games in the genre like ''

Under a Killing Moon ''Under a Killing Moon'' is a 1994 point-and-click adventure interactive movie video game. It is the third installment in the '' Tex Murphy'' series of adventure games produced by Access Software. In it, the detective Tex Murphy finds himself u ...

'' and ''

Myst ''Myst'' is a 1993 adventure video game developed by Cyan and published by Broderbund for Mac OS. In the game, the player travels via a special book to a mysterious island called Myst. The player interacts with objects and traverses the ...

''. The live action was produced by Vixen Films, director Jo Lane, and was at the time the largest multimedia production ever made in Australia. The game is nonlinear, having nine possible endings featuring over thirty fully acted and voiced characters to interact with and over one hour of fully performed cinematics.

Plot

Innocent-looking dame Carol Klein hires down-on-his-luck hardboiled private dick Scott Anger to find her brother, since she hasn't heard from him for some time. Anger learns that his case is connected to some murders and a bank robbery.

Reception

A reviewer for ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' panned the game, citing the use of still shots instead of FMV for most of the character interactions, the low difficulty, and the "cheesy, ersatz Maltese Falcon story". He scored it one out of five stars. Scott Gehrs of ''

Computer Game Review ''Computer Game Review'' was a print monthly magazine covering both computer gaming and video gaming. The magazine was started in 1991. Also known as ''Computer Game Review and 16-Bit Entertainment'', and then later as ''Computer Game Review and ...

'' wrote, "''The Dame Was Loaded'' has an interesting premise, but unfortunately I can't recommend it even to mystery lovers". Quandary wrote "In the end, the real time nature of the game prevented me from enjoying this outing...Timed puzzles are anathema to many adventure players".

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dame Was Loaded, The 1996 video games Adventure games Beam Software games Cancelled CD-i games Detective video games DOS games Interactive movie video games Piko Interactive games Single-player video games Video games developed in Australia