7 Point-And-Click Adventure Video Game Classics That Deserve A Revival
3. Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders
LucasArts Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is to conspiracy theories what The Secret of Monkey Island is to pirate culture: a goofball parody of its subject matter with tonnes of head-scratching puzzles thrown in. The second game to use the studios SCUMM engine followed a tabloid journalist, a freelance scientist and two students on a mission to save the world from a race of extraterrestrial phone hackers. Probably the same villains behind the News of the World scandal. LucasArts was the king of puzzles and parody in its day and, while the game had both in spades, it never truly fulfilled its potential. It came from an era before the Monkey Island developer had truly cracked the point-and-click nut and it looked dated beside the 90s fodder that followed - but there was still McKracken good fun and a gripping story on offer. While other early LucasArts properties like Maniac Mansion were built on with sequels, the Zak McKracken universe was sadly never given the opportunity to grow and expand. There was clearly scope for more mind-bending adventures because the games fanbase was passionate enough to take the development of sequels into its own hands - check out the exceptional Zak McKracken: Between Space and Time, for instance.
