''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders'' is a 1988

graphic 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-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

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-designer and co-programmer. Like ''Maniac Mansion'', it was developed for the Commodore 64 and later released in 1988 for that system and DOS.

Plot

The story is set in 1997, nine years after the game's production. The plot follows Zak, a writer for the ''National Inquisitor'', a tabloid newspaper; Annie Larris, a freelance scientist; and Melissa China and Leslie Bennett, two

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

coed students, in their attempt to prevent the nefarious alien Caponians (who have taken over "The Phone Company", an amalgamation of various

telecommunication companies A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...

around the world) from slowly reducing the intelligence of everybody on Earth by emitting a 60 Hz " hum" from their "Mind Bending Machine". The Skolarians, another ancient alien race, have left a defense mechanism hanging around to repulse the Caponians (the "Skolarian Device"), which needs reassembly and start-up, but the parts are spread all over Earth and Mars.

Development

''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders'' was developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after '' Maniac Mansion''. Like ''Maniac Mansion'', Zak McKracken was initially developed for the Commodore 64 and ported later to other systems. The project was led by David Fox, with Matthew Alan Kane as the co-designer and co-programmer. Fox consulted with

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consi ...

writer

David Spangler David Spangler (born January 7, 1945) is an American spiritual philosopher and self-described "practical mystic." He helped transform the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland into a center of residential spiritual education and was a frie ...

for the game materials. The game was originally meant to be more serious, resembling the Indiana Jones series, but Ron Gilbert persuaded David Fox to increase the humorous aspects of the game. The game was consequently heavily inspired by many popular theories about aliens,

ancient astronauts Ancient astronauts (or ancient aliens) refers to a pseudoscientific hypothesis which holds that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that thi ...

, and mysterious civilizations. The many places visited in the game are common hotspots for these ideas, such as the pyramids of Egypt and

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

Lima Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of the central coastal part of ...

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connec ...

, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Face on Mars. The Skolarians are based on the Greys alien, while the Caponians (a name derived from " Al Capone") are primarily based on the

Men in Black In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are purported men dressed in black suits who claim to be quasi- government agents, who harass, threaten, or sometimes even assassinate unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses ...

, with their Cadillac-shaped spaceship and Elvis-themed leader (nicknamed "The King"). The Caponians also have heads shaped like Easter Island's Moai statues.

Release

Zak McKracken was originally released in October 1988, for the C64, self-published by Lucasfilm Games. A port to IBM PC ( DOS) followed in the same year. In 1989, the game was ported to the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, 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 sign ...

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 per ...

. A DOS version with enhanced graphics was also released. The Japanese version of the game was released in 1990 under the title ''Zak McKracken'' ( ja, ザックマックラッケン ''Zakkumakkurakken''); for the Japanese Fujitsu FM Towns computer. Produced by Douglas Crockford, it came on CD-ROM with 256-color graphics and a remastered

sampled audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, sampl ...

soundtrack. It is playable in both English and Japanese. When this version is played in Japanese, the sprites' eyes are replaced with

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

eyes. The box art was redrawn for the Japanese market by artist Yuzuki Hikaru (弓月光), otherwise known as Nishimura Tsukasa (西村司).

Re-release

In March 2015, Zak McKracken was re-released on the digital distribution platform gog.com after years of non-availability. The GOG.com release marked the first time the 256-color version of the game had been made officially available outside Japan.

Reception

Discussing ''Zak McKracken''s commercial performance, David Fox later wrote, "I think Zak was far more popular in Germany and Europe than in the States. I'm not sure why... maybe my humor was more European in nature?" Many reviews, both online and in print, rate Zak McKracken as among the best adventure games ever made, but others disagree. A review in '' Computer Gaming World'' described ''Zak McKracken'' as a good game, but that it could have been better. The magazine described the game's central flaw in the game's environments, limited to a relatively small number of screens per location, giving each town a movie-set feel compared to the size and detail of ''Maniac Mansion''. '' Compute!'' favorably reviewed ''Zak McKracken'', but wished that Lucasfilm would next produce a game that did not depend on jokes and puzzles to tell its story. The large number of mazes in the game was also a source of criticism, but David Fox felt it was the best way to maximize the game's size and still have it fit on a single Commodore 64 floppy disk. Other critics complained about the need to enter copy protection codes not once, but multiple times whenever the player flew out of the US. The game was reviewed in 1989 in '' Dragon'' No. 142 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game out of 5 stars. The game received high scores in general press. It received 90 out of 100 in several reviews, such as of Zzap!, Power Play, Happy Computer, HonestGamers, Pixel-Heroes.de,

Jeuxvideo.com ''Jeuxvideo.com'' (from ''jeux vidéo''; ; ) is a French video gaming website founded in 1997. History The website traces its history to a video game hint collection on Minitel, a precursor to the World Wide Web, and was founded by Sébastien ...

, ST Action, and Quandary magazines.

Legacy

The title of the '' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' episode "Zach and the Alien Invaders" pays homage to this game's title.

Fan sequels

Some ''Zak McKracken'' fans have created and released their own sequels, so called fangames, among which: * ''The New Adventures of Zak McKracken'', released in March 2002 by "LucasFan Games" and containing graphics from the Japanese FM Towns 256 color version and country-specific backgrounds from various Neo-Geo games. The original release was notorious for containing an adult ending. However, the ending was soon changed when the developers were told that the female characters were based on actual persons. This sequel is very short and fairly limited compared to the two other fan sequels. * '' Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space'', released in German in April 2008 and re-released as a director's cut in German, English and French (subtitles) in May 2015 by "Artificial Hair Bros.". The game consists of hand-drawn 2D scenes and sprites and pre-rendered 3D videos. It uses the Visionaire Studio engine that professional developers like Daedalic use. Other notable but unreleased fan sequels include: * ''Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstars'', which was planned for a final release in 2007 following the release of a demo. After several project restarts and lead changes the project was stopped. However, the

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software ...

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

was released on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

. * ''Zak McKracken and the Lonely Sea Monster'' was scheduled for July 1, 2007, but has come to a halt. It was supposed to maintain the look of the original.Zak McKracken and the Lonely Sea Monster
on zaksite.com

References

External links

*
''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders''
at Lemon64
The ''Zak McKracken'' Archive

''Zak McKracken'' C-64 version theme
at the

High Voltage SID Collection The MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device) is the built-in programmable sound generator chip of Commodore's CBM-II, Commodore 64, Commodore 128 and Commodore MAX Machine home computers. It was one of the first sound chips of i ...