Adventure games often feature diverse, expansive, and well-crafted stories that include a wide range of items spread about their worlds. While it’s not typically a problem these days, there are plenty of older titles that feature items that could be mistakenly missed, overlooked, or discarded during an adventure. Nowadays, these kinds of things are marked as “Quest Items,” but in the past, you could pick up something as mundane as a hairbrush without realizing its importance and drop it somewhere. These game-breaking items can make an adventure game unwinnable, often requiring a full restart. Here are three such items, arranged in no particular order.
Videos by ComicBook.com
1) Jar of Green Acid – Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers
In Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers, there are plenty of items that seem entirely innocuous and are easy to leave behind. One item that seems useless is a jar of green acid. It’s difficult to find because the acid attacks you once you enter a sewer, and there’s no indication that you need to jar it for later use. If you decide to run away from the threat and don’t jar the acid, the game becomes unwinnable. What really sucks about this is that you find it relatively early in the game, so that you can proceed and nearly beat it, only to find out that you need the acid to defeat the final boss.
2) The Air Sickness Bag – Leisure Suit Larry 2 – Looking For Love (In Several Wrong Places)
In one of the earliest parts of Leisure Suit Larry 2 – Looking For Love (In Several Wrong Places), the intro offers up the opportunity to pick up an airsickness bag. At the time, it doesn’t appear to have any use, and it seems like nothing more than set dressing. If you pick up the bag and keep it, you’re good to go, but if you decide to leave it or later discard it, you’ll be screwed at the end. It’s needed to manipulate the elevator towards the end of the story, and if you don’t have it, you can’t beat the game.
3) The Paint Remover – Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion is one of the most important point-and-click games in the history of the adventure genre, and it includes a game-breaking mechanic surrounding paint remover. In this instance, losing the item isn’t necessarily the problem — it’s misusing it. If you decide to try the paint remover on the wrong item, you won’t have any left to remove the paint blotch on the wall (pictured). You must do this to discover a hidden door, which then takes you to an area where you’ll acquire a code to access the secret lab. No paint remover means no advancing through the game’s narrative.
Has a missed or lost item ever made an adventure game unwinnable for you? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Studio Bones -
Image Courtesy of Science SARU
