Plan 9 From Outer Space
  Gremlin Graphics Software - RRP œ39.99 (PC) œ34.99 (ST, Amiga)
          (Mouse/keyboard controlled graphic adventure)

                     Reviewed by Neil Shipman

Made in 1959 by Edward D. Wood Jnr, Plan 9 From Outer Space is a
79 minute black and white film generally regarded as being the
worst movie of all time. Everything about it is terrible,
including the plot - space people try to resurrect the dead and
turn them against the world; the set - wooden gravestones and
hubcap-shaped flying saucers dangling from bits of string; the
acting - Vampira walks around in a totally unmenacing fashion
while the double representing Bela Lugosi (who died after four
days of shooting) keeps his face almost completely covered with a
huge black cloak; and the dialogue - "One thing's sure, Inspector
Clay's dead. Murdered. And someone's responsible."

It is so bad that it is laughable and you could be forgiven for
thinking that it is a spoof on the popular sci-fi films of the
fifties. But it was actually made in all seriousness with the
object of making money. Maybe it did because it exerts a strange
fascination and, reports John Brosnan, author of The Horror
People, "It appears to have been made in somebody's garage."

You will get a chance to see its complete awfulness for yourself
as Gremlin Graphics provide a videotape in the box along with the
computer software. It doesn't matter if you watch the movie before
playing the game - it won't give anything away.

The adventure itself begins when you are called to the producer's
office. Someone has stolen a few reels of the film and he offers
you "More money than you've probably ever seen - at least 200
smackers!" to recover them. [I should think that's just about what
was spent on the real movie!]

The action window occupies the centre of the top half of the
screen and features high resolution, digitised graphics in bright
colours, occasionally with some animation. Your inventory is
listed to one side and the usual commands - Hit, Use, Talk, Push,
Drop, Give, Take, Open, Close, Examine - are chiselled onto a
tombstone in the bottom right-hand corner. Descriptions of
objects, choices of conversation and the results of your actions
take up the remaining space below the picture window.

Moving around the game environment is easy. In certain places in
the window the 'intelligent' cursor changes into a large, green
signpost with a message like 'Go to corridor'. Click on this and
you very quickly find yourself in the new location. Saving and
loading are accomplished via the function keys with 8 nameable
positions.

With just your passport and a little cash to start with you will
quickly need to locate a credit card if you are to get very far.
Once that and a few more relevant items are in your possession
your quest for the six missing reels will take you to Rio de
Janeiro, Sydney, Hong Kong and Washington.

There are projection booths close to the reels' locations which
enable you to view the contents. This is the really clever aspect
of the game as you actually see a short clip of the original film.
Also, with an editing room just down the corridor from the
producer's office, you can play about with these and have fun
running them backward, fast forward and so on.

I would have liked the adventure to require you to splice these
pieces together in the correct order and view the result but this
is not necessary. In fact you do not need to watch the clips at
all and the game concludes fairly soon after you have acquired all
six reels.

I have a number of gripes about Plan 9. The music is monotonous
and repetitive and the sound effects sparse. Your inventory is a
reasonable size but there are far too many objects which you can
pick up but then don't need to use. This wouldn't particularly
matter except for the fact that any dropped item is whisked away
by an ugly little creature which appears out of nowhere and
returns the object to its original location - rather annoying when
you realise that you wanted it after all and it's now on the other
side of the world.

It is also easy to get stuck without realising why. This could
well be because you have chosen the wrong conversational gambit
with one of the many characters so it is advisable to save the
game before talking to people. You can then see the different
results of each one.

Responses, though brief, are frequently amusing and I particularly
liked "Isn't it spooky when you see parts of your own body parts
in a game that you just bought?" when I examined a pair of hands
on a table in the diner! But too often do you get "There's nothing
special about it."

The use of the same graphic with just a different name for the
airport building in each country is also quite humorous. So is a
similar way of portraying different taxi drivers by the simple
expedient of having each one wear a different hat! A George Bush
lookalike in the White House comes up with an appropriate phrase
for this near the end.

To conclude, despite its shortcomings the adventure of Plan 9 from
Outer Space is a darn sight more interesting and ultimately
satisfying than the film. Worth taking a look at if only because
it is so different from most other graphic adventures.

[PC minimum system requirements are a 286 PC with 640K RAM, MS-DOS
3.1 or higher and a VGA 256K graphics card. You need around 8Mb of
disk space to install the game on your  hard drive, although once
installed it takes up approximately 5.5Mb]










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