Flight of the Amazon Queen - Renegade
                 Now on budget at about œ10
           (Graphic adventure for PC amd Amiga)

                      Reviewed by Sue

When Joe King, pilot for hire, takes on the job of transporting a
movie star to the Amazon, he lets himself in for more than he'd
bargained for. Getting her safely to the airport is his first
problem because an old competitor of his, Anderson, also wants the
job and he isn't bothered about getting it fairly. So he locks Joe
in a room and heads for the airport with the star, Faye Russel, a
beautiful blonde. Joe isn't going to let Anderson steal his job
and with a bit of thought, help from an old friend and a disguise,
he and his sidekick Sparky, the plane's mechanic and a big fan of
the Commander Rocket comic books, manage to get to the air field.
Joe knocks out Anderson and persuades Faye onto his plane and they
head off into the wilds of South America. The plane, by the way,
is called the Amazon Queen, hence the title of the game.

An inevitable thunderstorm begins and they are forced to crash
land in a piranha-filled river. They make their way off the plane,
and Joe goes for help. While he's gone, Sparky works on the plane
and Faye is told to stay still but, as you'd guess, she wanders
off pretty early on in the game so Joe has to rescue her as a side
plot. The jungle is a remarkably busy place and he will meet up
with some explorers, a village of natives and a local trader, as
well as a couple of missionaries. Through talking to them, he
learns about a German company, Floda, who have a factory in the
jungle, allegedly making leder-hosen. Hmm, that sounds suspicious
to us and with good cause as Joe will later find out.

He also meets, rescues and falls head over heels in love with an
Amazon Princess who has been kidnapped by Floda. But his meddling
has drawn the attention of Floda's chief bad guy, Dr Frank
Ironstein who, we learn during a series of cut scenes, has
developed a device to turn humans into dinosaurs and is planning
to create a hybrid army of these mutants. He also wants a crystal
skull which is hidden somewhere on a place called Sloth Island and
about half way through the game Joe is charged with retrieving it
if he wants to save the lovely Princess Azura. Joe goes along with
this arrangement but he not only wants to win the girl, he also
hopes to defeat the bad guy, as any true hero would want to do.

This then is the potted story to Flight of the Amazon Queen, a
graphic adventure from Australian team Renegade. It was several
years in the making and by the time it was released was, like the
Dig, past its 'sell by' date. The graphics owe more to Monkey
Island than, say, Toonstruck or Torin's Passage which feature
realistic movement. FotAQ has no such realism and there is an
strange quality to the characters' movement, especially that of
Joe, who shimmies rather than walks.

The game is icon driven with a range of options displayed along
the bottom of the screen to cover actions such as open, close,
move, give, talk to, use etc. Inventory objects are displayed at
the bottom right in a scrollable series of boxes. Objects cannot
be dropped so there is no danger of leaving something behind
(assuming you found it in the first place, of course!)

There is full speech on the CD version (I think there was
originally also a (silent) disk version) but about half way
through I found the game kept crashing at the same place and the
only way to prevent this was to disable the speech and go back to
on-screen text. I also had to use a boot disk to get it to run in
the first place! Losing the speech was a shame because the voices
are fairly amusing and it was nice to recognise some voices -
Penelope Keith as the Guardian and Jonathon Coleman, Jono from
Virgin Radio's breakfast show, is excellent as the Antipodean
Trader Bob.

FotAQ is a 'not bad' adventure. The puzzles are fair to middling
but the graphics and general lack of atmosphere, especially
without speech, let it down. Like The Dig, but to a greater
extent, FotAQ was delayed too long to be completely enjoyable. It
is a pleasant enough game but feels much older than it is. The low
price makes it more attractive but I prefer Torin's Passage and
Toonstruck.

                              - o -