Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Plot

The story is set in 1997, 10 years after the game's production. The plot follows Zak (full name Francis Zachary McKracken), a writer for the National Inquisitor, a tabloid newspaper (the name is a thinly veiled allusion to the National Enquirer); Annie Larris, a freelance scientist; along with Melissa China and Leslie Bennett, two Yale University coed students, in their attempt to prevent the nefarious alien Caponians (who have taken over "The Phone Company", an amalgamation of various telecommunication companies 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. Unfortunately, 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 writer David Spangler 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, and mysterious civilizations. The many places visited in the game are common hotspots for these ideas, such as the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, Lima, Stonehenge, 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, with their Cadillac-shaped spaceship and Elvis-themed leader (nicknamed "The King"). The Caponians also have heads shaped like Easter Island's Moai statues.

All official versions of the game except the FM Towns port require the player to enter copy protection codes (called "exit visa codes" inside the game) whenever they fly outside of the United States. The codes were printed in black on a dark brown paper sheet included in the game package to make photocopying more difficult. They consisted of Commodore 64 graphics characters, making it difficult for would-be software pirates to include them in a text file with a pirate copy. The codes do not have to be entered when flying into the US or when the player is at an airport in another country. If the player enters the wrong codes five times, Zak gets locked in the Kathmandu jail and his guard makes a lengthy anti-piracy speech. Nonetheless, pirated versions of the game quickly popped up anyway, in which the player may enter any code; modern-day cracked versions completely remove the need to enter exit visa codes. While copy protection codes were left out of the Commodore 64 version of Maniac Mansion for lack of disk space, the developers solved this problem in Zak McKracken by putting the game engine on a separate start-up floppy. This freed enough space to include the codes on the main disk. The Commodore version of Zak McKracken did not have CBM DOS files (only raw data), but was not protected and could be backed up.

Release

Zak McKracken was originally released in October 1988, for the C64, self-published by Lucasfilm Games. A port to IBM PC (MS-DOS) followed in the same year. An Apple II version was apparently planned, but never released. In 1989, the game was ported to the Amiga and Atari ST. An MS-DOS version with enhanced graphics was also released.

A Japanese version of Zak McKracken (Japanese: ザックマックラッケン Zakkumakkurakken) was released in 1990 for the FM Towns computer. Produced by Douglas Crockford, it came on CD-ROM with 256-color graphics and a remastered sampled audio soundtrack. When the FM Towns version is played in Japanese text, the redrawn sprites are in Japanese super deformed style. Other Japanese illustrations (such as the game cover) were also redrawn for the Japanese market by the artist Yuzuki Hikaru (弓月光), otherwise known as Nishimura Tsukasa (西村司).

Re-release

On 19 March 2015, Zak MacKracken 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

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 "it simply 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 #142 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 3½ 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, ST Action, and Quandary magazines.

Fan sequels

Some Zak McKracken fans have created and released their own sequels, so called fangames, among which:

Other notable but unreleased fan sequels include: