Oh Curse those demos!! welcome to another edition of The Demo Made Me Want this and boy did it ever


Gameplay and Story: So done in a game show format, the "Celebrity panel" is in a structure similar to Hollywood Squares, the game is a game show where we expose alien celebrities with bad pun names (hey this was made by the same people that gave us Carmen Sandiego) as not being the authors of well know literature (most aimed at Children) that is mostly used as Literature Circles or Novel Study Sets in schools (hey I work in a School Library this game is perfect) three rounds (two of them interchangeable) and after you prove that a citizen of planet earth wrote the book you either pick a prize (that won't arrive on earth until after you are dead) or you get promoted. Win the solar lightning bonus round and you can watch the humiliated celebrity get cancelled after proving them as frauds twice they get sent back to their home planet in utter disgrace. I won't list all 30 books but I can give you an idea of what you would get to read, there were books that I had already read at the time I first played (like Charlotte's Web and Hatchet) some well known classics (Treasure Island and the Wizard of Oz) and some books I didn't know existed (Red Cap and Secret of the Andes) however after playing it did make me want to read some of the books (like From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler or Summer of My German Soldier, probably the most mature children's lit I have ever seen, for some reason it reminds me of Helga Pataki's home life in Hey Arnold)

Graphics: These are great animated graphics here, not one sign of any CGI not that it's needed anyway.

Soundtrack: Gotta love the MIDI's yeah it's a very big MIDI soundtrack selection however each round has it's own soundtrack depending on which intercha-nah I'm just kidding it's all the same, you'll see when I do post the Longplay of it here, oh and I will post the individual books for them...too bad Video submission still doesn't count for action at the moment but if the Screen shots can get fixed, I'm holding out hope for the submissions.

Addictive: So like I said in the Introduction I first played this game as a demo when I got my copy of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego Deluxe and at first I played that more than I played Where in the World, enough so that I basically smashed the Charlotte Web round.

Depth: there are three rounds of play in each game and there are 30 books you have to prove that were written by an earthling. Every Round 2 game is Beat the Krok all the names of rounds are a play on well known game shows (No Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego is not one of them....that would be TOO meta, I mean one of the Alien's names is an iteration of Prince of Persia) I managed to finish this game in less that SIX hours but more than five and a half. Rounds one and three are interchangeable, Round One will either consist of To Tale the Truth which is a True or False game where you also need to complete the puzzle will show the scene you will see throughout the book segment (oh that reminds me when I get to those screenshots, I will likely not show off screenshots of experts from the books due to copyright related stuff, however I will do the synopsis and the about the author segments) Gangmeade Squares you have to uncover the scene while reading the synopsis of the story. Round 2 would be a crossword game and starting here, you have to uncover the picture Round 3, the solar lightning round is where you have to start answering questions about the Author it would either consist of Stump the Human where you have to translate what's wrong with the picture (which feels like defusing a time bomb the farther you get in the game however if you answer a question about the author correctly you get to pick a letter to translate and the letter you use will automatically translate the English letter) or you get Meteor Match, where you have to match up facts about the author oh did I mention that you have to deal with these aliens twice

Difficulty: the Age range for this game is 9-13, I didn't get to play the game in it's entirety until I was 27 when I sent a request to Classic Reload (or PlayDosGames as it was called at the time) as it was called at the time and they came through and god forbid I was stuck sometimes, but I mostly requested it because even though I was successful at burning a copy of the game it wasn't co-operating very well on my old Windows XP and my laptop at the time was well no longer co-operating with the disk drive (it was kind of broken I couldn't close it all the way, not to mention the charger was busted) funny thing is I first played this game around the same time I started my school library tech job. I can definitely say the game is perfectly challenging

Post Review Follow up: Why didn't this get a sequel? no seriously it should have gotten a second game so they can expose more alien plagiarists and there would be more books read, if I were put in charge of picking what books would be in the sequel I have picked other books by the authors that were included I would have included White Fang, or Dogsong, or A Little Princess, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yeah a good chunk of the authors that have had their books included, and as for new books I would have added Mrs.Frisby and the Rats of Nimh (or as you would all know it as The Secret of Nimh), or Holes (that would be perfect) and just for the hell of it The Hunger Games, hell I would have picked one of Ann M Martin's Non-Babysitters club books and as for parody names of other game shows a sequel could have had Press Your Luck or Deal or No Deal

This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review Amazon Trail 3rd edition Amazon Adventures