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Genre: Text adventure

Format: CD

Developer: General Coffee

Publisher: General Coffee

Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS 9.1 or Mac OS X v10.2, QuickTime v5, CD-ROM (for installation)

Review Computers: 1.5GHz 17" PowerBook with 512MB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (AGP 4X) graphics processor with 64MB of DDR SDRAM

Network Feature: None

Price: $19.95 (CD-ROM only), $24.95 (Deluxe CD)

ESRB Rating: Not Rated

Availability: Now

Official Website: [url=http://www.generalcoffee.com/futureboy/]http://www.generalcoffee.com/futureboy/[/url]

Demo: [url=http://www.generalcoffee.com/futureboy/demo.html]http://www.generalcoffee.com/futureboy/demo.html[/url]

Future Boy! (FB) is an entertaining little game. Those who remember the days when Infocom was king will enjoy this modern day successor to a long-abandoned throne. But while the game features a clever storyline and excellent sound effects, it may not make up for the shortcomings of the genre itself.

FB is presented as a superhero story in which you are, oddly enough, not the superhero. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by telling you that; it's revealed in the first two minutes of the game. An original idea, I'll give them that, to make the player Jimmy Olson rather than big blue. But while you may not have the power to fly or crush coal into diamonds, you are quickly pulled into the orbit of super-shenanigans as FB's nemesis escapes from prison.

FB is (mostly) a text adventure. The locations are described to the player, who interacts with the game by typing commands, such as "go west" or "put the key in the door." The game will then parse your commands (provided it understands them), and tell you what happens. Where FB differs from the oldest of the old school interactive fiction (Zork, Leather Goddess of Phobos) is that it adds both graphics and sound effects to enhance the experience.

When you enter a new location, you're presented with a graphic of what it looks like. Somewhat crudely rendered, the pictures provide no function other than eye candy. You can't interact with them (like, say, clicking on a door to open it), and they provide no real clues on what you can do there. For example, you may see a magazine on the floor, or see a desk with a drawer, but unless the text description specifically mentions them, they don't really exist in the game.

The sound effects, however, are different, and do a great deal to enhance the story. Crisply recorded, the voice-overs do a good job of giving the characters some, well, character, and moving the story along. For example, at one point I was trapped in a prison cell with a gabby felon. Not quite the sharpest tack, after every action he'd say something. If this were just text, I could easily ignore him, but with his pointless talking coming over the speakers, I got a real sense of being trapped with this rube for eternity unless I could figure a way out.

Not that the task was easy. You see, one of the things that text adventures encouraged was "lateral thinking," or, in layman's terms, "how the heck was I supposed to figure that out?" thinking. The simple act of making a phone call goes from dialing a number to getting the blue wizard to cast a freeze spell on the fire monkey who'll then drop the phoenix egg which explodes making the brown mouse run into the crystal bells in the right sequence so that the phone gets tricked into dialing the right number. In short, you are encouraged to try everything to solve the puzzles, including tasks that make no sense and are only vaguely alluded to. In fact, you should try those first.

Fortunately, FB comes with hints built into the game. The game detects what area you're in, and it offers you several layers of help, starting with suggestions of things you might try, and continuing up to the explicit commands you should use.

The game has a light tone, using the background characters to give the game a humorous edge. I don't think I ever laughed out loud, but the jokes worked, and I never gritted my teeth at a lousy pun or a forced bit.

Who should buy this game? Well, there's the nostalgia audience, obviously, those people who still have their maps of the Great Underground Empire will enjoy FB, along with people who enjoy puzzles, which are abundant here, though just as illogical as they were back in the 80s. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed playing Future Boy!; turns out the genre might still have some life in it.

Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.