[Subtitles by danielsangeo] Hey! Welcome back to the Game Dungeon. Today, we're looking at "Maabus"... ..."May-booce"? I'm not
even sure how to say this. ["Mah-boos."] ["Mah-booce."] ["Ma-booze."] "Mah-bus" it is. This is a
first-person, sort of adventure game. Now before we get too far into this,
let's take a look at the box cover here. Whoa! Something's happening. We have a blue minotaur thing your face, a blade that looks sort of
like the one from "Krull", spiky vines that form a hand, blood dripping off the title blades, and it might be hard to see here--it
also says "The ultimate PC videogame". That's a good bit of trivia. If you had asked me yesterday what
the ultimate PC video game is, I wouldn't have an easy answer for you. I would've guessed "Ultima". Now we know! And finally, a 3 CD Game. Now this came out in '95, so a game that had three discs
was still impressive by itself. The assumption was, any game THAT big
must really have something going for it. It wasn't cheap to put THAT in the stores. And if that's not enough, I think
we have another game on our hands where the ending has never been
documented. So let's see what's in store. Well, we start off and we have
a slow approach to an island while we get the opening
credits and some music. Let's jump right into the music
since we have some time here. Now I'm a fan of scores from the 80s
and 90s with good synthetic elements, and if I were to hear this theme in a movie, my first thought would be, "This
sounds like it's a sci-fi B-movie." Not necessarily terrible,
but not that great, either. This is an easy example, but if
you hear "The Terminator" theme... ...even if you know nothing
else about the movie, you can tell this has some soul to it. Or hey, "Short Circuit"... ...great robot music. We have something special
going on with this theme. It never hurts to open
your game with good music, but that's not quite what we're doing here. Anyway, to speed this along, we make it to
the island and a robot is parachuted in. And here's the menu. This one is a little unconventional
as we have a robot preview. I guess this is a big enough deal to
stick it right in the main menu. Why not? And below that, we have a bad sign already: Game duration. We have one to two hours. I really don't like this. If a game wants me to hurry, it should
get a monster to chase me or something, not give me a hard time limit. See, some people will argue that this was
a necessary experimentation phase in games of what worked and what didn't. Well, no. I'm saying
that ship already sailed. Again, this is a first person
adventure game, sort of like "Myst". Hey, wouldn't Myst be more fun if we
added a countdown timer to the game so the player had to hurry up? I'm saying "Myst" because that was a pretty
famous game by 1995--sold six million copies. So if you were going to make
changes to that formula, it served as a good point of comparison
to see whether it's more or less fun. Timers... All right, I'm going with the maximum
time limit, I guess. Let's start the game. ["Good day. ["I'm Admiral Terrence Jefferson, in
command of Special Operations - Pacific."] "You can call me TJ." ["A grave situation has come up and
you've been chosen for this mission, ["because you are the top
person in your field."] This guy goes on for over two minutes talking in this very
calm and sedative voice. I feel like he would've made a better
psychologist than an admiral, but whatever. In a long-winded way, he tells you
there's a radioactive disturbance on a secret island with mutants on it,
and you have to go in and contain it, otherwise it could spread to the American
west coast and Australia, maybe the world. It won't actually be you going in, though. Instead you'll be piloting a drone.
That's what we saw in the intro video. And that's it. Let's go. Whoa! Look at this HUD! Jesus! What is this? What's that green bar for? Is "Uplink" important? What's "P.O.H."? AH! I'M GETTING OVERWHELMED! ABORT! ABORT! SELF DESTRUCT! ["Don't give up now.
We're depending on you."] Okay, okay. I'll cancel. That's actually a nice touch
that they give you a chance to reconsider if you really
want to kill yourself. So, I can turn around and go... nowhere. If I turn around again, I can go forward. So I move forward a couple screens and... [alarm bleeps]
Uh-oh! What's that? Uh... Laser! LASER! AAAAAAH! I was clicking on it! Nothing happened! Oh, damn. I guess this doesn't bode
well for the mission. Ooh. ["The robot has been destroyed. ["The island has been destroyed. ["Soon, the world as we
know it will be destroyed."] Oops. ["Excuse me. I'm leaving
to be with my family."] Wow! They're not downplaying the
significance of my screw up, are they? Now this can't be the first game to do this, but I have to say, this has one of the
shortest transitions I've ever seen in a game going from one
mistake to the world ending. "Oh, you didn't shoot the first
monster one minute into the game? "That's it. The whole world is dead. "Good job, asshole. You've killed us all. "I hope you're happy with yourself." Oh, and notice how the timer continues
to count down during the credits. So that's Maabus. The game's over. I
guess we're done. I'll go ahead and quit. So really, the-- Oh, a slot
machine. Okay? That's... weird. "If three evil blue aliens appear, "you'll be eligible to win Microforum's
complete CD-ROM collection." Okay... let's spin it. Big
money! Here we go! Oh... oh! Aww... Well that's interesting. This game
motivates me to want to quit the game more. So let's do it! ...aww... ...no good... ...try again... ...better luck next time... I can't say I've seen this in a game before, perhaps-- Oh, I did it! I WON! I WON! Oh my god! What now? I could be the first of 100 people
to return the "consolation form". Ah. And I get such classics as
"Music Game", "Trivia CD", and "24-hour something assistant". Ah... Yeah, okay. I'm feeling
less like a winner now. Plus, something tells me
this contest may be over. That is one downside to playing
games over 20 years after the fact. But who knows? The company is still around. Best I can tell, they started off as a
media production and printing company, got into games later, but then stayed with media production. That would be sort of like if Nintendo
went back to making playing cards. See, look. If you go to their site, you can
buy a USB drive shaped like a hockey stick. Now is a good time to mention
this is a Canadian game. Okay, so maybe there's more to this game than just watching the Earth
blow up after two screens. If I could figure out how to kill that
monster, I think I might have a chance. Let's consult the manual. Oh, I'm sorry. There is no manual. Now, once upon a time, I
did have a copy of this, and I'm pretty sure it did have
a manual that came with it, but I didn't commit it to memory and it's
since fallen prey to the ravages of time. But surely somebody posted it online, right? No, nobody did. It's not up anywhere. But this is NOT a Commodore 64 game, so that means I still have a CHANCE
to try and figure out how this works. I'll be using the time-honored method of just hitting buttons and
hoping something happens. Well, after multiple deaths
to animal mutilation, I figure out that it's not about aiming so much as clicking on the
screen at the right moment, kind of like "Dragon's Lair". This is probably so the game had time to
load the right animation video off the CD. NOW let's try it out. Fuck yeah! Now we're cooking with lasers. Actually, best I can tell, all your weapons
do the exact same thing on all enemies, which is... kill them. The toxin gives off a cloud, and the
missile reduces them to polygons. But let's be real. The lasers are the best. They saw their heads right
off. What's not to like? ["Your laser charge is almost empty. [growls]
["Use it wisely."] Oh, quit being such a downer,
Admiral! Can't a man enjoy his work? Anyway, being able to defend
myself opens up a lot of the game. There's a lot of things
to see on the island: a swamp, some sort of ancient temple, an airfield, a rickety bridge, some ruins... Along the way, you have multiple
enemies looking to kill you, occasional cryptic puzzles,
and DOZENS of way to die. Seriously, if you go three or four
screens in the game, you're risking death. It almost reminds me of a board
game with a spinner on it, where one of the options is "die". Another thing that may happen is you have
to swap CDs once you go past a certain zone. I like how the admiral breaks the fourth
wall here and tells me to put the disc in. ["Insert data disc #2."] Now here's a benefit of playing
this game twenty years later. Not only am I running this game off of disc
images so everything loads immediately, but I spliced them all
together into one big image, so I don't even have to swap! HAH! After a while of walking around and looking at things that look like
they could be puzzles but aren't, I'm mostly just dying in this game. The admiral likes to pop in
to advise me not to die-- ["Do not follow that path. I
repeat: Do NOT follow that path."] Although, sometimes he warns me
against things that WON'T kill me. ["We are not sure that the bridge
will hold the weight of the robot. ["We advise you turn back."] ["Our satellite has detected a life form
around your position. Be ready to fire."] It feels like everything is random. Why give me advice at all if there's a
random chance of it being good or bad? WHUUHAHAHA! Now, again, 90s adventure
games almost never play fair. So after getting lost in
the jungle long enough, I decided to break down
and look for a walkthrough. Well, I find one. From 2008. Looks like I'm not the only one
who's playing games this late. We didn't get a manual but
we do get a walkthrough. And a map, too! I'm glad, because the navigation
on this was a bit of a mess, where you might go north
to end up facing west. Y'know, even though I didn't use it much, "Rama" had a built-in
compass for navigation. I could've really used that in this game where I'm in the thick of a twisting
jungle rather than empty alien corridors. Anyway, this helps tremendously. I like to partially-judge adventure games
by how badly I need their walkthroughs since I almost always end up needing one. Because some adventure games, I would
never EVER figure out what to do. I would die an old man before
I solved some games on my own. Well, after looking at this walkthrough,
I'd say that Maabus appears to be beatable, but it would take a long time and be really
not worth it figuring it out on your own. No regrets. Well, it looks like part of
the reason I was having trouble was because there was a secret
entrance with critical information. Also, these alien keys that I need are
randomly distributed around the game, sometimes in dangerous
areas. More on that later. I will say, the level of detail
in this walkthrough is impressive. For example, the author figured out that a yellow alien that you HAVE to
come in contact with in order to progress will spawn at a certain point, but
sometimes it won't happen in the same game and you have to leave and come back later. And, sure enough, I had
to come back to this spot in the swamp THREE TIMES
before it triggered. That is not great design for
an encounter you HAVE to find. Anyway, the alien gives me a... thing... and the admiral comments
on how it's a translator. ["A lot of people think that the alien
apparatus is a translator of sorts."] I like how they know what all these
things are... except when they don't. ["We don't know what this
item is, or what it's made of. ["We do know that it seems to be
an electronic device of some sort. ["It could be a weapon, a key
of sorts, or even a computer."] Other highlights of this walkthrough
are how blue aliens will rob you, but only if you face
rooms at a certain angle. So remember, "You can't get robbed by
blue aliens if you don't see them!" Now I should mention that this is a
pretty straightforward walkthrough. It's not full of commentary or sarcasm, but the author goes out of
his way to mention this part. "Note: If this is the first key you pick up, "Admiral Jefferson will get as far as
saying 'We don't know...', then you sink. "You can finish his sentence
with '...when to shut up.'" ["We don't know what--"] "Thanks Admiral. Due to your
poor timing, everyone dies. "While spending time with your family, "be sure to mention how it
was you that killed them. "2,000 hours of testing didn't
indicate a problem here?" As much detail as this guy
put into the walkthrough, if HE is going out of his way to criticize
something so starkly, it must be pretty bad. HAHAHAHA! Okay, the missiles are good, too. So, with the help of the walkthrough,
I navigate the Egyptian temple, which is kind of weird since this game
takes place in the middle of the Pacific. Some of the sculptures
move, but only when I move. I like how we have a mystical
portal that could lead anywhere, but instead of taking
me to another dimension, it just takes me back three screens. Okay. We then exit the temple,
and I swear the Egyptians used the same sound effect for
their doors as "Doom" does. On the rest of the island, we
get more monsters to kill. Yeah! A volcano-- ["The volcano is about to erupt. I strongly
advise you do not continue on the path."] Yeah, thanks Admiral. That
never would've occurred to me. And then onto disc 3. Buh-bum-bummmm. Oh, what's this? We cannot save on disc 3. This is another one of those odd decisions. I guess that raises the suspense a bit, and it's not such a big problem since I can
save two-thirds of the way through the game, or even come back to the disc 2
part of the game and save again, but I don't know what to
think. This just threw me off. ["You have encountered the shattered hull
of a World War II Japanese destroyer. ["We have confirmed that the ship
was badly damaged by US aircraft ["and must've run aground on this reef."] Okay... is that important to the plot? ...or... anything? So the other half of the island is mostly
just a bunch of jungle, but, what's this? A UFO and my favorite
line in the game so far. ["It seems you've come
across an alien spacecraft. ["Now things are beginning
to make sense. More later."] I love how casually he says this. There's
no surprise in his voice whatsoever. "Oh, of course. Now this all
makes sense. Typical aliens." For some reason, I keep
imagining the President convening with his top military staff
about some sort of armed conflict, looking over some satellite photos, then
BAM! Admiral Jefferson steps up and says, "Ah. An alien spacecraft. Now
this is beginning to make sense." It would be perfect. This actor should
go down in history for this line. And remember, he said more
on this later. I can't wait. Anyway, he's right. It
IS an alien spacecraft, and I get part of the alien code
which the walkthrough says I need. And here is where I run into a new problem. I need three alien keys for a door I
need to open later. I have two of them. The walkthrough states that the last one
I need shows up in one of three places. Well now, let's talk about
the randomization of the game. This last key is in NONE of those
three spots. I checked over and over. The walkthrough is wrong. Not that I blame the creator.
I'm sure it's an honest mistake. He all ready went above and beyond creating
this walkthrough in the first place. He probably wasn't aware of THIS particular
alien key randomization algorithm that MY particular game happens to be using. So since it's not there, this
leaves me with one of two options: First, explore the entire
island from every angle! It's not enough just to
be in the same grid block. You won't see the key unless you're
not in exactly the right position. Now this is not my preferred option
because, not only do I have a timer running, but the key could be in another place that
will kill me if I stay there too long. OR... or... the key may not
even exist this time around. I would not put it past this game to SOMETIMES generate a playthrough
that you can't beat, either due to a bug or hey, maybe it's just a way to pad
out the length of the game some more. Well, I'm a believer in cutting
my losses when they're bad enough, so that leaves me stuck with option #2: Start a new game so I can roll the dice
and get a better alien key randomization. All my saves are useless now. [growls] Let's go. Boobadabeep beep beep bop beep
beep bop lop badeep bop bop... All right. So THIS time, I have the key. The only way I could get it was
to get mugged by the blue alien, but the walkthrough says that's
okay this late in the game. You've made your peace or
something. I don't know. So let's go to the big door. [alarm blaring]
And we are greeted by nonstop alarms [alarm blaring]
from my robot about radiation, EMP waves, [alarm blaring]
and alien energy. [alarm blaring]
WOW! I really appreciate [alarm blaring]
this slow-ass sequence [alarm blaring]
while these alarms [alarm blaring]
keep going off in my ear! [alarm blaring]
Ugh! Okay, I'll spare you. There's no
reason for all of us to suffer. Although I want to emphasize this
does NOT go away once I open the door. Oh! A boss! Let's do this! Fire... fire! FIRE! NOOO! I HIT THE BUTTON! I HIT THE FIRE BUTTON! THIS STUPID GAME ONLY DETECTS
THAT WHEN IT WANTS TO! AND I CAN'T RELOAD MY SAVE; I
HAVE TO GO BACK FROM THIS, TOO! RRRRAAAAAAAAGH! Beepdadop beep ba deebadop
bop boop beedabop beep bop. Okay, fingers crossed. I'm doing nothing differently;
I'm just more paranoid this time. Fire... fire! FIRE! YES! EAT LASERS, MOTHERFUCKER! ["Your laser charge is almost empty."] I know, I know! Come on! So I make it to an alien device and
these damned alarms are STILL GOING OFF! GOOD GOD! This is exactly what I want to hear while
concentrating on some sort of puzzle. Just end it! Please! Oh no. Another one. I'll speed this up for your sake. Oh god! We did it. The alarms stopped... I almost feel like this was the
only purpose of this game now: to make the alarms stop. Okay, backing up. Oh, what's this? Did I do that? I didn't press a button. ["Congratulations."]
Thanks. ["The situation seems under control. ["We knew we could count on you. ["In the name of the
country, we are grateful."] You're welcome. ["Good-bye for now, until the next time."] Wait, what about the aliens? You said this was starting to make
sense and would tell me more later. Well, it's later now, right? Now
you can explain what happened? And maybe why my drone is
getting launched into space? Hello? Okay, so here we are in space... Yep. But what's this? The Moon patrol! Of course, OF COURSE this is
"to be continued". [growls] So there's the ending. I'm sorry. I'm glad you're here to share this with me. Getting invested in a game, then
getting an ending like this to stew in by yourself helps shorten your life. I mean, look at this. Oh hey. Did you notice
there's no other music? One theme for the entire game. That's great. Oh! I'm a double winner! You know what? They say I could be the
first of 100 people to beat this game, I think that could be true. I thought about blurring out my
Victory Code, but you guys can have it. That's my gift to you. All right! Awards time.
This sure inspired some. First award: Best exit screen slot machine. I'm not big on slots, but
like so much about this game, I don't know what else to think of this. Next award: Blue aliens bad, yellow aliens
good. I'm glad they sorted that out. And the final award, I'm sure
some of you saw this coming: The ultimate PC videogame. It
says it right there on the box! How can you argue with that? Maabus is a game that leaves
me walking away confused. Like, what is Maabus? The game literally does
not say that word once. Why were the aliens here? What is this blue minotaur thing? You probably thought that was
the blue alien that robs you and blows up at the end, right? No! Look here on the slot machine.
That's obviously the teal alien. We never see THIS thing and it looks rad. What happened? Why does nothing get explained? The more I think about it, this game
needs yet another award, so here it is: Best story by a 6-year-old. It has everything thrown in
and nothing to tie it together. Here's how I imagine the
story pitch went down: "Okay so you're a super-soldier
who controls a robot "and your robot has toxic
darts and lasers and missiles "and the admiral tells you what to do "and he sends your robot to an island
that doesn't show up on any map..." ["The island of Alora Tora does
not appear on any regular map."] "...and you go through the jungle, "and mutants attack you but you shoot them
with the laser and blow their heads off "then you go through a swamp with alligators "and there's an old bridge "and a temple that was
built by the Egyptians..." ["The hieroglyphics in this temple ["bear a strong resemblance
to Egyptian hieroglyphics."] "...and a yellow alien
gives you a translator "but the blue alien takes it away again "but you leave the temple and you go to the
volcano and fight the pterodactyl--PEWWW!-- "and then there's a big shipwreck "and then you open the secret
door that's radioactive "and has alien energy "and you punch in the code and
stop the radiation and save Earth "and the admiral says you did good job "but more aliens are coming from the Moon. "I want ice cream." [music] [alarms] Whup! I didn't get target
lock. Where'd he go? Is he gone? Oh no! Get off! Stop! STOP! NOOOOO!
[removed]
I love Ross' Game Dungeon mainly because he somehow manages to find old obscure games I've played through and COMPLETELY forgot until he makes a video about it. It's like opening long lost memories or something.
That zoom-in to the Toronto skyline of the 90s was a pretty cool intro, made me do a double-take and watch it again, wasn't expecting that.
I feel like the look at the game itself is a bit of a letdown. Not a lot going on that's interesting except for that "Admiral" in his shabby thrift store duds. Feels like I've seen him in an early X-Files episode, or the story bits they had between porn scenes in the days where they still cared about plot.
Ross is a darling. I think of all of these big analysis or game review channels, or whatever you wanna call them, Ross is one of the more important. Very few people are willing to give up the attention of a hyped new release so that they can look at some ancient game no one has talked about in 10/15/however many years. It's good to know that someone is taking these obscure pieces of the medium's history and giving them a good dust-off, and archiving them somewhere so they get a little bit of immortality.
See this is one of the things I miss about 1990's CD-Rom games.
Take titles like Crusader or Command and Conquer, the acting is just huge cheese, the CGI when they use it looks just so damn awful or out of place when they have actors interacting with some of it. The music is so on point as Ross said. If there's voice acting in the game it sounds like your buddy DMing a game of Dungeons and Dragons and trying to get everyone into the setting and RP things out.
Keep in mind the games back then still had the same faults and the like that games today have. Lord knows I watched that intro to Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall a bunch due to crashes and saves getting corrupted. Still there was a charm to it all where the games at times felt like it was one step away from really being a Direct to VHS then on USA Up All Night movie.
One of the things I like about this series is how deep the cuts are. With the exception of some Deus Ex stuff, the majority of the games he's covered I've genuinely never heard of before.
Ross is so underrated. I encourage everyone to check him out, you can sink hours into his channel. He's the voice behind Freeman's mind
Oh yes. I've been waiting (impatiently) for a new Ross Scott video. Now to feign a terrible illness to escape from the workplace.
I've found myself recently checking his channel for updates on an almost daily basis. I've been fiending for some more game dungeon.