The Space Bar
Sold Out		(Win95/Mac) (Retail) (SPACEBARDR)

SegaSoft

Game

Ages 17 and up

A Comic Sci-Fi Adventure by Steve Meretzky

Welcome to the Space Bar.

Play as Alias Node, a human detective working on planet Armpit VI. Your assignment? Catch a shifty criminal wanted for grand theft and murder before he escapes the planet.

Clues to the criminal's whereabouts point to a seedy spaceport bar. No easy task - picking out a criminal from the motley assortment of aliens you find there. You have no idea who - or what - you're looking for but interviewing aliens is the only way to track the suspect. You'll want to stay well past "last call" in order to crack this comic case!

Three discs of hilarious gameplay

Hundreds of puzzles to solve

Smooth-motion 360° views of imaginative alien environments

Game design by award-winning adventure game designer Steve Meretzky of Infocom fame.

Character design by Ron Cobb, conceptual designer of the aliens in the Star Wars cantina scene.

Requirements:

Windows: Windows 95, Pentium 75, 16 MB RAM, 16-Bit SVGA graphics, 4X CD-ROM drive, 8-Bit Windows 95 Direct X-compatible sound card, Microsoft-compatible keyboard and mouse.

Macintosh: Power PC 6100, System 7.5 or better, 4X CD-ROM, 16 MB RAM, color monitor.

Reviews:

Computer Shopper, November 1997

"Looking for some out-of-this-world adventure? Then drop into The Space Bar for a nightcap and some extraterrestrial encounters.

"Your persona is Alias Node, a slightly xenophobic rent-a-cop for the Amalgamated Vacuum Corp., a company that mines Uptite on the dismal backwater planet Armpit VI. In the guise of Alias, you track a murderer into a squalid spaceport bar called the Thirsty Tentacle. As you have been trained in an interrogation technique called Empathy Telepathy, you can enter the mind of a suspect and relive a memory through his/her/whatever's eyes. Fortunately for the game play, the Thirsty Tentacle is populated by a bizarre assemblage of aliens. As you question each one, you relive an episode that provides you with a series of challenges (sort of a mini-adventure game within the main story line). By solving each puzzle, you gain a clue that will help you solve the mystery on Armpit VI.

"Much of the game's originality stems from its ability to let players view life from some really weird perspectives. You can chat extensively with any sentient being, and experience existence through the segemented eyes of a Zzazzl, or live something out as a Neblitz, whose entire life is spent inside a mayonnaise jar. Our favorite character, the Vedj, is an engaging botanical life-form that dislikes humans because we eat fruit and indulge in potting helpless houseplants - a gross form of floral enslavement. The entire game is infused with hilarious concepts, making the exploration process especially delightful."

"...Although you can die in this game, you can have unlimited saved scenarios to take you back to where you were before you unadvisedly tried to open the grate with the fishing spear. We found the puzzles difficult, but refreshingly logical - unlike Obsidian, for example, which seemed to include an inordinate number of mystifying and pointless actions.

"Designed by veteral game developer Steve Meretsky, The Space Bar has gorgeous graphics and 360-degree panoramic movement. On our 200MHz Pentium, panning was silky-smooth. Our sole complaint is there's a fair amount of disc swapping between the game's three CDs, but given the extensive, well-done scenery, it was worth the annoyance.

"If you're looking for chaming, nonviolent entertainment, buy The Space Bar."

Quandary Reviews by Gordon Aplin (December 1997)

"'The Space Bar in question is not a warm, cosy, friendly watering-hole like Callahan's, but a seedy spaceport transit lounge called The Thirsty Tentacle on the aptly-named planet of Armpit VI. This is a company-controlled mining planet and you are Alias Node, a company cop and, being the only human around, you are strangely alien to the other life-forms that you meet. Worse still, they think you look like Jerry Lewis, but then, all humans look alike, don't they? And, what would a Zzazzl know? Or a Neblitzi who lives in a mayonnaise jar, or a Vedj, for that matter? Well, this game gives you the chance to find out exactly what these and other life-forms know as, at some stage, you will experience the last few 'time-periods' of eight quirky characters in their own environments."

"...In the bar you will meet lots of characters to engage in conversation, so pick out a likely looking suspect and talk to him or her or it. As a company cop you have been trained to use 'Empathy Telepathy' so after talking for a while you may trigger a flashback where you re-live that character's recent memory. Usefully, this involves the sequence of events that lead up to the character arriving at the Space Bar and takes place on their home world. These flashbacks are actually mini-adventures where you 'become' the character and see things from their perspective. Each story is self-contained and you must solve the puzzles and overcome the obstacles that each character faced, as you learn of their motives for travelling to the Space Bar."

"As each flashback segment is completed you are rewarded with a piece of information that will ultimately assist you to track down the criminal in the bar. Remember, that's what you came here to do. Remember, too, to save your game regularly as it is easy to be thrown out of a flashback and this will enable you to avoid repeating huge chunks of play."

"The Space Bar is one of the most challenging graphic adventure games I have played in a long while with some quite complex and absorbing puzzles. However, not all of the game is fiendishly difficult and there is plenty to do to keep you moving, as long as you pick up the clues and anything else that isn't nailed down. Adventurer's weaned on text games will find much to delight them here and so will any player who is looking for variety, humour and the occasional brick wall to hit their head against. This one will test you."

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