It Came From The Desert

An interesting arcade/adventure with too many silly dead-ends for its own good. The gameplay of the action sequences in particular is mediocre at best. The overall narrative and presentation have nothing to do with the original Amiga version, but the streaming video sequences are quite impressive in their own way - especially if one considers that its a mere CD-ROM game (not SCD) which only uses the 64 KB RAM of the TurboGrafx. The acting is usually very cheesy and tongue-in-cheek, but it somehow serves well the kitsch nature of the game. Good mention to the original score by Ken Melville, which I found well crafted and appropriate to the heavy climax - except for the ridiculous title song, but I guess thats part of its charm too :) One last note: Cinemaware was not directly involved in this conversion, and it really shows. But its definitely not as bad as the short-lived It Came from the Desert 2 on the Genesis!

ICFTD on the PCE/TG16 really has a charm on its own, especially when you like the cheesy atmosphere and look of B/C-movies. The overacting and clichéd roles add up to this feel. That was one of the reasons why I bought it and liked in playing it. Of course the colour palette of the video sequences is ultra low and looks extremely dated by now, but it is not so far from what computer games with CDROm video content were able to deliver in 1991! And like <kaminari> said in his review its quite an accomplishment to make seamless streaming video happen on such a low memory console; I was astonished at how stable it actually plays. If you are into early multimedia CDROM games/content like me, then it´s definitely worth for you buying it.