Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Zak McKracken is a tabloid reporter (and not a very good one at that). When he has a psychedelic dream one day, he realizes something is wrong - aliens are dumbing down the public via the phone system. Zak needs to stop this, but he can't do it alone. After finding a strange crystal, Zak enlists the help of anthropologist Annie and her friends Melissa and Leslie. The four unlikely heroes must now find a way to destroy the dumbing down devices and save the Earth. Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a third-person puzzle adventure and is similar in gameplay to Lucasfilm's groundbreaking title Maniac Mansion. The player chooses verb commands (open, pick up, give, etc.; there are no commands to look or speak) to interact with the game world. The game has up to four controllable protagonists; it is possible to switch between them at any time after they are introduced, and also to exchange inventory items when the characters are in the same location. The game can be described as a "globe-spanning" adventure, since the heroes have to travel to different exotic lands and even leave Earth for a while to finish the game. Some of the puzzles are optional or can be solved in different ways. The FM Towns version has VGA graphics with 256 colors and higher quality music and sound effects.