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Hunchback: The Adventure1986

Hunchback: The Adventure

1986 Ocean Software

Overview

As they went on to demonstrate with Nightbreed, Ocean wasn't afraid to try a few different approaches to licensed material once they'd gotten their mitts on it, which is how you explain following up not one but two run-and-jump platform games with a text adventure game -- the change in approach a breath of fresh air and, perhaps, a response to critics suggesting that rehashing the same old thing is getting tired and stale. Many arcade games of the period would have a hard time with the transition, lacking enough of a skeleton of plot to flesh out with characters and events, but the Hunchback franchise has always enjoyed descent from one of the greatest works of French fiction (not incidentally long since in the public domain, hence ripe for free squeezing), Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris... even if it hadn't made terribly extensive use of its heritage up to this title. You are still Quasimodo, deformed ward of the Church, and you still quest for the favour and well-being of gypsy Esperalda,...