I'm sort of torn about covering games like today's for ST-urday. No, not because it's French, but because it's currently available to purchase from an online retailer. (That would be GOG, of course, since this game is over 20 years old.) It presents a moral quandary concerning emulation which is only slightly mitigated by the fact that every game I've covered for ST-urday thus far have been games I personally own for the Atari ST. However, precious few games I've demonstrated in this feature have been made available in any sort of modern convenient fashion: short of buying the original physical media off eBay, there's little hope that the non-console games I've covered in previous ST-urdays will be made as easily accessible any time soon. Presenting a game that is available on GOG might spur enough interest for a few additional sales for that title, and there's no harm I can see with that.
Of course, the other matter is that I'm trying to be a little off the beaten path here in order to get the most out of this half-LP, half-tutorial format - there'd be little point in trying to describe a game and how it plays in detail if everyone's already familiar with it - so it's less effective when I'm showing off games that received US SNES/Genesis ports or is regularly featured in GOG sales. Then again, it's largely inescapable when covering some of the best and most memorable games the ST had to offer: the ST wasn't an island, for as little attention as it got outside of Europe, and most of its hits were hits on other systems too.
For these reasons and more, I've decided that it couldn't hurt if I were to show off the occasional game that anyone can go buy right now. Just, you know, keep in mind that I don't get any referral bonuses or anything. I'm literally just going through my pile of floppies and plucking some fond memories from the heap. By which I mean disks, not... never mind. There'll be plenty of dumb entendre humor with today's game anyway.
Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon
The Gobliiins series (which changes the number of "i"s in the name of each game dependent on that game's number of protagonists) is the product of oddball French company Coktel Vision. Giant Bomb premium members might know these guys better for the inscrutable Inca and its sick panflute-solo theme tune that got Jeff's head bobbing. For a majority of Coktel's extant fans, though, they're best known for a distinctive cartoon style that shows up in all the Gobliiins games and their lesser hit The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble. (Well, those and softcore erotic adventure games like Emmanuelle, Fascination and Geisha. But if you were, say, ten years old in 1992, Gobliiins was probably the thing you knew Coktel for.)
The Gobliiins series in particular are fantasy-themed adventure games that resemble The Hobbit crossed with Looney Tunes: the player, as one or more of the titular goblins, must deduce a series of adventure game puzzle solutions that will allow them to pass to the next level. Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon does some unique things with its multiple protagonist concept: for instance, the personalities of the two heroes of Gobliins 2 couldn't be any more different, and interacting with hotspots in the environment with either of them will lead to different results. Fingus is the normal-looking fellow who is shy, introverted, cowardly but fairly bright; Winkle, meanwhile, is completely crazy, belligerent, tough and not too smart. Puzzles are often designed with one or both in mind, though the player needs to experiment to figure out how the pieces fit together. It starts getting Rube Goldberg-ian in later stages, as the player switches from one goblin to the other to complete all the necessary steps in a puzzle to collect a new item or unlock some other means of progression. The game's also not big on inventory or permanence either: puzzles often reset themselves by necessity if the player screws up during any stage, and the goblins can only carry a handful of items. Another curious aspect is that the game has considerably less text than other adventure games: most of the jokes work on the basis of silent movie style visual slapstick, and there's only a few NPCs that the duo can talk to with nothing in the way of dialogue trees and the like. They'll have a few hints each (depending on who talks to them) and are essentially additional hotspots to play around with.
It all works better than it sounds. The second game, which is the only one I originally own, feels like it might've streamlined some of the teething troubles from the first game, which had three protagonists (hence "Gobliiins") and was, I imagine, a little more chaotic. The game also looks great opting as it did for an evergreen cartoon pixel style that still looks sharp and colorful today. I admired its attention to detail back in 1992 and continue to do so today.
This intro video fills you in on the basic plot details: the King's son is kidnapped by a demon, necessitating the service of a couple of heroic goblins. The wizard narrator guy also gets into a Tomy & Jerry style battle of wits with a bee flying around the room. It's meant to establish both the thin plot and the game's comedic sensibilities going forward, I suspect.Welcome to Gobliins 2! That sure is a lot of French people!This is Fingus and Winkle: our heroes. Fingus is the pale-skinned one on the left, while Winkle is the pointy blue one.By checking out these flowers, we get a sense of the personalities of these two characters. Fingus plucks one, looks forlorn at how sickly it is, and places it back.Conversely, Winkle just eats one because why not.This personality divide also applies to how they talk to NPCs. Fingus asks this pair of old men for the destination of a wizard we were sent to get into contact with for more information on our quest. They helpfully point out that he's at the end of the village on the screen to the right.Winkle's a little less polite than his pal......though his approach did net us an additional clue. There's only one piece of food around here and it's the sausage belonging to the "notable" on the left there.The notable isn't particularly eager to help us out. Looks like we're going to have to take this sausage with a little subterfuge.Fingus politely asks the notable for the sausage if you try clicking it (and gets told off) but Winkle will actually make an effort to grab it.He gets sent flying off the screen when the notable takes exception to his plan.And the old men start laughing at us.The old men are also unwilling to part with this empty bottle. Maybe they're hoping to get a five cents recycling fee?However, by combining these last two observations, we can concoct a co-operative scheme where Winkle gets whacked with the sausage while Fingus snatches the bottle as the old men are distracted with the schadenfreude (wait, I thought this game was French not German?).Whenever you solve a puzzle, one or both of the goblins gives you a little thumbs up. Sometimes the encouragement is nice.I mentioned earlier that Fingus is the "smart one". That essentially boils down to mechanical devices like this switch, which launches whoever is standing on the welcome mat onto the roof. There's not much we can do here yet: the notable intercepts any attempts to purloin his pork. Instead, let's check the wizard's house to the right.This is one of the game's load screens. Travelling to a new area, even one I've been to, requires a 10-15 second load. Don't you miss early computers?Not even the frogs around here are friendly. I want to take the stone this one is sitting on, but didn't account for the fact that it's some kind of hideous mutant frog.The wizard won't see us, either. We'll need to figure out a way to get inside his house without him spotting us.The fountain has a secret switch that only Fingus can activate (to his chagrin); if you try with Winkle, he'll just give you a thumbs up because he finds the statue hot.Yet another co-operative puzzle. Fingus gets to first base while Winkle fills the bottle. You actually need to do this three times in total: the game's one detriment is that you have to repeat a lot of these puzzles, either because you failed a puzzle at some stage or because certain objects get reused a few times.With a full bottle of water, Winkle takes a glug and spits it at the toad to force it to run off. Not the most elegant solution to a puzzle, but Winkle's brute force route works more often than not.We're done here too, but I thought I'd show off the game's UI. There's the obvious floppy disk save/load option, the "jokers" which are a finite number of hints, the inventory sack (though you can access inventory at any time with the right click), this "exchange of objects" button for when the duo are separated and the signpost, which automatically takes you to an area of your choosing. I forget what the scroll and screw do: they're presently inaccessible.Fast-travelling to the giant on the hill (it's very helpful that I didn't need to come here first to access it on the fast-travel), we have more unhelpful animals to contend with. This obstinate chicken has teeth for some reason.The dog does not allow anyone to pass by, so it's the first obstacle between us and the exit.Some classic cartoon physics as Fingus sticks his hand down a mysterious hole (always a good idea), only to get it pounded by the dog.Winkle's hand, meanwhile, is... I'm not sure how this is possible.By pouring water on the flowers (after refilling the bottle), they spring back to life. The notable takes one whiff and falls asleep, allowing us to finally kidnap that kielbasa.What? You have a better system for getting eggs? I'd like to hear it.The sausage, which has endless potential as a blunt weapon, allows Fingus to use the hole to smash the dog right in its stupid face. I'd be concerned about animal cruelty, but we've already established that this dog is an asshole. While it's reeling, Winkle can slip past.Entering the hole in the side of the tree, Winkle can... what?Entering the hole in the side of the tree, Winkle can find his way down and push this rock out of the way. The resulting tunnel now lets both goblins pass the dog whenever they wish.Alas, the sleepy giant isn't too friendly either. I dunno, I'm sensing a lot of hostility around these parts. Looks like we won't be able to stir him until we light that fire and fry something delicious on it.So, it's back to the wizard. In one of the game's less obvious puzzles, Fingus tosses a rock to activate this rope bridge (Winkle refuses, since he's useless with mechanical objects) that he then has to hold in place for Winkle.That's... not normal. The wizard isn't keen on trespassers evidently.Alright, so I forgot he was a wizard and the distraction trick won't work on him. Either that or he has some exceptionally long arms.Eventually, we try his patience enough clicking on every part of his roof until he finally relents and lets us in. I gotta say, I don't feel particularly satisfied with this puzzle solution.Cozy place the wiz has here. Like that it has the same orange/blue color scheme as the outside too. We can talk to him, and he simply directs us to the far end of the village where a castle awaits. The castle has been taken over by demons, so maybe we'll figure out where they're keeping the Prince.The wizard dozes off after we've talked to him, but there's still the matter of figuring out how to wake the sleeping giant, and Pearl Harbor's too far from here. This was one of the few puzzles I remembered from playing the first time: Winkle stamps on the tail of this fur carpet, allowing Fingus to (quickly) grab the matches in its mouth.With the matches (and yet another bottle full of water), we can activate this kettle and reveal a key for the cuckoo clock from the steam.And then it's simply a matter of Winkle throwing a stone at the mechanical cuckoo after Fingus winds it up.That key leads to this cellar, which reveals a bottle of wine. I bet the giant's going to enjoy that!So now all that's needed is to wake up the giant with this fried egg......feed his hunger and quench his thirst with the sausage (goodbye weapon) and wine...And we're allowed past onto pastures new. There's even a disk change prompt and everything, so this is an ideal place to stop.
That's the first "level" of Gobliins 2, though many more follow. I'm always talking about episodic adventure games in the sense of how an adventure game will present a series of disconnected, discrete puzzle rooms between which little gets carried over (rather than a more literal interpretation such as Telltale's model of serial adventure modules) and Gobliins is one of the earliest types of that adventure game of which I am aware. I'll have the same objects I left the last area with - the matches, the stone and the bottle - but I won't be going back to that village nor will have I any reason to do so. It's refreshing to consider that I'll only ever have a handful of screens, objects and hotspots at any given time with which to solve the game's next headscratcher.
The game still holds up, the occasional moon-logic puzzle notwithstanding, and I'm more eager to keep playing via my copy of the GOG Gobliiins bundle than I was previously - if only to curtail the amount of loading screens I'd have to sit through with this older disk-based version. There's still something so goofy and endearing about these games, in spite of the mechanical complexity (and occasional repetition) of some of its puzzles.
