The Last Resort, Robert De Niro's Forgotten '90s Adventure Game | Hacker News Reader

The Last Resort, Robert De Niro's Forgotten '90s Adventure Game

atlasobscura.com

96 pointstintinnabula12 comments

I loved this game. One of the more satisfying computer games I remember playing in the 90s.

I have no idea how I got it, I almost certainly didn't buy it. I'm guessing the CD-Rom came free with our family Gateway 2000 desktop.

Yes, I had a copy that came with a Gateway 2000 that was purchased around 96/97.

Also came with MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries, SPQR, & Deadlock.

Oh, cow boxes. Unfortunately, my last memory of Gateway was after they'd declined to physical stores and a sales rep sold my mother a machine without an AGP slot as "perfect for gaming" as a surprise Christmas gift.

I remember picking this game up from the budget bin at my local toy store as a kid. It came in a beautiful retail box full of weird goodies, that was normally reserved for premium games 10x the price. The game itself looked gorgeous as well. I was probably still too immature and definitely understood too little English to appreciate the story and humor at the time, but I remember it being weird as hell.

It's a shame there is no easy way to play these old games on a modern iPad/iPhone. Seems like such an appropriate platform for the art form and gameplay.

I'm almost certain games like this could be played through DOSBox on iOS (the DOSPad project, for example) ..

The game has never been re-released to run on modern machines, making it incredibly difficult, if not nearly impossible, to play now.

You can play it by setting up windows 3 in DOSbox

Funny how memories express themselves in reality. I was just thinking of this game the other day, and how unique the experience of playing it was as a young adult. Very interesting to read the back story behind its making all of these years later.

This place

   http://www.old-games.com/getfree/16972

claims to have one that will run on modern windows

Even at launch time review, the critic was more concerned about trashing Myst than the game to be reviewed:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/nine-review/1900-2543940/

> Even with names like De Niro, Tyler, and Cher involved it is only rarely referenced.

I find that a happy thought - they weren't able to throw celebrity at a game and make it popular.

It can also be an unhappy thought: sometimes a great offbeat work can't reach the BS consuming masses, even when you throw celebrity and money to market it, because they just want more of the same plastic crap...

Then you realize that it's not necessarily the celebrities that help shallow crap sell, but the other way around: people want shallow crap and create celebrities of those who make it.

I think my favorite part of that game was Cher as the voice of the fortune-telling machine. The whole part of the fortune telling machine was to allow you to save your in-game progress in exchange for coins.

Probably the first game ever that hired a celebrity to narrate the "Save Your Progress" feature.

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