Deja Vu 1: A Nightmare Comes True

<i>Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!!</i> is the first game made by ICOM, known for its adventure games such as Shadowgate and Uninvited. It featured mouse support, a multi-window interface, and bitmapped graphics at a time when text-based interactive fiction was the norm. <p></p><p>In <i>Deja Vu</i>, action takes place in Chicago in December 1941. Your character's name is Theodore "Ace" Harding - a retired boxer working as a private eye. He wakes up in a toilet stall of a sleazy pub with no memory of who he is or what he is doing there. To make matters worse, you as him soon stumble upon a very dead corpse upstairs with three bullets buried in him. Sure enough, you find there's a gun in your pocket with three bullets missing. From there you have to figure out what happened and who you are before whatever is happening to your brain turns you into a mindless vegetable. To make matters worse the cops would very much like to have a word with you about that stiff.</p>

<p>This game was from the same company that brought us Shadowgate, but is a very different game. I enjoyed the game pretty much from start to finish and the story was very interesting and had a decent amount of depth to it. The mouse driven interface was very interesting and friendly for a game from 1985. There were issues with the interface and some of the “puzzles” were made more difficult because of it. Reading the text, of which there was a lot, was also fairly difficult, but I feel some of that was an issue with the emulator and not game itself. Overall, this game was a fun experience that I would recommend.</p>