The Journeyman Project 1: Pegasus Prime

I've finished this game after playing The Journeyman Project Turbo!, 2 and 3 first. I had never played them before but knew of them when they were originally released. I was pleasantly surprised by Turbo! It's a bit of a historical curio, but a fun, quirky relic that's a large part multimedia PC showcase. The game itself is a little thin on the ground, but short and sweet. It's a little rough around the edges, but still holds together well. This remake was an attempt to make a more accomplished version of the original, but it doesn't succeed in doing this. There's more animation, some more puzzles and extra sections. None of these add anything to the experience, however. The movement is very slow, the extra puzzles don't add much depth and the game was better without the extra sections. Of particular annoyance are the "action" bits, where you occasionally steer left or right, sometimes with little information on where you should go. They're not particularly hard, but they don't work and detract from the experience. "Action" sections that are in both versions are superior in the older one (the Mars ship fight and the nuclear silo section). That's saying something since they're rudimentary enough in the original! The new interface is somehow worse than the original. In that, you could use the mouse, with keyboard controls for some functions. In Pegasus Prime, you must use the keyboard for some things, with odd keys to bring up things like the inventory and biochip screen. The inventory is limited and the game will remove items you may want once you run out of space. This new version is missing several great tunes from the original, like the time travel and Mars ship launch ones. There's more of a blandness to this make-over and it has lost some of the personality and quirkiness that made the original so endearing. Not that it was a masterpiece, it's just better, faster and with better gameplay. Why take out what worked and replace it with more of what doesn't?

I originally play The Journeyman Project Turbo years ago when it came packaged with a Packard Bell PC and it's near the top of my list for all time great gaming experiences. Not so much for the great gameplay, it's actually quite slow paced and clunky, but because I had never, and I'm not sure I have since, experienced such a phenomenal atmospheric setting. The graphics have been improved in a big way and there are several modifications from the original game throughout including some enhanced sequences with new gameplay elements included. For the most part, these changes are welcome but some did grate against my nostalgic memories of the game. The story is a little contrived but for the most part is compellingly presented. It is a time travel story and is subject to the same plot issues as all other time travel stories. However, I didn't encounter any moments that challenged my suspension of disbelief. I do feel that the story is more interesting in the beginning of the game and becomes less driving in the latter half. The music serves particularly well at immersing the player in the setting. It just fits, it did in the original, and it still does today. It is one of my favorite parts about the game. Most of the interface is taken up by your ocular interface...thingy, leaving only a small window to view the world. This has been redesigned in Pegasus Prime and I actually feel that the old interface was more immersive. The small view window itself, while successfully played off as part of the first-person view of the the ocular device in the original game, just screams of technical limitations today. My enjoyment of The Journeyman Project Turbo was apparently a product of the right game at the right TIME. Although I did enjoy playing through it again, this just isn't the right TIME anymore. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the series or the genre. I think anyone not in those categories might be turned off by the dated gameplay and interface.

I remember sneaking out of my room at night to sneak into my Father's office to play the Journeyman Project Turbo way back when. Those days were full of trying to figure out and map ALL the areas, and attempting to complete the puzzles that would at times boggle my young brain. The series as a whole deserves to be remembered. When I saw this version in a gaming magazine, when it was targeted for the first Playstation and Macintosh back then, I was hopeful we'd see a PC release of it some day. Twenty-some years later, my wish is fulfilled. The port is overall functional, too! There was a point in college where a group of friends attempted to bring it to life in the Source Engine, and any research they had to do by playing the game required emulating the MacOS on a PC, which wasn't ideal. If only we had this version back then,... man. However, if I had to choose between this version and Turbo... I might have stuck with Turbo for "certain" things. Where there was a simple but concise block of text in a pop-up window with a light and a small alarm, there is now a bland, blue-faced AI reading information at you like the script is dangling in front of her face. She's ARHTUR Alpha Vers. 0.4, and they haven't even begun to program a good personality for her to make her less annoying or boring to listen to. If I could skip her dialogue, I would. Speaking of skipping things, while the pre-rendered canned cinematics to move through an environment were a fun way to make you "feel" like you were playing a game with real 3D graphics at ultra-hi fidelity (for the timeee ... ), these days I'd appreciate a "zip mode" like Riven has to skip through some of these lengthy point-to-point walking sequences, or any sequence. Just a thought ... Acting is about as cheesy in this game as can be expected, but I can get past it, since this was the "garage band" era of games. You got what you could get... Like I said, it's Great, but I think it could have been better ...

First game I bought on GoG, worth it for the extra additions like better CG and improved music. I loved this series when I was a kid! I own the original Mac version boxed and an old Mac I can play it on, but still wanted to get this version. I think Pegasus Prime holds up better than JMP2! I like how you can use the arrow keys to move. I was kinda disappointed they changed the music in the opening cinema, but the enhanced music in the apartments won me over. Worth playing if you like Sci Fi and are a fan of the Journeyman Project series!

The easiest way to describe this game is as a more action-oriented sci-fi version of Myst, with less emphasis on puzzles and more on plot and danger. As agent Blackwood, an apparent lazy slacker who somehow has the most important job in the universe, you must stop a xenophobic terrorist from altering history to prevent humanity from joining an intergalactic alliance with a peaceful alien race. The stakes are refreshingly idealistic and the futuristic environment is fun to explore and has a lot of fun Star Trek-ish devices to show you what a utopia the human race has achieved and provide some basic backstory. There are a lot of ways to die in this game, but most of them require you to ignore an obvious warning or be blundering around while not paying attention, and there's an option to continue right before you made your mistake. The exception would be the driving action sequences, where you have to quickly choose left or right and it's often pure luck whether your guess was correct, because there's not always any indication. Luckily, there's no way to get actually stuck, as all the deaths are reversible and the energy timer that counts down throughout the game refills whenever you jump to a different era. The controls are certainly clunky and slow by modern standards but better than most similar games of that time, and with a couple exceptions the puzzles are fair and not impossible to figure out on your own, as well as not requiring any pixel-hunting. All of the characters have personality and give the game a fun, lively atmosphere. The acting is amateur but charming- a lot of the characters, especially the scientists, are super cheesy and exaggerated, but in a way that's enjoyable without crossing over into a full-on parody, and the villains play it completely straight, preserving the sense of menace. I haven't tried the original version to compare, but Pegasus Prime was definitely worth playing. Grab it when it's on sale sometime!