Plan 9 from Outer Space

Ed Wood. A name that in certain circles functions as a punchline all by itself. The man who in 1957 directed Plan 9 from Outer Space — a film so earnestly tragic that it became a cult gem of B-movie horror. Bela Lugosi managed to film a few shots before his death, the rest of his role performed by the director's relative with a cape over his face. And in 1992, Irish studio Gremlin Ireland decided this was perfect material for an adventure game.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is a point-and-click adventure set in the world of Wood's film — flying saucers, zombified corpses, a small American town in panic. You move freely through an environment loosely inspired by the source material and try to navigate a story full of cheap horror clichés that work here intentionally, with a knowing wink.

The controls are standard for the adventure genre of that era — you click, combine objects, talk to characters. Nothing revolutionary. The problem lies elsewhere: puzzle logic occasionally veers into territory where neither Freud nor a detective could explain why exactly this object belongs exactly there. The graphics are functional, but without any particularly distinctive style — the EGA/VGA palette looks period-appropriate enough, but next to LucasArts titles from the same year it comes across as just a gray curtain. The audio on PC Speaker or Sound Blaster won't thrill or depress you.

What keeps the game afloat is the theme itself. Taking Wood's film as the basis for an adventure was a crowd-pleaser in 1992 — B-movie horror fans got a sense of insider knowledge, others at least got a curiosity. The game's humor knows what it wants to be and doesn't overstep. That's a virtue in this niche. Today the game has aged decently in terms of concept, less so in execution — the pacing and difficulty aren't balanced enough to convince players without nostalgic attachment to see it through to the end.

Nowadays it's mainly played by those who have a connection to Wood's filmography or collect oddities from gaming history's margins. In a browser via DOSBox anyone who wants to experience how the nineties tried to cash in on cult films can click through it in an afternoon. It's not a grand revelation, but as an artifact of its time — when you could still make a game about the world's worst filmmaker and mean it as a compliment — it has its place.