Fantastic Four

The 1986 Fantastic Four game isn't a miracle, but it manages to hold your attention longer than you'd expect from a computer adaptation of comics from that era.

It's a text adventure with puzzle elements where your task is to help a team of superheroes solve various problems and situations in New York. It's not a graphically rich beast — the essence lies in text descriptions and your ability to deduce what you should do next. You enter commands classically, using the keyboard, and the game responds with messages that more or less try to evoke the atmosphere of the Marvel universe.

How does it play? You progress through locations, collect items, solve logic puzzles, and try not to get stuck anywhere. Sometimes you pick a specific team member — individual characters have slightly different abilities, which at least occasionally leads to different solutions. The problem is that the game isn't exactly kind about explaining what the heck you're supposed to do. If you ask nowadays when you can't remember where you were supposed to go next, the fun's over. Consulting a guide is essential, and that already ruins the experience.

The early days of computer games didn't nail accessibility with this kind of ambition. The game thinks it's smarter than the player, and if you don't push something in precisely the right order, you're stuck. It's not elegant — rather frustrating. So if you remember Infocom and their beautifully written stories, this will feel like a budget version.

Nevertheless, it's a piece of retro curiosity that tried to do something on a computer at a time when 8-bit consoles dominated. The characters aren't just empty shells — there's an attempt at some personality. And when you finally manage to solve a knotty problem, you get at least a moment of satisfaction.

Today you can play it in an emulator or in a browser if you want to experience what computer games looked like when shooters were just being born and stories were told in letters. It won't be the best hours of your life, but for lovers of classic adventures and comics from that era, it can be an interesting trip down memory lane.