Beavis And Butt-Head's '90s Adventure Game Still Rules
In the 1990s the point-and-click adventure was king, and games like Monkey Island, Police Quest, Broken Sword, Myst, and Gabriel Knight were played by millions. Graphic adventures had suddenly become big business, and the genre was enjoying a golden era. The arrival of CD-ROMs helped, allowing developers to take advantage of FMV and voice acting. Not to mention higher res displays and players whose tastes were growing more refined. Arcade games didn't cut it anymore. People wanted to be told stories, not score points.
As is often the case when something becomes successful, publishers enthusiastically threw money at adventure game developers, which resulted in some truly weird, wonderful examples of the genre. There was Toonstruck, where a digitised Christopher Lloyd is transported to a cartoon world. Dark Seed, a mind-bending psychological horror with art by H.R. Giger. The Neverhood, whose world and characters were sculpted out of clay. No genre of game since has experienced such a prolonged period of wild creativity.
Related: Blade Runner Is A Masterclass In Turning A Movie Into A Video Game
Then, in the mid-to-late '90s the wider world took notice, and licensed adventure games became a thing. Batman, Dune, Blade Runner, The Simpsons, Star Trek, Ace Ventura, and The X-Files all received the adventure game treatment—as did a controversial cartoon that was making waves on MTV and outraged headlines in the tabloids. In 1995, Beavis and Butt-Head was into its sixth season, and these crass, sniggering, metal-loving losers had made enough of a cultural impact to cross over into the world of video games.
The '90s were a period when anything even vaguely adult or subversive was inevitably blamed for destroying the minds of
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