Pegasus Prime
Review by Orb
Pegasus Prime is an anomaly as far as adventure games
go. Firstly, it was designed and released for Macintosh, Apple
Pippin, and the Japanese version of Sony Playstation. Secondly,
and more interestingly, it is actually an updated version of an
earlier release, the original Journeyman Project. Is it
a different story? Well, no. Does it play differently? Well ...
yes. Is it worth it to the Mac gamer who's already paid for and
played the first JP? Let's take a look.
The story starts in 2318, in the skyborne city of Caldoris. Humanity
has unified and is about to be accepted into the Symbiotry of
Peaceful Beings, an invitation offered by aliens called the Cyrollians.
At the same time, a time travel machine has been invented, which,
by its sheer power to alter the course of historical events, threatens
Caldoris's entrance into the Symbiotry. You play the game as Gage
Blackwood, Agent 5 of the Temporal Protectorate, a government
agency established to protect this technology from falling into
the wrong hands. The time travel machine itself is called "Pegasus."
(Get it? "Pegasus" Prime?) The player's job, as Gage,
is to stop a terrorist that's behind a series of rips in time.
Fans of the series definitely know this beat; it's a good old-fashioned
Golden Age of Science Fiction style of story.
One of the things added to Pegasus by the designers is
some seriously fun cinematic sequences, traveling around in a
sub and flying through the air in a spaceshipreally, they
have a bit of the feel of a Disneyland ride to them. The look
and texture of the game has been redesigned, taking some of the
more cartoonish elements out and adding more of the style of visual
science fiction that's become popularized with the advent of the
Star Wars serieslots of used-looking equipment and
photorealistic areas that have a very human feel to themnone
of that 2001 sterility, if you please. There is more depth to
the design, added rooms, characters, puzzlesyou name it.
And it's packed onto four CDs, quite a bit more than the original,
which came on a single disk.
Ambient sounds of Gage (you) creaking around in his rubbery suit
are fabulous, all the way down to the rubber soles of his boots.
The music, however, in many places is a weak point of the game,
sounding suspiciously as though it were lifted from a Chuck Norris
movie, although the music in the Mars Colony sequences was nicely
spacey.
This is not a simple game. Although gameplay is very nonlinear,
you do have a specific set of tasks to perform. And although in
some instances you are given a straight puzzle to get through,
in many more you are playing with objects that very much revolve
around the texture of the story itself.
The game is designed with a couple of different hint systems,
both delivered by a very serious-looking female talking head that's
basically Agent 5's onboard AI. Firstly, there is a warning given
if the player moves to an area of the game where Gage will be
caught by other people or a robot or two. So it's easy enough,
using this system, to navigate the sometimes honeycomb-like halls
of the various sites transported to during gameplay.
There are also two modes of gameplay, Adventure, for the hard-core
player, and Walkthrough, where the player is given a series of
hints when requested, then a solve during some of the more complex
parts of the game where timing is of the essence. A wonderful
device for the novice, as many of the game sequences are timed.
And yes indeedy, PP has something almost unheard-of in
adventure gaming, a timed maze! But don't be put off by this,
it's very doable, and the game thoughtfully comes with an onscreen
mapping device that keeps the player from getting too turned around.
Okay, but is it different enough from the original JP, you
ask? Most definitely. Some irritating things have been eliminated,
such as an access code the player needs to get rolling that's
in the game docs, not the game. Puzzles have been moved around
a bit and some added, some inventory is moved to different locations
and additional actions need to be done with what's there, and
some additional environments to explore and use inventory with.
And of course there's the incredible recrafted graphic design
and added cinematic sequences, nothing short of amazing in comparison
to the original game. It kept me, as a "previously done the
original JP player" thoroughly enthralled. 
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The Verdict
The Lowdown
Developer: Presto
Studios
Publisher: Bandai Digital Entertainment
Release Date: June 1997
Available for: 
Four Fat Chicks Links
Player
Feedback
Screenshots






System Requirements
Power Mac
System 7.5 or higher
16 MB RAM, 8 MB free
5 MB free hard drive space
4X ROM drive or faster
Thousands of colors
Where to Find It

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