The Dallas Quest

When a game is faithful to the poor writing and wildly implausible plot conventions of a soap opera, does that make it a bad game or an effective adaptation of its source material? In any case, this game situates you as a private investigator hired by Sue Ellen to find a map to hidden oil fields, in hopes to accumulate enough wealth to escape the sinister influence of J.R. Sue Ellen offers you a reward of $2 million for the map. You snoop around the grounds of the South Fork Ranch, superficially interacting with much-loved characters from the TV show and an assortment of extras from the animal kingdom. You must avoid J.R. who would like to put a stop to Sue Ellen's plans. So far, so good.

Your travels ultimately lead you to the jungles around Playa Peligro, in South America, where you overcome a series of obstacles by using various techniques, but mostly by doping a friendly monkey with tobacco -- a firm reminder that we're descending beneath even soap opera plot conflicts and sitting squarely in an early-'80s text adventure game, with all of the internal logic-twisting that entails.