The Jetsons: Legend of Robotopia

The Jetsons: George Jetson and the Legend of Robotopia is an adventure game developed by The Dreamers Guild. It was published by MicroIllusions in 1989 for the Amiga.

As you can imagine, the game is officially based on the famous Hanna-Barbera animated series The Jetsons.

The base mechanics are the ones of graphic adventures, but the text plays an important role, with many descriptions and dialogs, almost as if it was an interactive fiction. Said that the visuals and animations are probably one of the best aspects of this title; they are really high quality and perfectly in line with the animated series. When you watch George moving on the screen is like watching the TV; probably the developers used original frames from the cartoon. The music is also quite good and interesting, never annoying.

However, if you ask me what are the most innovative elements of this game, I would probably answer the user interface, based on icons and different windows.

You have the stage area on the top left, showing the current location. You can click on any object to examine it or drag and drop items.

Below that, you have the narration window, with long descriptions as in-text adventures. On the right, you have the characters area, with George (the main character) always on the top left, but also the other NPCs. Below the characters, you can see the game icons: Interact, look, go, open, close, give; and the Inventory. There is also a layout area, a sort of mini-map, but interactive: for example, you can click the exits to leave the rooms. Finally, on the bottom right, you have the action area. This is where the adventure will present the choices, for example, during dialogs.

It might sound complicated, but once you get used to it, it works very well, and it's a nice alternative to classic point-and-click adventures gameplay.

Last but not least, the story is well-written and full of humor. It's a pity that the guys at Hanna-Barbera didn't like the comic book that MicroIllusions included in the game box as a backstory of the game. This fact led to copyright troubles that stopped further developments of this game. The Amiga version was not followed by any PC or Commodore 64 versions, and the game never had a sequel.

Anyway, we are lucky because we can still play the Amiga version of Legend of Robotopia. Have fun guys!