Arctic Adventure was one of my favorite dos games as a child, and I found it highly addictive, enjoyable, and like most games, also incredibly frustrating at times. Another classic from Apogee, it is the sequel to the dos game Pharaoh’s Tomb by George Broussard.
In the game, you play as the archeologist named Nevada Smith, and your goal is to pass through the levels to find an ancient Viking relic. If you enjoyed the Indiana Jones films or games, and needless to say Pharaoh’s Tomb, you’ll probably like this because of its obviously similar theme.
Arctic Adventure was one of my favorite dos games as a child, and I found it highly addictive, enjoyable, and like most games, also incredibly frustrating at times. Another classic from Apogee, it is the sequel to the dos game Pharaoh’s Tomb by George Broussard.
In the game, you play as the archeologist named Nevada Smith, and your goal is to pass through the levels to find an ancient Viking relic. If you enjoyed the Indiana Jones films or games, and needless to say Pharaoh’s Tomb, you’ll probably like this because of its obviously similar theme.
As you pass through the ice caves, you need to find pieces of an ancient map, which will lead you to this ancient Viking treasure. I really like this game because it’s not
just your simple ‘jump around and kill stuff till you reach the exit’ scenario. Rather, you must overcome obstacles. In each level there are blocks of ice blocking your path, and you must navigate your way through these by collecting pick axes and activating switches, and collect keys to pass through areas amongst other puzzles. You also must avoid things like snowballs, and hidden guns, but sometimes you won’t find out these are in the level, until you walk into it and they kill you!
I definitely don’t recommend this game to someone who enjoys action packed, short games. You’ll get frustrated very quickly, expecting an ending that doesn’t seem to come - It’s important to note that this game has 4 ‘chapters’ to it, and from memory the first chapter alone has 20 levels, so it’s a game that will take a lot of patience to complete. I never reached the end of the game myself, because I only originally had the first chapter, which was distributed as shareware. I don’t recommend rushing through the game trying to finish it – you’ll get stuck very easily, because you need to pay careful attention to how you’ll make a clear pathway to the exit. Restarting a level over and over gets old very quickly!
Arctic Adventure definitely surpassed Pharaoh’s Tomb in my opinion, although both games were awesome. The levels were more interesting to play, but I must admit I always liked the idea of being an explorer in the cold, virtually unknown arctic, rather than the warm, harsh colors that Pharaoh’s Tomb was set in. The cyan, magenta and white graphics worked well to create a majestic and mysterious ice world, unlike many other games at the time, which often seemed to have very erratic color choices that didn’t really set an atmosphere in the game.
