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"Infocom creates mystery game at carnival. Some laughs and strange gags follow."

Ballyhoo is an adventure game from Infocom, that company that for years denied that monitors should be used for anything but text. "The best games come from inside the head, just like a good book." Yeah, right. Tell that to Half-Life. Anyway, the game is like most of Infocom's earlier games: a text adventure with no graphics whatsoever. It details the story of you (that's right, YOU! Hah!), as you stay behind after a rather nice show in the bigtop at the Charles Munrab Traveling Circus. Why you stay behind is not really certain. Maybe you wanted autographs or something. Yeah, that midget acrobat's signature's really gonna be worth something someday. But, all is apparently not well under the safety net. It seems Mr. Munrab's daughter Chelsea has been kidnapped and he's hired a detective (not you) to help him find her. Unfortunately, he tells the detective that the kidnapper CERTAINLY couldn't be one of his own performers. Yeah. And Norman Bates didn't kill his mother. So, when you see the P.I. going off to get himself sotted, you guess it's up to you to solve the case. Naturally, you're going to run in with some shady characters. Not to mention carnies. Brrrrr!

GRAPHICS: 1
Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Seriously, it's a text adventure. The graphics are words that roll up off the screen as you type in commands. Nothing else in between. Considering that these things cost about $30 nine years ago, doesn't it seem kind of a waste?

SOUND: 1
No sound, either, unless you count your fingers tapping over the keys. Try putting on your favorite CD while playing to add SOME ambiance, for God's sake.

CONTROL: 6
Typing parsers, must escape from typing parsers...yeah, you have to type EVERYTHING in this game. Thankfully Infocom made the best parsers on the face of the planet, so anything from adventurese (discard all articles like a, an, and the) to real English works on this thing. Just don't go typing in nouns and verbs that don't belong. Easy learning curve.

GAMEPLAY: 8
So, what IS there in this software, anyway? A pretty good game, that's what. Although it is techincally a mystery game, it's really more weird than that. Tons of strange humor pops up in this game. For instance, you see a guy that wears a set of headphones. Later on, you open a cage and find a bed of hay as well as the headphones. THE GUY LIVES IN THE CAGE! AHHHHHHHHH! There's a pretty funny part where you have to pick up a mousetrap. If you pick it up while it's still set, the game stops and asks you to say an expletive. Kind of a takeoff on acting (FEEL the mousetrap, BE the mousetrap, that sort of thing). Anyway, if you say something very filthy (you probably know what I mean) the game says, "Hey! This is a family game! That's a bit too much!" I don't remember the exact words, but it's really pretty funny for a small bit. You can "die" in this game, but it isn't like other text adventures with simple death sequences. It turns out you get operated on, surgically changed, and end up on the sideshow! Yeah, it's weird, but it's really pretty fun. And the mystery is easy to get into. No murders, no tragic accidents, just simple, carnival fun.

So if you come across Ballyhoo, stick it in and give it a spin. And don't piss off the fat lady.

Reviewer's Rating: 4.0 - Great