♦ Livestream of the ZZT world "Joel's World 1-6" by Joel M. Smith [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/joelwrd126/] ♦
Oh, no! More Joel!
Yes, after the severely tedious Joel's World 3, it's time to delve into the Joel mines again for the sequel trilogy.
(1:10) Part 4 thankfully improves on the situation, returning to perfectly adequate board-by-board shooting action. Making things somewhat more interesting is the non-linear format. The world is divided into four continents, Dooby, Hoist, Mah, and Cig. The first one must be Dooby (not that I'd pick anything else first if I could), and then afterwards the other three stages unlock simultaneously. Ordinarily, this one would be pretty forgettable, but thanks to the poor showing of the previous game, the series is on a rebound.
(35:51) The fifth Joel's World game leans into wacky humor. The game begins with your spaceship crashing due to a faulty computer, and the only hope for repairs is to find the "Super Glowing Immense Magical Golden Electrified Cheese", or SGIMGE Cheese for short.
The game begins with some clear Best of ZZT/Cannible Isle influence, forcing players to prove their worth to the Igmite king in order to be allowed to travel the rest of the world. Some unique places to explore are added and the game deviates from the pre-established formula soon enough. There's a nice well to descend, plus a number of castles and towers. Gameplay remains the same basic action, but is mostly handled well.
This one introduces some new issues, with a confusing layout, and having to sometimes step over passages by going into them, exiting, and continuing on the original path. There are a number of challenges to collect keys which can get a little out of hand as well. Yet it too gets to coast on quiet approval for not being as annoying to play as the third entry.
(1:13:58) Joel's World 6 wound up being the finale for many years. It's a rather unusual one. The game suddenly goes back to its yellow border-laden roots, and very basic design consisting of (you guessed it) shooting lions and tigers. It seems like the game is going to be a miss (still not as bad as the third game) until you reach the city and the game becomes something more original.
Once in town, players deal with dragons, explore a number of homes, a shopping mall, a haunted house, and a power plant among other locations, adding some much needed points of interest to break up the monotony of its action boards. It still runs into problems like having to touch a random building's window to find a crowbar lying on the sill, which would be a definite stopping point were it not for the Museum's file viewer.
By the end, players befriend a dragon (which has some issues with soft-locks of its own), and rescue an ugly lost child.
This has been quite the series, with Joel's skills at game design sporadically taking steps forward and backward that make it really hard to weigh on whether it's been a worthwhile trip or not. Next Sunday, the two lost entries that I can only hope make it a series to remember for its highs rather than its lows.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/joelwrd126/
♦ Originally streamed on July 28th, 2024 ♦
