If the prince of Zamunda has enjoyed a sequel more than 30 years later, it is not surprising to know that Amazon announced last March the intention to shoot Ace Ventura 3, although it is not known if he will repeat the iconic and histrionic Jim Carrey after two 1994 and 1995 movies. That Josh Flitter’s 2009 was terrible.
That news made one remember the 1996 Ace Ventura video game , by the 7th Level studio. A graphic adventure with a casual and very colorful touch that many people would like to see in GOG, server included, being an abandonware product today. But how was this video game?
The video game of the animated series of a movie
The year 1994 marked a before and after in Jim Carrey’s career. A regular on the In Living Color program at the beginning of the 90s, four years later he would win the “lottery” with the premiere of the films Ace Ventura, a Different Detective , The Mask and Two Very Silly Fools . The rest, as they say, is history: he was Enigma in Batman Forever, he continued with his comic vein in the sequel to Ace Ventura (Operation Africa) and Compulsive Liar, among others, until he achieved the recognition and respect of the critics for him. Truman Show in 1998.
The character of Ace Ventura cannot be conceived without Jim Carrey , in short. It was for which he became known to the general public, despite the fact that his career began in the mid-eighties with minor roles in the cinema (Dangerous Bites) or acting in local as a stand-up artist. And if we say all this it is because the Ace Ventura video game replicates all the jokes of his movies as a pet detective. If you are a fan of Jim Carrey, he will have beat you from the start.
Being more technical, this video game was based on the 1995 animated series (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), without Carrey’s voice . This work was done by Michael Daingerfield, who would repeat for said video game and even a cameo in the animated series La Máscara in 1997. Great job, in any case, for this dubbing actor, offering a style very similar to that of the other actor. It arrived in Spain with dubbing into Spanish by Carlos Salamanca, a regular in video games.
And what was this Ace Ventura graphic adventure like? It did not come to revolutionize the genre, far from it, but it did turn out to be a worthy product for what is usually seen in this class of licenses that seek to get a slice of a fashionable product. The use of the planes and certain geometry of the objects on the stage reminded me personally of the classic Day of the Tentacle by LucasArts from the year 1993.
It did not have such a beautiful finish, but it was attractive and with many details about each area we visited, having many surprises almost anywhere we clicked, especially on the Ace Ventura apartment, with hidden animals in every corner. Even a seal in the toilet bowl.
Logically, the plot revolved around some animals that had to be rescued in different parts of the world, from whales to Siberian huskies, among countless other species. And always, our starting point took place from the chaotic apartment of Ace Ventura, with the landlord besieging him every two by three to pay the rent and from whom the presence of animals had to be hidden.
A graphic adventure very worthy of Ace Ventura
This Ace Ventura game took care of the character’s figure in a sensational way , not only in terms of the jokes seen in the movies, such as the phrase he used after leaving the bathroom completely wet and with his clothes destroyed, or that of saying an extremely long making the most of his lung capacity, but also gestures, both to laugh and to walk with his peculiar movement of the shoulders or on tiptoe to give it drama in stealth parts. All that joke is perfectly replicated and is its greatest attraction.
As a point & click graphic adventure it was simple, in the sense of not having the typical options of LucasArts jobs. Here it was more to the point, having an inventory from which we took an object and dragged it to the area on which we wanted to interact. In fact, he was also simple in terms of dialogue, with an atypical lack of chat options, being an adventure with many predefined conversations with the simple desire to see the show off of this histrionic character. Ace Ventura, the life of the party .
There was a section where she clearly suffered, and it had to do with flirting with other genders. In the submarine section we had to dive avoiding obstacles and getting oxygen, but without the grace of Earthworm Jim. There was also a hint of Quick-Time Events with “burgers” (whales, actually) and fire traps. Even in the snowy area we traveled through their regions on a motorcycle prepared for the occasion. And in all these cases he did very badly.
Those shoehorn transitions did not blur, on the other hand, the exploration and puzzle parts as such, with scenarios that forced us to pay attention to the details and be imaginative trying with what was shown on the screen, such as using electric eels. in Ace Ventura’s bathroom to charge the electricity from the floor. It did not reach absurd levels as in the mythical Gobliiins of Coktel Vision, but it could confuse us with so many objects.
There were puzzles, on the other hand, that played with other types of mechanics, such as moving pieces on a board, building a tower with different figures to pass a test of a tribe or paying attention when consulting information from Ace Ventura’s laptop. There was only one that twitched, the one with the happy colored lines and dots of the final stretch , with which many people ended up turning to a guide because it was messy. Perhaps, to extend the experience and create a peak of difficulty in that area, the least successful of all of them, especially for the final duel, somewhat chaotic with the help of our inseparable monkey Spike.
Surprisingly, it was not the only official Ace Ventura game, with the arrival of the 21st century having an interactive video adventure under the name of Ace Ventura Pet Detective: The Case of the Serial Shaver , but it is the most blushing and does not honor to the figure of this character embodied by Jim Carrey in the mid-nineties. And yes, in the 7th Level adventure, Ace also featured scenes where he was talking with his ass . Impossible for a game to be bad like that.