What is The King of Chicago?

Interactive fiction has been in a rut. The text-based, Infocom-style adventures vary in theme, but retain the same tired technology. Mindscape’s The King of Chicago delivers a game that comes one step closer to the computer entertainment dream: a real-time movie controlled by the user. In this movie/adventure game you see the characters move around, talk, and take action. (Actually, the actors here are animated cartoon drawings based on clay sculptures; the way they move their lips and blink their eyes is reminiscent of the vintage “Clutch Cargo" cartoons.) As in an adventure game, you control the protagonist, and choices you make at various decision points determine the outcome of the story. Different decisions result in different plots, and the program randomly changes characters’ actions, so the same decision in one game may produce a different series of events in subsequent games.

This hybrid movie/game would not work at all if the dialogue sagged, or the graphics were handled poorly, or the limited multiple-choice questions you answer had no clear effect on the plot. But it does work, mainly because The King of Chicago is consistently entertaining. Game designer Doug Sharp has saturated The King with plot and characters that might have come straight from the great gangster flicks of the 1930s - protagonist Pinky Callahan tries to gain control of gangland Chicago while dealing with The Crafty Old Advisor, The Dumb Goon, The Flashy Moll, The Deadly Southside Rival, The Weepy Momma, The Crooked Aiderman, and the Uncorruptible Cop Who Was Pinky’s Boyhood Friend. Everything is handled with self-parodying wit and interchanges between characters are terrifically funny. I’ve never had so much fun playing a computer game.

Macworld. (July 1987). In Gangland Chicago. (pg. 152).

Download The King of Chicago for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

• 512 KB RAM

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac