From The Man-Cave: It Came From the Desert Retrospective


Check this out: The Man-Cave blog's look back at Cinemaware's classic video game, It Came From the Desert.


I always get a kick out of horror games that take a retro approach to their visual style and plot, because they feel like "what if" examples of how video games would have looked if they had existed back in the 50s and 60s. Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Destroy All Humans, Stubbs The Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, and I Was An Atomic Mutant! are good examples of this style of gaming. Yet even by the standards that these other games set, It Came From the Desert stands by itself as a very unique video gaming experience.

At first glance, It Came From the Desert looks like what a licensed video game for the classic movie Them! would have been, but it's much more than that. Unlike many horror games, It Came From the Desert plays very much like a feature-length horror movie, combining a diverse selection of mini-games with a cast of characters and dialogue-heavy scenes. Man-Cave does a great job at reviewing the game's distinct style and provides a few video clips so you can see how the game actually looks, so be sure to go over to the site to learn more about this ground-breaking big-bug game.

For additional information about this game, the TurboPlay Magazine Archives site features an article from 1991 about a very different version of It Came From the Desert for the TurboGrafx game console which utilized full-motion video (FMV).

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