Together Retro Game Club: Deja Vu

Presented by fastbilly1
New To Together Retro? Check out the introduction to the club

A nightmare that has come true.  You awake in a bathroom stall, unable to remember who you are, and potentially about to be eaten by a grue.  It is the 1940s, Chicago, and you have no idea whats going on but there is a deadman upstairs.  What do you do?  This month for Together Retro we have chosen a game close to my heart and unknown by many: the amazing 1985 Mac title, Deja Vu.  So come, let us solve the mystery.

Deja Vu NES Screens

History

Deja Vu was created by ICOM Simulations way back in 1985.  For the game they created the Macventure engine (Shadowgate, UnInvited, Deja Vu 1&2).  Disk space was at a premium so the original Dejavu was created to run on two 400k floppys.  In a funny bit of history, when the game was ported to Atari ST the MacVenture name was changed to Atari Venture, and to PC Venture for the PC release.  Like most pc games of the time, Dejavu had a small development team, but with that small team they did some great things.  For example, like stated previously the game fit in 800k.  The team had to create new compression techniques and routines to accomplish that.  Many of of their other advancements are over shadowed now because they are common place now.  But back in 1985 when you had a “desktop” like interface were you could drag and drop items into the inventory, it was amazing (up until very recently before this most pcs were command line).

Legacy

  • Uninvted – 1986
  • Shadowgate -1987
  • Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas – 1988

Why Part of Together Retro?

We chose Deja Vu for a handful of reasons.  First off it is an amazing game that most people have never played.  It was first released on the Mac, and one of the very few Mac first games we will play.  It is considered by many historians as one of the pioneering graphical adventure games.  And if you have been paying attention, we have to do a classic adventure game each year.

Ports:

  • Mac – 1985
  • Commodore 64 -1986
  • DOS – 1987
  • Atari ST – 1987
  • NES – 1990
  • Gameboy Color – 1999
  • Pocket PC – 2000

Together Retro Discussion

Instead of posting in the comments section of the blog, we will be using the forum for all of our discussion in order to keep things more organized. So play Dark Forces and talk to us about your thoughts and play experiences in the forums. We want to know your favorite parts, your successes and your failures.
Discuss The Game In The Forum