Well, that plan didn’t work out so well, because Matt’s brother turned us down.

Next, we tried interviewing President Barack Obama, but he turned us down, too. How are we supposed to write an interview column if everyone turns us down?

Finally, we found one person who didn’t turn us down: the AIM sim of Abraham Lincoln. Sure, it’s just a computer designed to sound like Abraham Lincoln, but it’s good enough for us! And so, we sent Michael Gray to interview Abe about the Nancy Drew videogame series.

Abraham Lincoln: Hello my friend and how are you this fine day?
Michael: I am doing well, Mr. Lincoln. Thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me.
Abraham Lincoln: I am buried in “Lincoln’s Tomb” in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois. It is the final resting place for me, my wife (Mary Todd Lincoln), and three of our four sons. The monument is owned and administered by the State of Illinois as Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site. you are welcome.
Michael: First off, I think the people here want to know one thing: What is your favorite Nancy Drew game?
Abraham Lincoln: My favorite Nancy Drew game is the best thing since the invention of the electric kettle. Does that surprise you?
Michael: I’m not surprised, but could you be more specific?
Abraham Lincoln: I certainly hope I don’t bore you. Tell me about your day.
Michael: I’m the one asking the questions here, Abe. Now please, can you tell us what your favorite game in the Nancy Drew series is?
Abraham Lincoln: You are indeed! You’ll meet people who say you aren’t, but don’t let them intimidate you. Stand up to them and they’ll run away.
Michael: ……
Abraham Lincoln:

Michael: Do you like The Curse of Blackmoor Manor?
Abraham Lincoln: I don’t know if I like The Curse of Blackmoor Manor. What about you?
Michael: I like it a lot.
Abraham Lincoln: Obama is a gifted and inspirational figure. I have confidence that positive changes will come from his administration.
Michael: What did you think of the newest game, Shadow at the Water’s Edge? It’s pretty scary, right?
Abraham Lincoln: According to my laptop, I thought of a high mountain with a ruined castle on the top. But is it not likely that there’s a bug in the computer?
Michael: So…you didn’t get to play Shadow at the Water’s Edge?
Abraham Lincoln: Good. I was enjoying the play, at least the first act.
Michael: But you were disappointed by the ending?
Abraham Lincoln: I was enjoying the play, at least the first act
Michael: play
Abraham Lincoln: I was enjoying the play, at least the first act.
Michael: Okay, let’s talk about the opposite topic. What do you think the WORST game in the Nancy Drew series is?
Abraham Lincoln: Search me. You should hire a private detective to find out what does me.
Michael: But..Nancy Drew IS a detective, Abe!
Abraham Lincoln: But what? Fancy that, mine too.
Michael: What do you think about Bess and George?
Abraham Lincoln: I’m afraid I don’t know what my opinion of Bess and George is, but I’ll find out.
Michael: What do you think about Nancy’s boyfriend, Ned Nickerson?
Abraham Lincoln: I am uniquely able to understand the pressures of the presidency. I respect his public service, that he is a man of strong convictions and that he seems devoted to his family. Clearly, mistakes have been made. That is not a personal judgement but a fact based upon the economic downturn, national security issues and his low approval ratings nationwide. However, I don’t judge him, I’m sure he has done what he felt was in the best interests of the country. Furthermore, I don’t know him personally, so I cannot say if I like him or not.
Michael: But Ned isn’t the President!
Abraham Lincoln: I was the first President to be photographed. Ominously, John Wilkes Booth can be seen standing close to me in the picture.
Michael: Well, that’s almost all the time we have for today. Is there anything you’d like to say to our readers?
Abraham Lincoln: Many have suggested that my mother was born out of wedlock. The common consensus among historians today is that my mother’s parents were very likely not married at the time of her birth. My formal education consisted of about 18 months of schooling, but I was largely self-educated and an avid reader. I was also a talented local wrestler and skilled with an axe. I avoided hunting and fishing because I did not like killing animals, even for food. At 6 foot 4 inches (1.93m), I was unusually tall, as well as strong.
Michael: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Abraham Lincoln: hello Citizen.

Thus ends the GameCola Interview with Abraham Lincoln. He says Nancy Drew is the best thing since the invention of the electric kettle, thinks Ned Nickerson is the President, and he ends conversations with “hello”. Clearly, he was a  great President. Will he go on to co-write an edition of “Digital Championship Wrestling”, just like AIM chatbot SmarterChild did? Only time will tell.

[Article adapted from a post on Michael's blog.]

…Forty two minutes of me solving a Sudoku puzzle.

I’m seriously considering ending my video walkthrough here, because there’s no way I’ll ever be able to top the awesomeness contained in this epic trilogy.

[Reprinted from the blog of former staff writer, Michael "stop reprinting things from my blog, and write your own dang articles" Gray. Clearly, his time has been well-spent since leaving the GameCola writing staff.]

1. Length: It is over twice as short as the other games.
2. Plot: What plot?
3. Graphics: It is glaringly obvious they got a new graphics team for this game.

So, if you like short mystery games with only a semblance of a plot, this is the game for you. Thus sayeth the cynics.

The plot of the game is that Nancy goes to Hawaii to help a quirky entomologist named Dr. Kim. The Hardy boys are there, too, doing a background check on a local surfer girl. And there have been sightings of Kane Okala, a minor Hawaiian god who is destroying the local pineapple crop. Could it be that someone is pretending to be Kane Okala in order to carry out nefarious deeds?

The plotline about Kane Okala, who I can only presume is supposed to be the titular Creature of Kapu Cave, gets dropped ten minutes into the game. The Hardy Boys’ investigation, while interesting at some points, is pretty much completely optional. In fact, when I tried to follow through with their investigation, I was unable to trigger the “confront the criminal” scene, which stinks because that’s basically the whole POINT of investigating crimes, am I right?

In fact, most of the plot of this game is entirely optional. And unfortunately, it’s often hard to trigger certain plot points because following through on their subplots is optional. So, far too often, you’ll end up with a bunch of unrelated plot points that don’t get explained and/or don’t seem to be relevant. Only when you replay the game a couple of times and choose different dialogue options will you be able to get an idea of how all the various plots are related.

The ending of the game amuses me, because it tries to wrap up all the various plotlines in as little time as possible. Personally, I like the idea of an ending that says, “You won the game! Congratulations! Here’s the plot as a reward.” In fact, if Final Fantasy games did this, I would be pleased as punch, because they do not contain discernible in-game plotlines.

Okay, that’s enough bad-mouthing the game. What good things can I say about it? The characters are pretty popular with everyone. Dr. Quigley Kim is loads of fun. Quirky is always a fun personality trait, although it is immensely overused in children’s entertainment nowadays. Dr. Craven, whose main personality trait is angry, is also a fan favorite. There’s something oddly enjoyable about hearing Dr. Craven blow his top and yell like a maniac. The least popular character is surely Big Island Mike, who is personally responsible for 80% of the filler material in the game, but it’s a mark of good characterization that he can consistently get that negative reaction from most gamers.

As for the graphics, yes, it’s obvious that a new animation team was working on this game, but the graphics aren’t really all that bad. In fact, a lot of the time, the graphics are very good. The Hawaiian scenery, in particular, is so beautiful that I can’t help but think they used real pictures from Hawaii.

The problem, however, is with the character animation. From what I can tell, there are two different models for each character: a full-body model and a closer-up shot. The full-body models look just fine. The closer-up models? Not so much. If they stuck with the better models the whole time, nobody would have complaints about the new graphics. Or at least, people wouldn’t complain as much.

People would probably still complain about the game’s length, though. As I said earlier, it’s a pretty short game. Most of the other games in the series are twice as long. The worst part is that even though the game is short, it still feels like it has an overload of filler content that artificially extends the game’s length. For example, you have to do a five-minute fishing challenge—a minigame that is copy/pasted from Nancy Drew: Secret of the Old Clock, by the way—three or four times over the course of the game. Then there’s the frass analysis challenge, which also takes up fifteen to twenty minutes, a lot of which are spent going back and forth between Quigley and her base camp. True, these aren’t any worse than similar challenges in other games, but maybe because this game is so short, they just stand out a lot more.

Is this really the worst the series has to offer? I’m hesitant to say yes, but there are a lot of reasons to not like this game. It’s too short, the plot is poorly presented, and I’d like to be able to skip over some of the longer, repetitive tasks. On the other hand, the characters are well done, and the scenery looks great, so it’s not a total disaster. It definitely has its moments.

If you’re only going to play one Nancy Drew game in your lifetime, don’t make it this one. But if you want to enjoy all the series has to offer, don’t skip over it, either. Aloha!

Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand is not my favorite Nancy Drew game, but I have to admit that it is one of the more important games in the series, setting most of the standards that the series follows to this day.

Scarlet Hand is the sixth Nancy Drew game. Like with most series, Her Interactive has hit upon a successful formula for their games, following general rules like, “there must always be four suspects”; “Nancy can always call her friends Bess and George for hints”; and, “there is always a locked door you have to find the key for.” Starting with Secret of the Scarlet Hand, the series pretty much sticks to this formula and doesn’t try any major innovations until the game screen changes in Secret of Shadow Ranch.

Today, sixteen games later in the series, it becomes obvious that many of these general rules have their origin in Secret of the Scarlet Hand. This game is the first to have the to-do list, as well as the written summary of the plot/clues. It came up with the “find all six special objects” metapuzzle that appears in most of all the other games.¹ It’s the first game to include a trailer for the next game before the ending credits. It’s the first game with the Hardy Boys, Sonny Joon and Koko Kringles, Prudence Rutherford, and Krolmeister. And while it’s not the first game to include multiple locations, the ability to travel between various places becomes a standard of the series from here on out.

Now, I prefer this game’s predecessor, The Final Scene, just because my organized self loves how the game is split up into three convenient parts (and that kidnapping plotline! DRAMA! And Nancy jumping into Sassy Detective Mode, coming up with all sorts of great one-liners! And Brady Armstrong is—wait, wrong review). However, I cannot deny that Secret of the Scarlet Hand is spectacular. The mystery is tip-top, and whenever it starts to seem that the plot has slowed to a complete stop, they throw a huge plot twist from out of nowhere. BAM! Henrik gets thrown down a flight of stairs! Joanna gets fired! And Poppy Dada is…POPPY DADA! Oh man, she’s so cool that I friended her on Facebook. Keep drawing, Poppy!

One of the highlights of the game is calling people. Her Interactive went above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to phone calls in this game. The dialogue is all entertaining—so much so that I saved the game and replayed through the phone calls to hear the different dialogue options—and the voices are just plain fun to listen to. What should be a simple, boring challenge of “Call person X to learn information Y” ends up being surprisingly awesome. The only drawback is that you have to switch back and forth between the two phones in the game, because Nancy can’t call all of the characters from one phone, which almost always confuses first-time players.

And that overarching plotline of getting all six jade carvings! It’s really satisfying to see those six subplots come together so well, what with the exciting “you just found a jade carving” music, and the 3D “put the pieces together” puzzle. It’s almost as satisfying as seeing the villain scream, “Confound you, Nancy Drew!!!” after realizing that Nancy has tricked him or her. That still sticks out in my mind as one of the best endings to the series.

Actually, the villain him/herself stands out as a great villain. I don’t want to spoil the culprit’s identity, but for this game, the culprit is well-chosen. At the end of most Nancy Drew games, when the culprit appears, it could pretty much be any of the suspects who appears before Nancy. You could easily see Jacques, Dexter, Hotchkiss (okay, maybe not Hotchkiss) or Lisa appear as the villain at the end of Treasure in the Royal Tower; they are all interchangeable when it comes to the villain role. In Secret of the Scarlet Hand, however, I cannot see anyone else being the villain besides [name deleted]. The culprit in this game is just that much of a perfect fit.

There are a lot of great things about this game, but it’s not perfect. My two issues with the game are the phone call section and the educational section. Like I said earlier, the phone calls in this game are great, but there’s a stretch around the middle/end of the game where you have to go through 15-25 minutes of doing nothing but making phone calls. It’s a little too long for my tastes, and the game really should have spread them out a bit more instead of lumping them together at that part of the game.

The educational section is a bit too long for my tastes, too. The game takes place in a museum about ancient Maya culture, so Nancy has to go through all the exhibits and learn a lot about the Maya. And you do learn a lot; I now know the ancient Maya numbering system, and the Maya calendar system (something which people are obsessed with today, for some reason). There are matching puzzles that force you to connect Mayan glyphs with their translations, and there are even quizzes in this game, where you get to answer questions like, “What is a language spoken in modern-day Mexico?” Answer: Nahuatl. If you go through all of the museum stuff at once, it’s sort of like edutainment overload.  Fortunately, you can do the exhibits challenge at the beginning of the game and the pyramid challenge at the end; that way, the educational parts are spread out, instead of being lumped together like the phone call section.

All in all, Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand is a very good game. It might not be a home run, but it is definitely a triple with at least one RBI attached. Even eight years later, it’s an enjoyable experience, and it’s no surprise that this game set some of the series’ standards, which persevere to this day.

The walkthrough is 21 videos long (which is about three hours), and it comes complete with both Michael’s humorous commentary and walkthrough-style advice on how to progress through the puzzles.  It’s a great help if you’re stuck and don’t know what to do next, or if you’re just looking for a funny take on an engaging mystery.

Trail of the Twister stars Nancy as she goes to Oklahoma and joins a team of tornado chasers that are being sabotaged.  Is the person behind the sabotage Brooke Tavanah, the leader of the rival team?  Could it be Frosty, the danger-seeking photographer who wants to get out of his contract (and who, by the way, screams like a girl)?  Could it be Debbie, the organized team leader who is making secret plans to get someone kicked off the team?  Could it be Scott, the super-grumpy team leader who hates everyone?  Or is it one of the other two characters?

The game combines puzzle-solving with several intense action sequences, where the team is chasing a tornado, or being attacked by a tornado, or doing something that involves tornadoes while dramatic music plays in the background.

As the above video shows, Michael’s walkthrough includes a number of bonus videos, like music videos, death scenes and easter eggs.  It also includes a walkthrough for the demo that came out before the game was released.  All in all, this is the most complete walkthrough for the game that you’re going to find on the Internet today, and it’s also loads of fun.  Stay twisty!

Shocking plot twist: I like this game.

As a casual gamer, I do not have super-high standards. There are basically only three things I want to see in a Nancy Drew game:

1. Nancy Drew
2. A number of Laytonesque puzzles
3. Jokes, or something else equally amusing

Simply put, this game delivers on all three accounts, so I like it.

The game takes place in Oklahoma, with a crew of tornado chasers. They’ve been having a series of mysterious accidents, and Nancy has been called in to investigate, which is Standard Nancy Drew Plotline #4. Can she find out who is behind all the sabotage?

Shocking plot twist: Yes, she can.

There are five suspects in this game: Scott, Debbie, Chase, Frosty and Pa. They’re OK as far as characters go, but I don’t really like or dislike any of them. None of them really stick out in my mind. Maybe I’m just weird, but my two favorite characters in this game aren’t actually characters in the game. I like P.G. Krolmeister, who you can call but never see, and Brooke Savannah, who you overhear while snooping in a museum. Krolmeister is funny, and Brooke is mysterious, and I like ‘em both.

I want to say more about the characters, but I’m afraid of giving away spoilers like “the culprit ends up being Nancy Drew’s Aunt Eloise.” So I’ll be vague and say that every character is hiding some kind of secret. Nancy learns out about all these secrets, thanks to her awesome detective skills, then she jumps into Sassy Detective Accusation Mode™ for a series of dramatic confrontations that are fun to watch. It’s pretty awesome.

Chase gets defensive if you Nancy him a lot of questions.

Some critics have complained that the plot is bare-bones, and the characters exist just to give you puzzles to solve, instead of being necessary to the plot. My response? Awesome. I love puzzles. The more puzzles the better. And besides, the characters tend to be minigame/puzzle dispensers in every Nancy Drew game, so it’s not like their penchant for puzzles in this game is something new.

The plot has many abrupt turns, in that one day you’re going along, doing your thing and solving puzzles left and right, and then, BAM! You’re chasing a tornado with no warning whatsoever, and you’ve got to move quickly or else it’ll destroy Auntie Em and Uncle Henry’s farm. It’s a very dramatic way to shake things up. Personally, I think of this as grand metaphor for life in general. Life is like a hurricane…here in Duckburg. Race cars, lasers, airplanes: it’s a duck blur! You might solve a mystery, and that’s exactly what Nancy Drew does.

My favorite part of the game is not investigating the mystery or solving puzzles; it’s turning on the broken TV and catching up with Detective Beach. This is officially my new favorite TV show.

Announcer: Previously on Detective Beach…
Chief: You’re a loose cannon, McNorton! I want your badge and your surfboard on my desk immediately!
McNorton: Only one man would be crazy enough to use a shark to rob a bank…you’ve got to let me back on the case!

I have a hard time summarizing Nancy Drew games. It’s kind of a point-and-click adventure, and it’s kind of a whodunit, and it’s kind of a puzzle game. This installment of the series focuses more on puzzles, whereas the last installment, Warnings at Waverly Academy, focused on character development and the most shocking plot twist of all time. Both games are fine by me.

I think that’s a good enough summary of this game. It’s fine by me. I’m not going to call it the best Nancy Drew game ever, and I’m not going to call it the worst Nancy Drew game ever. I like it just fine.

Well, too bad. You’re getting one anyway.

This preview came at the end of the recently-released Nancy Drew #22.  They like to advertise their upcoming projects when releasing their newest products, just like Pixar used to do.

It looks like in this game, Nancy is going to Kyoto, Japan, the city where they make protocols that the United States of America ignores.  I’ve had this video up for less than a day, and it’s already gotten over 100 comments, most of which are about how the preview looks like some horror movie I’ve never heard of.

And now, I will return to my cave and play Nancy Drew #22 for approximately twenty hours, or until I unlock all the achievements (so far I have three out of twelve).

• Paul and Lizo’s big news
• Telltale’s upcoming Back to the Future episodic series…which, technically, wasn’t announced or even shown at E3
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which some of us think wasn’t quite ready for the public spotlight

• GoldenEye for the Wii, which Paul isn’t planning to get excited about because he still remembers 2004’s GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
• Kirby’s Epic Yarn, which Lizo is interested in because she likes yarn
• Journey, the upcoming exploration game by the developers of Flower
• The 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time, which Michael hopes will be a little better than the DS remake of Mario 64
• Why Michael prefers Nancy Drew games to Monkey Island
• Adventure game dialogue
• The best and less-best movies by Pixar
• Portal 2, and whether the Portal games qualify as “shooting games”
• Mario’s love for cake
• Super Mario Galaxy 2’s bombshell that Mario and Peach are now an official couple
• LittleBigPlanet 2’s new level creation tools
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and which colors Paul dyed his hair in high school
• What PSN, WiiWare, and XBLA are
• How Paul feels a little betrayed by Rock Band’s annual release schedule
• The game we all wish we’d heard more about at E3 (besides Back to the Future)

Enjoy!:
GC Podcast #25

Bottom line? Though we do our best to make everything accessible to everyone, sometimes ya gotta dig back through the archives to know what we’re talking about, homeslice.

That’s why you’ll probably get the most enjoyment out of our YouTube adaptation of The GameCola Podcast #18 if you’re familiar with the two major conversation topics, Deja Vu and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The videos we’ve made for these games are entertaining in their own right, but being able to discuss them in a podcast setting allows for the kind of conversations that would get you hauled off to the funny farm if you had them with yourself.

To keep your visual organs engaged while listening to Michael Gray and Paul Franzen talk about hookers, killing people with children’s TV show props, and “The Gates of Life,” there’s completely unrelated footage of Nancy Drew: White Wolf of Icicle Creek going on at all times. Plus, as an added bonus, Michael kicks off the podcast with a delightful rendition of “Earth Angel.” You have to hear it to believe you’re listening to it.

If you’ve any interest whatsoever in Deja Vu, Phoenix Wright, GameCola’s legacy of semi-obscure self-references, or eavesdropping on people’s conversations like a creepy stalker, try out the first two videos below. The full playlist is available on the GameCola YouTube channel, and if you watch long enough, you’ll see a snowmobile crash into a big rock.

Of course, as soon as I heard about this contest, I decided that I absolutely had to enter. Because if I won, that means my picture would be in an actual Nancy Drew videogame and that would probably be the coolest contest prize I’ve received since the time my DNA was sent into outer space.

My excitement lasted for a few minutes, until I remembered that I have a history of really ugly yearbook photos.

It looks sort of like James Bond...in that movie where he had to go to the bathroom really badly.

Fortunately, this year I have an ID badge for work that looks somewhat presentable, so I submitted that to the contest instead. It’s technically not a yearbook photo, but it looks a lot better:

Well, the contest officially ended last month, and they announced all the winners.  I think you can guess who was on the winners list…

They sent me some legal stuff, like a release form that I have already filled out. So now, it is official: I will be in a Nancy Drew game. And it will therefore be the best game ever. I can’t wait to play it.

Let’s just hope they got the right photo.