You may notice that periodically, I wake up in the morning, and before I've juiced my brain with the hit of caffeine it requires to actually turn on, neurotransmitters stumble drowsily into my synapses, colliding rudely with each other like a New York City subway station at rush hour, and suddenly, I remember some old PC game that I used to love and begin harassing everyone I know to see if they have played it.
I would have guessed it was a decade ago, but Wikipedia says 1996 -- close! I played this 3D adventure game called Normality, and I recall it was maybe one of the first realtime point-and-clicks I played in 3D. It was the era of grunge, and I'm sure a lot of people dismissed this title as Interplay trying to cash in. I think the plot, if introduced today, would be dismissed as trite: You're an alt-teen revolutionary trapped in the city of Neutropolis, a gray and boring city capped with an oppressive pall of soot, and under the thumb of the Norms, a bunch of suits who don't like music, originality or creativity. Yeah, yeah, typical, but this game is funny, man -- for example, at the center of the city's suburban deathtrap mall, the decorative centerpiece is a large square "sculpture" with lots of small squares inside it. It's called The Waffle, and in your quest to mess with the squares and disrupt the rule of the Norms, you'll have to bug them out by painting The Waffle bright yellow.
Also, it was kind of hard, and full of some well-hidden, not in-your-face cultural satire, like the names of the mall stores or the CDs inside the music store, none of which I can remember, but all of which were sorta cleverly mocking my proud teenage identity. I remember one puzzle wherein you'd have to stand inside a toy store and "liberate" some barking puppy toys by flying them over the security alarm using toy airplanes. The puppy toys bark if you clap, so you'd need to find a CD that was all clapping and blast it on the speakers. Do so, the puppies bark and the security guard gets distracted so that you can go and spray-paint The Waffle, which ends up lighting on fire, somehow. Adventure games, how I miss you! Sierra, Cyan, save me!
Apparently, Corey Feldman did the lead character's voice, also -- I would never know, because I recall never getting the sound to work in the game, not ever. Oh, Windows 95, how you spiced up my PC gaming life.
Alright, brain-spasm over.
