Retro Game Review: The Incredible Machine 3

Image via Wikipedia

Take a trip back to 1995, the year one of my most beloved childhood PC video games came out. Put your knowledge and puzzle solving skills to the test as solve your way to the top. Go head to head with others or build your own crazy Rube Goldberg machine.

Installation
First things first, installation. Installing the game is the easy part but If you have vista, don’t expect it to work. Install it and right click the EXE file. Select properties and click the compatibility tab. Click the “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” tab and select windows 95. press OK. if all goes well, the game will work. Shortcuts the the file however don’t seem to work very well, compatibility mode or not.

Difficulty
Difficulty wise, I would Recommend this game for kids 7 to 13. For young kids training cognitive puzzle solving skills, this will be an excellent hands on experience. If you’re playing for the nostalgia, considering you’re probably not still in the third grade, the puzzles won’t be much of a challenge at all.

Graphics
For it’s time it was very well animated. All the pieces where dynamic, moving and popped out. of course it was 2d but it felt more alive than that. It would definitely out perform some of the lousy Flash animated games we have today.

Music
For 1995, the music was pretty diverse and ranged from hoe downs to techno pieces that reminded me of the Mega Man series. But more importantly the music fit the bill. When you played with solar panels and electric wall sockets, you got electric music. When you played with pulleys and barrels you got country style music.

Overall
This is a game that was forgotten through time. Only a few die hard fans remember it but it is definitely one to play. If you have some extra cash somewhere, you can pick it up on Ebay for about $5. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.