Pictionary (NES)

Pictionary

Platform: NES Year: 1990 Developer: Software Creations Ltd.

Pictionary (Also known as Pictionary: The Game of Video Quick Draw) is another video game adaptation of a board game. This is one of the better games that LJN published. In this game, you can play from one to four players. Like the board game, your goal is to get to the finish square first. This game however has some strange elements. When you play one player mode, instead of the game instantly giving you an image to guess, you must play one of four games. In those four games, you must complete a goal constantly to reveal more of the picture you must guess, whilst avoiding enemies that drain your time to reveal more of the picture. Attack of the Paint Zombies is a clone of the infamous Space Invaders; you play as a paint bucket and must shoot all the paint zombies off the screen. The more you clear, the faster the zombies are. The Warehouse Shuffle consists of you playing as a worker who must bring up to six boxes at a time to the right of the screen. Meanwhile, you must avoid what the game manual calls gremlins. Four Alarm Rescue has you playing as two firemen reminiscent of the Game and Watch game "Fire". People will jump out of their windows and you must catch them. This is the hardest game because it's impossible to make it from one side to the other when there's two people jumping out the windows of the opposite ends of the screen. In Leapin' Energy Capsules, you must collect orbs for your spaceship while avoiding laser cannon shots with eyes.

The game was made by only three people: Tony Pomfret for programming, Craig Houston for graphics, and Tim Follin for music and sound.

Screenshots

The title screen. I didn't choose that name, the game did! The music program that was used for Pictionary's soundtrack.

Music

For 1990, the game has a short soundtrack, only six tunes, but they are all well-composed. Each song has a funky feeling to them. To be fair, the songs are pretty lengthy so they won't get too annoying. Game Theme 1 sounds similar to Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust". The game itself lacks credits, but the game's ROM credits Tim Follin for the music. Tim wrote the music in hexadecimal using Stephen Ruddy's music driver.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Programmer	Length	Size	Listen
01	Title Screen	Tim Follin	Stephen Ruddy	1:33	3.55 MB
02	Drawing Practice	Tim Follin	Stephen Ruddy	2:45	6.25 MB
03	Game Theme 1	Tim Follin	Stephen Ruddy	2:43	6.2 MB
04	Game Theme 2	Tim Follin	Stephen Ruddy	2:36	6 MB
05	Board	Tim Follin	Stephen Ruddy	1:27	3.28 MB
06	Ending	Tim Follin	Stephen Ruddy	0:11	407 KB

Credits

• Ripper: Gil Galad
• Recorder: Doommaster1994
• ROM Credits:
  • Musician: Tim Follin
  • Uncredited Sound Programmer: Stephen Ruddy

(Missing Source)

Releases

USA Title: Pictionary Platform: NES Released: 1990/07/?? Publisher: LJN, Ltd. Links