Grim Fandango (Jewel Case)

by LucasArts

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004WGW1
• Product Dimensions: 4.9 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: July 10, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (130 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,244 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Join Manny, the undead travel agent, and uncover a conspiracy to keep new additions to the underworld from buying a safe passage through purgatory. Grim Fandango combines a unique story line and complicated puzzles to create an adventure different from any you have experienced before. Follow Manny through four years of mystery on his quest for true love and eternal salvation.

The game opens to find Manny in search of the perfect client, one with the means to place them both on the fast track out of purgatory and into eternal paradise. Enter Mercedes Colomar, the client who has it all--beauty, brains, and enough money to buy them each tickets on the exclusive No. 9 train. Following the film-noir formula, Mercedes promptly vanishes, leaving Manny to solve the mystery behind her disappearance and her connection with the Department of Death.

With fantastic graphics--stylishly rendered in the film-noir style--and art from the Mayan, Aztec, and Mexican traditions, Grim Fandango is imaginative and appealing. The challenging puzzles call for attentive play and serious exploration of the Land of the Dead--not an unappealing job when surrounded by such beautiful animation. Include the original story line and humorous characters and you won't want to stop playing--we didn't!

Product Description

Meet Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death. He sells luxury packages to souls on their four year journey to eternal rest. But there's trouble in paradise. Help Manny untangle himself from a conspiracy that threatens his very salvation.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably one of the best adventure games ever made, September 4, 2000

By 

Genesis Whitmore (Goldenrod, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grim Fandango (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

I was very dubious when I started playing Grim Fandango. An adventure game with polygons? And the SCUMM menu interface system that was in every single past Lucasarts adventure game was gone? But I gave it a try. Thank goodness I did.

Grim Fandango is a story about Manny Calavera, a travel agent for the souls of the dead. He sells packages to the departed for their four year journey to their just rewards, and if he sells enough he can earn enough to make his own trip someday.

Imagine the theme of Casablanca with some mexican folklore and Mayan art thrown in for fun. Add big orange demons, hot rods, killer beavers, cat races, and the grim reaper and you have Grim Fandango.

The story is supurb and the voice acting was top notch. It's very difficult to do a dramatic yet humorous story, but somehow this game pulls it off. Grim Fandango could yank me to the brink of tears one moment and cause me to almost bust a gut another.

The things that make a good adventure game are all there. Logical puzzles that don't cause your gameplay to come to a standstill until you solve them, good acting, good animation, and good code! If I were ever forced to reccomend only on adventure game to someone, this would be it! Especially at the new low price!

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top-notch adventure game, October 19, 2001

By 

Daniel L. Tao "ordinary guy" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grim Fandango (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

Grim Fandango is one of those games that you look forward to playing every day after work or school. It's not only fun; it is a masterpiece of game design. The graphics are beautiful, the audio quality is superb, and the interface is intuitive and incredibly easy to learn. Manny (the main character) always turns his head towards something when you can interact with it. Then you simply press a button and he can describe it, use it, pick it up, talk with it, etc. It's a great system, one that feels very natural and makes the flow of the game as smooth as possible.

The story behind the game is based on Mexican folklore; in the early stages of the game, el Dia del Muerto is the central theme. The characters are all quite colorful, especially Manny Calavera the protagonist and his ursine driver, Glottis. Clever humor is interwoven throughout the storyline and dialogue, promising hours of hearty laughs.

Not everyone will like this game, though. Adventure games don't have the quasi-universal appeal they used to, and for this reason some gamers may actually find Grim Fandango "boring". I, for one, found it to be an extremely entertaining game. You can even play with other people, despite the fact that it is a single-player game; the story unfolds so much like a movie that, even if you're not controlling Manny, you can enjoy what's going on on the screen.

Grim Fandango is an adventure game. If you liked the Monkey Island series or any other LucasArts adventure games, or games like King's Quest or Space Quest (remember that one?), you will love this one. I sure did.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Day in the Land of the Dead, June 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Grim Fandango (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

I admit it: I absolutely love adventure games. They are practically my life and, if it weren't for companies like LucasArts, Cyan, Presto Studios, etc., then I would be crying myself sore on the ground.

For the skeptics among you, let me tell you that GRIM FANDANGO is every bit as good as reviewers put it up to be. It has drama, wit, humor, and great gameplay. If you don't want to read the rest of the article, let me sum it up in two words: BUY IT.

There. That said, let me get into the game. You play Manny Calavera, a dead guy working in the Eighth Underworld (inspired by Mexican folklore about life after death.) Because of some great sin you committed in life (although I have a sneaking suspicion that he didn't do anything wrong) you are forced to work off your debt to the powers that be by selling travel packages to other newly arrived souls (think sports cars, luxury cruises or, best of all, the high-speed Number Nine train) for their journey to the Ninth Underworld, the land of eternal rest (I think). Unfortunately, due to some turn of events, the perfect client (stolen from your arch-competitor) is cheated out of her rightful package, setting in motion events concerning the dangers of the Eighth Underworld and the corruption within the agency you work for itself.

That classic LucasArts humor returns in GRIM FANDANGO. However, this time, it is not the slapstick comedy of Monkey Island and other titles but serious and more subtle humor, accentuated by superb voice acting. The characters themselves are all quite memorable; there is Mercedes Colomar, the lost soul cheated out of her right ticket on the Number Nine and forced to wander the Eighth Underworld on foot; there's Chepito, a lost soul also journeying to the Eighth Underworld. However, this southern chap hates boats, instead walking there under the ocean itself and turning blue because of the cold. There's Velasco, the crusty sea captain in the port town of Rubacava. There's the orange-skinned, purple-tongued Glottis, a "spirit of the land" summoned from the deepest deeps of the underworld with one desire, one purpose, and one wish - to drive. Finally, there's Manny himself, the Mexican dead guy trying to sort things out. He also has an uncanny ability to rise from the bottom of a corporation to the head itself (excluding his own agency, the Department of the Dead).

The puzzles are all well designed and make sense - at least, in retrospect. However, some of the puzzles are downright bizarre. For example (skip to the next paragraph if you don't want any spoilers), how about filling limp balloons with to different chemicals and sending them down the message tube to the central messaging machine so that they pop and combine to create a packing foam, allowing you access to the machine once the repair demon leaves? Kind of weird, eh? Nevertheless, the puzzles do the job right and are quite fun.

I also found the interface and controls quite fine; granted, they weren't as good as that of previous adventures using the SCUMM engine, but the GRIMM engine, despite falling short in some areas, surpasses SCUMM in others. The visuals are very good, even by today's standards, and the interface for the inventory and actions is just as good as that of SCUMM. The controls, on the other hand, are a bit clunkier; while I adjusted to them quickly enough (thanks to ESCAPE FROM MONKEY ISLAND), they are certainly less convenient than a simple point-'n-click adventure game.

My one complaint lies with the story itself - there are times when GRIM FANDANGO can seem awfully dark to some. However, despite this one shortcoming, the fact remains - you should own GRIM FANDANGO.

Enjoy your stay in the land of the dead.