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Release: 1993 (Floppy Disk).
Developer: Sierra On-Line.
Publisher: Sierra On-Line.
Director: Josh Mandel.
Producer: Josh Mandel.
Designers: Al Lowe, Josh Mandel.
Programmer: Steve Conrad.
Artists: Bob Gleason, Karin Young.
Composer: Aubrey Hodges.
Engine: Sierra's Creative Interpreter.
Platforms: MS-DOS, Macintosh, Windows 3.x.
Genre: Adventure Game.
Mode: Single player.
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist is a comic Old West adventure computer game created by Al Lowe and Josh Mandel and published by Sierra On-Line in 1993.
Gameplay: The game uses Sierra's SCI1.1 engine, and features 256-color hand-drawn art, scaling sprites and a mouse-driven interface. Freddy Pharkas ran under
DOS and Windows 3.1. It was released in floppy disk and CD-ROM versions. The game's manual is entitled The Modern Day Book of Health and Hygiene, a parody
of 19th century medical texts. It contains information necessary for solving prescription puzzles.
Plot: In the game, the player takes the role of Freddy Pharkas, a 1880s pharmacist in the town of Coarsegold, California which was the location of Sierra's
headquarters in 1993. Freddy was once a gunslinger, but sought a new career after his last gunfight, in which "Kenny the Kid" shot off one of his ears.
Throughout the town, businesses are either being bought or proprietors are being scared out of town. Someone is obviously trying to take over the entire
area, but who? why? The slimy sheriff, Checkum P. Shift doesn't seem eager to help, so it's up to Freddy to find out the details. The cast includes the
town's eccentric old man and story narrator Whittlin' Willy, Srini (Freddy's "Injun" sidekick - actually East Indian), Doc 'Dizzy' Gillespie the drunken
town doctor, the cafe owner Helen Back, otherwise as Mom and her Chinese chef Hopalong Singh, the crooked banker Phineas (P.H.) Balance, town schoolmarm
(and Freddy's love interest) Penelope Primm, and Madame Ovaree, who runs the local brothel. The villain "Kenny the Kid" is a cartoonish version of Sierra's
then-president Ken Williams. Madame Ovaree's name is an obvious parody of Madame Bovary and (as evidenced by her occupation) ovaries. Freddy must take part
in numerous tasks such as mixing the right amount of chemicals to create the requested prescription remedy and lab equipment. He also must deal with various
dilemmas taking part in town such as a gas leak aka all the town's horses with explosive flatulence, a snail stampede, a diarrhea epidemic and an abandoned
building fire that might spread through the entire town. He must use found objects and pharmaceutical skills to solve these problems. As a form of copy
protection, the recipes for the prescriptions are only found in the manual.
Development History: Al Lowe has said that he considers Freddy Pharkas one of his funniest games. He gives a good deal of credit to Josh Mandel, who co-wrote
the game, as well as some of the songs including the opening and closing ballads. Mandel had explained in a commentary the reason why there were so many more
jokes in the Floppy Disk version as compared to the CD-ROM version of the game, "I had co-designed, directed, produced, and written the floppy version; there
were no plans at all, at the time, to produce a CD version. Al Lowe was then tapped to do the casting and recording of the CD version, but the game already
had so much text in it that, when it came time to record the inventory text, Al just stopped—he was, he said, tired of sitting in the sound studio. As I had
written the vast majority of the game’s text and dialogue, I pointed out to him that, in the process of cutting roughly 15% of the game’s text from the
recording, he’d left out many of the jokes". Lowe admitted that his goal was to make a comic western game in the vein of Blazing Saddles.
Differences Floppy and CD: There are some differences with script between the Floppy and CD versions. In particular many lines are abridged, many of the
narrator's comments are cut and replaced with generic you cannot do that messages. Also the floppy version had name labels above many of he random unimportant
extras that could be seen when you talked to them. Since the CD-ROM has no subtitles their names are not seeable in the CD version. On at least one box
containing the CD-ROM version of the game, it states "Meet the Great-Great Grandpappy of Leisure Suit Larry!", referring to Zircon Jim Laffer who makes a
appearance in the game. However, the game's original intent may have instead been to portray Zircon Jim as Leisure Suit Larry's great-great-great uncle.
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