I completely missed this one the first time around. 1997 was a very busy year in my life. I was in the midst of my
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, which is essentially a high stress academic boot camp for teenagers.
Essentially it's a program based around all advanced classes, in which you get no grades or credit at all throughout the program , until a series of back to back high stakes exams in the final two weeks that determine almost 100% of your grade for your high school career. Picture an entire High School program based around something like AP classes but to the extreme, in which there is no homework or class participation credit or grades as you go along. Everything depend on you barrage of exams at the end (and a thesis you have to write, and mandatory extracurricular leadership activities). Essentially you do not have a life outside of school work for all of high school. No time for games, no time for friends, no time for anything except studying and other school work.
I remember Christmas 1998. I was studying, and gave myself a brief diversion. My exams were coming up in may of 1999, and I did some back of the envelope calculations and determined that even if I did nothing but go to school, eat sleep and study for the next 6 months, I still would not have the time I needed to adequately cover all the material for every subject in preparation for the exams.
Usually you can piss off an IB graduate by trying to compare the experience to having taken AP classes, British A-Levels or French Baccalaureate. Those three are child's play by comparison. IB is a program that tries to break you in every way possible, and those who get through it successfully have a shared sense of trauma, and usually a little bit of pride too.
Anyway, so ~1997 through 1999 are kind of a blur for me.
Only benefit was that after that experience, nothing else was really difficult anymore. I exempted out of a ton of college classes, and many others I barely went to, just pulled the homework assignments offline, and went to the midterms and finals. The Engineering program at Umass Amherst was largely considered a rigorous high drop out program, but for me, after IB it was lots of easy A's. I'll never forget my Differential Equations professor carding me during my midterm exam, because he had never seen me before. He had never seen me before, and wouldn't again until the Final. Yeah, I got an A in that one.
Anyway, I haven't played a point and click adventure game since I replayed Day of the Tentacle in ScummVM a decade ago. If this one is reasonably priced I may have to give it a try.
