"I didn't choose to be a hero. I just ran out of other things to be."

Being a Midwestern Gen X gamer, one of my favorite stores to visit in the mid-to-late '90s was the now-defunct "Media Play". The one closest to me opened in 1995 and closed two short years later, but in those two short years, I spent a good number of hours prowling the aisles, especially their computer software and books.

I was late to the PC party, only acquiring a laptop of my own in the mid-90s, so all my prior PC gaming experiences came from being at other peoples' houses. But now that I had my own computer, I started looking for games I could enjoy that (A) wouldn't break the bank, and (B) weren't DOOM clones. Having experienced Myst on a friend's computer a few years earlier, I was specifically interested in point-and-click adventures. And it just so happened EA had released a budget version of a comic-book-themed adventure from a year or two earlier called Noctropolis.

I liked comics. I wanted a graphical adventure game. This one wouldn't break the bank. It wasn't the first game I purchased for my PC with my own money, but it was the first graphical adventure I bought, and that makes it special to me.

Noctropolis isn't a terribly long game -- it took me about a week to solve it, mostly thanks to some warped puzzle logic and a couple of items necessitating a hunt-the-pixel mentality to find -- but it is an intriguing mixture of pre-rendered backdrops, rotoscoped animations, and FMV cutscenes that gives it a look which is simultaneously dated and yet somehow timeless. Comic-style artwork is an oddly untapped sub-genre, and this works in the game's favor. If you play it in eXoDOS today, definitely use the Roland MT-32 option to hear that gorgeous soundtrack in all its glory.

If you want a more up-to-date edition, Nightdive Studios remastered it back in 2016 and in the process cleaned up a few bugs and edited out several paths where it was possible to soft-lock your progress; this is the version available on GOG and Steam.

There's something special about your first experience with a genre, and I cannot possibly be the only person who appreciates this game for being what it is. I like that it didn't become an on-going series, like King's Quest or Ultima. It's a thoroughly '90s title: dark, edgy, a product of its time, mostly fun, sometimes annoying, and occasionally surprising. It works a lot better than an obvious Batman rip-off has any right to.

I've loved it for thirty years.