With the simple life of bringing love to your girl behind us with Popeye, our world has become somewhat more troublesome in Hijack, which lands at Number #72 in the Your Sinclair Top 100. A game in which the fate of hostages around the world arrive on your desk within the Pentagon.
In our first game within the Top 100 from Electric Dreams Software, Hijack – made in 1986 – brings to the table the chance to use your spongy grey mass between your ears, as you go around the Pentagon speaking to the numerous people including the President, an FBI agent and Press Officers. It’s down to you to manoeuvre troops and diplomats to and fro the fraught situation, gauge the public opinion and eventually – hopefully – resolve the hostage crisis.
Hijack on paper – and also visually on the screen – appears impressive, however it rapidly becomes apparent as you begin to play the game it really isn’t as much fun as you want it to be, the main issue being the lifts. At first the lifts are a simple affair as you go in one, it takes you down, then you go into another and it goes up. However as you venture further into the bowels of the Pentagon, it becomes clear these lifts are designed to trap you within purgatory and the game becomes both frustrating and dull; as you just seem to be going around in circles.
With access to perhaps a map of the building I may enjoy Hijack better, however I shouldn’t in truth need this. Instead I’m just a lost employee in a building bothering the Finance Dept.
Originally published June 17, 2016. Updated June 30, 2023.
