The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime has something of an odd history. It was originally released in 1993 for Mac computers, but as the first release was something of a technical disaster, it was re-released, completely re-worked as Turbo! a year later, accompanied by improved visuals. Then, a complete remake, which is also the current version of the game, Pegasus Prime was released in 1997, again, with greatly improved image and video quality, as this time around all the renderings were re-done and environments remodeled.
The game was originally released for Mac OS, but it did have a Windows 3.1 version as well. The Pegasus Prime was released only for Macs and mostly because of that, it kind of fell from the face of the gaming map for a while, as there just wasn't a proper way of running it on modern platforms, until ScummVM got support for it. Without ScummVM, there would be no way of playing The Journeyman Project today, unless you'd be doing it with legacy hardware. As most people are not willing to do so, I can only say, thank God for ScummVM. And for the devs willing to put in the time and effort.
I've not played the original or the Turbo! version of The Journeyman Project, but I've understood that Pegasus Prime is more or less the same as Turbo!. The main goals behind it were to make the gameplay, well better than the original, but also be more comparable with the two sequels, in terms of the story, continuity and controls. As the game is a pre-rendered FMV title, there were also a lot of improvements made in terms of compression and codecs, so each version looks better than the previous one.
So, the publication history taken care of, let's tackle the game itself.
In the future, humanity has found time travel. Deemed too dangerous, the technology is given to the special governmental branch, whose purpose is to monitor history and take action if any unlawful alterations are detected.
On the eve of the second encounter with the alien race known as Cyrollans, a massive time rip is detected. You, as the agent in duty, are set on the case. The 1st point of business is to go to the prehistory, where a record of the unaltered timeline is kept, which can be then compared to the current time. This helps to pinpoint the major changes in time, where the history has been shifted out from alignment.
In this instance, there are 3 major rips in time. The 1st is a failure of world unification negotiations, which on the proper timeline resulted in the unification of the world. In the failed time, the USA launched a nuke to foil the meeting. The 2nd is a destruction of the Mars colony during the 1st alien ship encounter in the altered time line. The normal history had this as the first alien encounter, during which humanity received an open invitation to join the community of species and ten years to consider this invitation. And the last is the assassination in the convention where this invitation was considered. On the proper timeline, this invitation was accepted, in the altered one, the assassination led into rejection of the invitation.
So, this is your job: to go to each pinpointed time and find out the cause for the alteration and prevent it from happening. If you succeed in this, the timeline returns to its proper course. Aided with your AI companion, you head out. In a proper adventure game fashion, you do need items from different time zones to solve all the puzzles you encounter, so even if you solve one rip, you might need to return to them just to pick up an item of importance.
I reckon Myst-like is a way of describing the game play. The world is presented in pre-rendered 3D scenes and every time you move, a cinematic shows you going forwards. In the case of the Journeyman Project, this presentation succeeds in feeling very nice, as the movement directions are somewhat carefully planned, so each step forwards feels logical and there's no feeling of disorientation games like this might have, if one step is a long winding path or something like that.
The puzzles themselves are relatively simple and fair, even on modern standards. They are mostly bringing item a to place b, but there are some logical puzzles as well, like when you need to disarm a nuclear bomb and so on. You also get extra points if you manage to solve the situations in a peaceful manner. There aren't that many puzzles though and the game itself isn't terribly long either. As it is with games like these, most of the size comes from the moving animations, not from the puzzles.
There are no inventory puzzles, so there's no need to use an item on another inside the inventory. And while I'm talking about the inventory, the one you have is limited to 9 items. But unlike in many other games, the Journeyman Project keeps tabs on what is actually important and removes unnecessary items if needed, so there's no items moving from one time to another.
A handful of puzzles require some quick reaction time and trial and error, but as a re-try is always a possibility (the death screen gives you a continue possibility that reloads the game to somewhere near where you died), it's not too bad as far as design goes.
The game offers two modes, the standard adventure mode and a walkthrough mode, which allows you to auto-solve puzzles, if you have the right items with you. This makes the Journeyman Project easier to approach, even for those who might not be into old school adventure gaming.
There isn't a lot of FMV scenes with real actors. Mostly just the mission briefings and some additional mood pieces here and there, but what there is, is generally well made. Overall, the game has this early 90's, a bit cheeky, intentionally a bit goofy feel about it. This is enhanced by the rock guitar riffs stringing through some of the scenes. All great stuff, especially if you like the aesthetic.
As I stated, I've never played the Journeyman Project in its original form, so I can't really compare the different versions more than just superficially in terms of graphics (Pegasus Prime looks vastly better than the original). But from what I've understood, the game did benefit greatly from both times it was retooled, and the version you can get now, is one of the best adventure games in this Myst-like format.
if you want it, you can buy the game from Steam or GOG. I do recommend GOG in this case, as you can get the sequels from there as well, whereas Steam has only Pegasus Prime.
