PINK PANTHER'S PASSPORT TO PERIL

A learning experience the whole family can enjoy.

Travel the world on an adventure of intrigue and learning with one of TV's most beloved cartoon characters. Visit England, Australia, China, India, Egypt, and Bhutan.

The Mission:

A group of summer campers are in trouble - can you help each and every one of these international VIP's get home safely?

Kids ages 6 to 12 will enjoy:

• Interacting with Pink and many other zany animated characters
• 30 to 50 hours of fun-filled gameplay
• 10 original songs
• Exploring animated locales in 6 far-away countries

PDA Cultural Database:

To help complete the mission, kids use their PDA - personal digital assistant - filled with a cultural database of more than 250 fact-filled pages of photos and information. Topics include people, languages, clothing, foods, art, entertainment, nature and history.

Kids enhance their knowledge of geography and history while building their vocabulary and learning about other cultures of the world.

Teaches: geography, social studies and history. Builds vocabulary

• Inspector Clouseau has a top secret assignment for Pink.
• Pink travels the globe to rescue a group of summer campers - the sons and daughters of important parents from many different countries.
• Pink hooks up with his old friend, inventor Prof. Von Schmarty whose latest invention changes the seasons - one of his many fun devices.
• Use your cool PDA - personal digital assistant - to discover fun facts about the lands you visit.

~ from the back of the box

As one of the mainstays in animation, the Pink Panther has been around. Mostly suction-cupped to cars but you get my point. In the 90s, the silent feline finally got his own voice; that of Max Headroom himself Matt Frewer. His nonchalant vocal inflections gave him a disinterested yet sarcastic tone that endeared him to a slightly older demographic than he would normally have outside of the Inspector Clouseau movies. It sat well alongside the likes of Animaniacs or Tiny Toons, at least that was my opinion as a ten-year-old. Pink starred in his own games at this time, including a couple of educational adventures based directly on this show. The first of which was Pink Panther's Passport to Peril in 1996.

Developed by Wanderlust Interactive and published by BMG Interactive for Windows computers, Passport to Peril keeps Pink's voice box intact, though he no longer sounds like Matt Frewer. His tone is more enthused and attentive, being voiced by second-generation TMNT Leonardo Michael Sinterniklaas. This probably suits the spirit of a scholastic game a little better, but as a whole this is no mere educational game. It is a full-on point-and-click adventure.

Click on Pink to access your inventory. Don't think too hard where he keeps them (left).

Each country has multiple locations to visit as detailed on the map (right).

As a professional spy, Pink has been called to the office by Inspector Clouseau to be assigned a new case. He is to travel to a top-secret summer camp called Camp ChillyWawa where the sons and daughters of the world's greatest minds and most powerful people are in attendance. Except, after a suspicious visit from the Better Camping Bureau, the children start acting weird. In a leap of logic that can only be found when excusing plot points, Pink travels to each child's home country to bring back something that would make them feel more at home. Naturally, an inconceivably bonkers conspiracy gets uncovered along the way.

We first visit my home turf of England, where everyone has Australian accents. We are to find the estate of the bratty British kid and bring back his unburnt effigy of Guy Fawkes that he holds so dear. We do this by convincing a hooker to take off his shirt by grabbing his ball. Rugby ball that is. We can then exchange that shirt for another item which is exchanged for another item and so on. That's the standard puzzle of the game, and it's not particularly hard. Even if you don't hear the clues - which are so obvious it might as well be an instruction - you can easily solve it by using everything on everything. If it isn't highlighted, you cannot do which takes a lot of the trial and error out of it. If you can, it's either the right answer or a setup for an amusing joke.

You can watch all of the music videos at any time. Egypt's is about preparing mummies (left)

while the Chinese sing about their over-population and one-child policy (right).

And that's where this game really shines, in its comedy. There were some laugh-out-loud moments that I wasn't expecting. Funnily enough, being an educational game, the jokes are often a little bluer than you might otherwise expect. I already mentioned the hooker, which is a position in rugby by the way, but Pink's reaction to his role is just as amusing. Talking about Pink, there is one moment where he literally and rather suggestively loosens his belt. Enough for his trousers to fall down. It made for a surprisingly unpredictable adventure.

With all the tea, bad teeth and worse cockney accents, this version of England is filled with only stereotypes. That goes for every other country we visit too, and some of them haven't aged particularly well. Egypt is populated by haggling merchants around Giza while China is all about population control, President "Meow" Mao and confusing cat-yelps with traditional singing. They even sing a whole song about China's one-child policy. Most other featured countries get musical history lessons about Guy Fawkes or mummification. China gets birth control.

There is some interesting facts in the PDA, but it's by no means exhaustive.

Even if they are a dubious means to teach about other cultures, the songs are still highly entertaining. That cannot be said for the encyclopaedia found on PDA (Pink Digital Assistant) which is a little dryer in its presentation. The circular menu displays the flag of each of the six featured countries which can be lined up with one of eight different categories. You have topics on native wildlife, food, art... all the basics. It's no exhaustive list, with just as much space given to The Beatles as the entirety of ancient Chinese history. At least you get some nice cartoon scenes on your way there.

It is for this reason that I'd like to treat Pink Panther's Passport to Peril as solely a comedic adventure. In this context it is a very good one, if on the extremely easy side. The dialogue and humour may be out-of-date at times, but it is generally well written and presented for the most part. That alone kept me playing to the end.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses ScummVM to allow the game to run on modern PCs. Finnish-language Manual and Help file included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 352 Mb.  Install Size: 752 Mb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download


Pink Panther's Passport to Peril is © Wanderlust Interactive, Inc 
Pink Panther (the character) is © United Artists Corporation
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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