Play Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders Online

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders came out in 1988 from Lucasfilm Games, a time when MS-DOS adventures were heavy on text and light on hand-holding. You control Zak, a tabloid reporter who stumbles onto a real alien conspiracy to lower human intelligence, and the game quickly spirals into a globe-trotting (and eventually interplanetary) scramble to save the world.

You guide Zak and eventually three other characters, switching between them to combine items, talk to odd characters, and solve puzzles that range from clever to completely absurd. The main goal is to gather evidence and tools to disrupt the alien signal, which involves everything from using a rubber chicken to retrieving a crystal skull. Progress is screen by screen, with a verb-based interface for interactions; the pacing is slow, and some puzzles are notoriously obscure without a guide. It feels like untangling a very silly, very satisfying knot.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".