Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas

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Deja Vu II

Developer(s)	ICOM Simulations, Inc.
Publisher(s)	MindScape
Engine	MacVenture
Release date(s)	1988 (Mac) 1989 (Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari ST) 1990 (DOS)
Genre(s)	Adventure game
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Apple IIGS Commodore Amiga Atari ST CD-I Game Boy Color Apple Macintosh PC PocketPC
Media	Two 3,5" 800k floppies (Mac)
Input	Mouse/Keyboard (Computer)

Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas is a "point-and-click" adventure game, the sequel to Deja Vu: a Nightmare Comes True, set in the world of 1940s hard-boiled detective novels and movies. It was the last game made in the MacVenture series.

1 Gameplay
2 Trivia
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Gameplay

In this follow-up set in the late 1940s our hard-boiled hero Theodore 'Ace' Harding once again regains consciousness, this time in a room at the Las Vegas Lucky Dice Hotel and Casino. It soon becomes apparent that the Vegas mobster Tony Malone is missing a hundred grand after the events that took place in Deja Vu (I): a Nightmare Comes True and that Ace has become the scapegoat.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Deja Vu II takes place in a sparsely populated Las Vegas reminiscent of the movie Bugsy, with just a few locations to explore. However, the player has the option to take the train to other cities including Chicago, where locations from Deja Vu I are revisited. Connections to this background story are well explained, and the game is completely playable by itself. In fact, there are situations where experience with Deja Vu I can be a disadvantage by creating certain expectations, for instance: the phone in the office at Joe's Bar is not openable in Deja Vu I, in Deja Vu II it contains an important item. To get to the office the player has to climb the fire ladder from the street, which is "too high" to reach in Deja Vu I.

Like the other MacVenture games there is a time limit, in this case the hitman Stogie Martin, who periodically reminds Ace to "come up with the dough". Although no longer affected by drug-induced amnesia (as in Deja Vu I), the player still experiences memory flashbacks when encountering certain environments or photographs.

Together with its predecessor Deja Vu II is considered by some fans to be the most difficult of these games and requires a lot of lateral thinking. As in Deja Vu I, the gameplay has a final part where evidence collected during the game has to be planted in the right places. This part is among the trickiest in the game, since the significance of each tidbit can be hard to assess.

[edit] Trivia

Deja Vu II on the Apple IIGS

When around Joe's Bar, an old woman periodcally comes out of nowhere, punches you with her handbag and disappears again after screaming various phrases, including:
- "Stop floridation! (sic) Save our precious essence!" - a reference to General Jack D. Ripper from the movie Dr. Strangelove.
- "Soylent green is people!" - a line from the movie Soylent Green.
- "They're coming to take me away! Ha ha!" - a reference to the song of the same name by Napoleon XIV.
At the cemetery one of the tombstones is engraved "Here lies Scott Adler, a man who wanted his sunny side up," a macabre reference to developer Darin Adler's younger brother.
The proposed NES port is one of the more famous pieces of vaporware for the platform. It was completed but never released. The port finally saw release on the Game Boy Color.