Teenagent
5% 
VERDICT: Unimaginative game. Boring protagonist. Humor isn’t that funny. The adventure gameplay doesn’t work because the puzzles defy all logic and means only a walkthrough necessary. There is absolutely no reason to ever play this game. But it is free.
VERSION: GOG
This game runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Linux requires Dosbox tweaking.
MULTIPLAYER:
TeenAgent has no multiplayer. Sorry you cannot torture your friends with this… game.
INPUT:
Mouse is used primarily. Keyboard is used to bring up the menu to save and load your game.
TECHNICAL ISSUES:
Unfortunately, I had none. I’ve never wished for more technical issues in my life.
WHAT IS IT?
Above: Such an ambitious title screen. Note the flames in the title to fool the player to think that maybe, just maybe, this is an epic adventure like Final Fantasy 6 or something. Nothing could be further from the truth!
TeenAgent is not a game. It is GOG torture device used to bring new GOG sign-ups down to Earth after their Tyrian 2000 high.
TeenAgent is an adventure game that came out around 1995 for shareware.
Above: Oh dear, this game was actually sold for money.
There’s not much to describe how the game works. It is the basic adventure game format. You run around from screen to screen to collect items which you use on labeled items on the screen. Trial and error will have you place the right item on the right label on the right screen. Sounds fun, right?
Of course not.
MANUAL REVIEW
There is no manual to review. You have no idea what the controls are going into this game.
CONTROLS
There is no manual. Instead of clicking every button forever, here is what to do.
The function keys (F1 onward) load up the options menu. There, you can save and load your game.
You point the mouse and click to walk there or right click to use something. Clicking [CTRL] moves you to where your pointer is. You can also use the arrow keys to move.
Inventory is accessed by moving your mouse cursor to the very top of the screen and holding it there.
WHAT HAPPENS
Since most of you will never touch this game, I will tell you what happens.
Gold is vanishing out of thin air from a bank. Since the government doesn’t know how to solve the answer, they hire a fortune teller to point at the phone book and tell them who they should hire. The fortune teller picks your character, the young teen. Armed men drag the teen in.
Above: The graphics are handpainted and always look lively. Animation is well done too for that time period.
You get dropped off at a training facility. You meet the drill sergeant type guy who informs you that you must go through three trials.
The first trial is that you get locked up in a cell. There’s not much in there. The way out is to rip the light from the ceiling and wire, have the guy give you your food. Attach the live wires to it. Say you are done eating. He grabs the food and electrocutes himself. This allows you to grab the keys and get out.
Above: I thought the guy died at first.
The second trial has the guy tied himself up in a chair. You must extract the secret password from him. You’ll do this by tickling him with something.
Above: While the first trial wasn’t that bad, the second trial shows that the puzzles make no sense.
The third trial is finding where the guy disappeared. The only place you don’t have access to is the secret room behind the bar.
The puzzles make no sense. You must combine bread crumbs and medicine (who does this!?) in order to give to a bird who you capture. The bird is then used on the radio (!) which distract the bartender. You are then to switch out the mug he has there with a mug of mud you got because you obviously used a mug on the mud pit after you landed in it.
Above: You must use the mug on the mud pit but only after you have fallen and and before you have gotten out. The game is full of these stupid puzzles.
After you find the guy in a barrel behind the bar, you are done with the trials. It is time to send you to work. You need to get into the mansion of the suspect. The only thing you are given is superglue.
Above: This is a rare map screen of the second part and is where most of the game locations are at.
It would take far too long to describe all the puzzles you have to do. It is important to state that they make no sense. Who combines a feather duster on a fireplace and then on a potato? Who shoves chocolate through a heart shaped hole in a cupboard? Who combines a cone, a needle, and a feather to make a dart to shoot at a beehive? Who combines ribbons with rakes? How are you supposed to know that you need to talk to the guard at the precise time he is drinking from a bottle? Not only is this game uninspired and lame, the gameplay is unfair.
Above: Something you’ll never hear women say. Something is up with her.
You find a diving mask and fins on the scarecrow (!). When you swim underwater, the item you need to obviously pick up is the anchor. Really now? The anchor?
Above: The kid can’t stay underwater for long yet he can pull a boat anchor out of the lake! This game makes no sense!
What triggers progress in the game is making multiple attempts to get into the mansion. After about five attempts, the big fat guy inside (the suspect) comes out and gives you a hundred dollars to leave him alone. He tells you to buy a walkman.
(I love how this game dates itself. You will hear about walkmans, see VCRs, ‘dictaphones’, and even a Polaroid camera!)
Above: You get very angry here.
The banknote has Anne’s name on it. When you ask her about it, apparently the Big Fat Guy in the mansion tried to use the same banknote to get Anne to give him a kiss. She refused. Upon hearing the story (you have a crush on Anne), you get enraged to run over and beat the guard out of way. Then you enter the third part of the game: inside the mansion.
The mansion only has a few rooms such as the kitchen, bedroom, hallway, and study. More crazy puzzles abound here such as taking paper from the upstairs trashcan and putting it on the stove to catch fire. Then stuff that flaming paper down your pants and put it into the refrigerator. This will free the meat. You take the meat and put it into the stew.
“Why do you put the meat into the stew?”
I have no idea. But you do. The game makes no sense.
There is a robot that is a futuristic safe. You must provide proof that you are the fat rich man by showing proof of SIGHT, SOUND, and SCENT.
By opening the correct colored drawer while pulling a pink book that is four rows down and three rows left, a secret compartment appears that has a video tape. You watch the tape and use the camera on the TV. That is your proof of SIGHT.
You get the dictaphone and get batteries for it. The batteries are in the kitchen in the Japanese radio. Since your character cannot find the batteries in Japanese radios (I’m not making this up, he says this directly), you must smash the radio with a rolling pin. You use the dictaphone on the tape. (The tape is the fat man singing and dancing to ‘singing in the rain’.)
The scent can be obtained from dirty socks in the bathroom. You must use tongs to get the socks.
When the safe opens up, there is a jar and a diary inside. The diary shows the secret behind the rich fat guy.
Above: Time pills!
Fat guy’s inventor friend got drunk one night and made time pills. They don’t last long but allow you to move 1000 times faster in time for a few moments. Only a jar of pills were made before the inventor became sober. He asks for money to build a lab downstairs to discover the formula. Fat dude agrees. That is how the gold got stolen in less than a second.
Above: At the end, you confront the big fat guy.
The rich fat guy points a gun at you when you try to stop him. Luckily, the drill sergeant guy from the beginning of the game comes through the walls at this right time. The mad scientist is captured. The fat rich dude runs away.
Above: Anne was a spy!
You chase after the fat rich dude, and he just laughs at you. He tells you he has a gun, and you can’t stop him. So you use a jar of chili on him (which I’m sure is something we do everyday is to use jars of chili on bad guys). He gets knocked out, and it is the end of the game.
Above: At the end, you become an ‘official agent’. Actually, though, you just want to chase Anne.
JUSTIFICATION FOR SCORE
Does this really need to be explained? The premise of the game is just stupid. The protagonist is not interesting. The puzzles make no sense.
Is the music good? Not really.
Is the graphics good? Not really.
Is the dialogue sharp? Not really.
Is the gameplay fun? Not really.
Is the game charming? Not really.
There is nothing to save this game. It is Urban Champion: The Adventure Game. Even Teenagent’s setting seems identical to Urban Champion.
Don’t waste your time playing this game.
Above: That is the final screen. There, I save you time from playing this awful game.
At least in the good Sierra adventure games (Freddy Pharkas, King’s Quest V, Police Quest, Space Quest IV, etc) there was a twisted logic to the game universes that gave you a fighting chance with some of the puzzles (use powder to confuse the huge-nosed dwarf, or enter a time-travel code backwards… to go back in time) – it’s interesting that it’s precisely the elements IN Teen Agent (combine random item A with random item B) that partially led to popular ridicule of the genre and its decline.
Unfortunately, it never quite recovered, as many of the “rebirth” pc adventure games have simplified things to where it’s not as fun to see all the zany and ludicrous outcomes of your actions.
Interesting. I never considered connecting TeenAgent (and other bad adventure games I imagine) with the decline of the genre. Adventure games are my least traveled genre.