Yes its true. While the series has its own Wikipedia page, and there are people who can’t get enough of the series (to make their own SCI engine even) to be honest there were parts of the game that were simply painful.

The original game required a 286 computer, but that was honestly wishful thinking (as there is no computer that makes it run smooth). When I played it as a child on a XT (8 MHz 8088) the save/load times were easily minutes long. Even on my 3 gHz 8 cpu machine it still takes over 10-15 seconds (yes seriously).

So there’s this section where you are floating in the air trying to get away from the sequel police, and it has a unique sequence. You fly up, then right, and once they shoot at you, down and to the stairs. About half the time they shoot you right as you leave the left hand side, another one that will get you is other skaters will stun you and the police will shoot you, but even if you make it to the other side – move right up the stairs is a challenge for your hero for some reason and the guards blow you up there. Needless to say after doing this some 30 times I gave up.

Can you imagine doing this on the old XT? Seriously – it took hours waiting for that ST-225 (2” tall, 25 megs unformatted hard drive, and very very very very slow by today’s standards)  to load the game to try that sequence again and again and again…

So what’s wrong with it? I honestly think there were certain parts of the game that weren’t play tested – ever. Unresponsive controls combined with split second reaction requirements = suck.

And yes I played it on a 386 later on in life, and it wasn’t any better as I remember.