0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Ark of Time

Ark of Time is third person point n click adventure game developed by Trecision and published by Project Two Interactive, the game was released exclusively in Europe in July of 1998 for the Playstation. The games first release however was in 1997 when it appeared on DOS in Europe with International Computer Entertainment handling the European publishing, the game would also release for DOS in North America with Koei publishing the game there.

Ark of Time is a point and click adventure game and works like the many previous entries in this genre, with the player exploring various locations and interacting with characters and objects in order to progress the story. The various locations that Richard can explore are accessed via a world map with the player clicking on the desired location.

The game also has puzzle elements for the player to solve, these puzzles are inventory based puzzles starting off pretty slowly and fairly simple, these puzzles ramp up the difficulty as the game progresses, some of these puzzles are logic based puzzles of elimination, while other puzzles the player is trying to escape from the various predicaments the lead character gets into. In addition to the puzzles the game has several mysterious objects to find, a quest to exonerate an assassin and plenty of character interactions as well

You play as sports journalist Richard Kendall, during the summer of 1997 an expedition to the middle of the Atlantic ocean to find the fabled lost city of Atlantis the team of four scientists are headed by Professor Caldwell, another scientist called Helen, the sponsor of the journey Mr. Blower and his nephew Simon.

Shortly after the expedition sets out all contact with them is lost, Richard Kendell is tasked with finding them by his editor, reluctant to leave London his editor however insists on him going, because if you are lost while searching for the lost city of Atlantis you really need a sports journalists heading up the rescue mission.

Anyway Richards journey to find the lost expedition will takes him to a varied range of places around the world from the Caribbean, Easter Island, Stonehenge and even the fabled city of Atlantis with the games story exploring the links between the various ancient cultures and Atlantis.

Only a handful of critic reviews are available for Ark of Time ranging from pretty good to average, as usual starting with the best which comes from Tap-Repeatedly/Four Fat Chicks who scored the game at an 80/100 and praised the sly humour running throughout the game concluding with Nothing overt or scene-stealing, but time and time again I found myself smiling at a remark or reaction.

German publication Mega Fun were the next highest review score with a 74/100 they praised the puzzles in the game as well as the mature and wittily permitted story they were however critical of the over use of the world map for changing locations which with the Playstations loading times were something of a drag also the lack of German voice over was a downer for them.

A 70/100 from AdventureGamers up next who praised the cheesy but wonderfully retro opening cutscene and concluded with, this is the worst game that I've totally enjoyed. Down at the bottom of the review scale we find HonestGamers who scored Ark of Time at a very average 50/100 with their review critical of the game never doing anything to make itself stand out more against the other major titles in this genre.

They were also critical of the sudden difficulty spike towards the end of the game. They ended with the following, I didn’t complete Ark of Time as much as I slew it, gloated over its broken and bloody corpse, and then forgot it ever existed.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who unsurprisingly don’t stock this title with it only releasing on Playstation in Europe, likewise eStarland.com and the dot com version of Amazon don’t stock this title either. More surprisingly Retrogames.co.uk don’t stock this European only release, so we head over to the co.uk version of Amazon as a last hope.

Where we find a limited supply of the game available, even with the limited stock to choose from prices remain pretty cheap, with a complete used copy in very good condition available for £6.55 which is $8.75 in the US and €7.33 in the Euro zone countries.

Prices for a very good used copy peak around the £15 mark with a like new copy starting at around the £17 mark, prices for a like new copy do start getting steep from here with a like new copy reaching a current peak of £43.29. 

As you would expect the price for a new copy of the game is considerably higher, with at the time of writing just one new copy on the market, which is priced up at £68.87, the new copy is shipped by Amazon so comes with free deliver on orders over £20.

Written by

P J Gibbon