If you'd want to go through the intro, I'd suggest you don't as it will crash as soon as that raspy speech is heard (note: an update fixed the sound crash, making this point moot). The problems lie with an incompatibility with Soundblaster cards - something I'm told was an issue on actual DOS as well.
That might not mean much considering the godsend that is DOSBox, but even that emulator's latest iteration has problems. The last negative I'd like to mention is how difficult it is to get this game to run. I won't even mention the hoops you have to go through to combine two items. This becomes annoying when you're stuck and want to look at all of your items to see if you've missed anything. To look at an item in your inventory, you select it then drag it over to your avatar. Things seem simple enough to begin with - hold down the right mouse button to select an icon before clicking on the main screen - but as soon as you attempt something a little more complex its failings become obvious. It has probably one of the most unintuitive point-and-click control schemes I've ever come across in such a game. This is not a problem for most adventure gamers who grew up on the genre but it seems at odds with the nice SVGA graphics. Except for the barely audible scratchy voices on a buggy and poorly mixed intro, all of the speech is displayed in sound bubbles.
For a CD game released in 1995, it's also surprising that there is next to no voice work going on. The music consists mostly of sub-par renditions of known songs like the theme to Happy Days and the former Soviet national anthem. The animation is sparse and juddery that takes away from a good visual design. That's where the good points end in its presentation as the other aspects seem rushed and sloppy. The graphics do look quite nice, with a hand-drawn cartoonish style that looks great in SVGA. This doesn't go according to plan as you're soon plunged headfirst into a caper that sees you travelling the world. At first you only play as Doug as he plans to steal the Czar's crown on display at a museum. The three leads return Doug Nuts, the international thief, Donna Fatale his top-heavy love interest and Dino Fagioli the muscular lunk who's overdosed on steroids. This is a sequel to the Dynabyte developed Nippon Safes Inc. Where else can the Marx Bros fight for Marxism?
Big Red Adventure came to our PC screens in the middle of 1995, bringing with it a mildly political sense of humour as it lampoons communist Russia.
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