Hawaii High: The Mystery of the Tiki

This was the first game release targeted specifically to girls. Its designer was Trina Roberts, a writer for Barbie Comics and designer of Wonder Woman. The game was not successful, probably due to the low budget accorded such a ground-breaking project. It was followed, however, by four or five other games targeted towards girls, and it did introduce some of the features that would dominate the girls' games movement discussed in this volume: more character-centered plots, issues of friendship and social relationships, and bright colorful graphics. The two protagonists are 14-year-old students of Hawaii High, one native, one just moved from New York. They meet and make friends, and the girl from New York learns all about Hawaii in the course of the adventure, which involves a stolen tiki that they find and that they try to bring back, and in the course of doing that they discover an ancient Hawaiian burial and have to deal with two thieves who are bad guys, but kind of wacky bad guys, and wind up on the slopes of a volcano, surrounded by flowing lava, and meet mysterious creatures like the ghostly kahuna who is guardian of the burial cave.