this is going to be a super obscure one.

so there's this popular swedish movie franchise that started out as an adoption of a danish movie franchise, but blew through all of their scripts and outgrew it after just three films. it's about a trio of thieves who try to steal high-stakes targets by means of ludicrous plans[^1] but usually fail due to sheer incompetency, only to then have the treasure land in their lap by sheer luck at the end. and in the late 90's, when macromedia shockwave was the big thing, a couple of shockwave-based point-and-click adventures were released with the trio as protagonists. each character has their own special skill, and you need to switch between them to use them. a fun premise, and a fitting one. i had both, but only got the second one much later. the first one is seared into my mind.

the problems start almost immediately. the first puzzle in the game is to blow up a door using dynamite, and at your home base you have five different bags of dynamite to choose from, from one to five sticks. if you pick three, you get through the door. if you take any more, you blow the whole wall out and the police are immediately alerted. game over. if you pick less, you make too much noise and the police are immediately alerted. game over. and if you pick them all up and select the right one, the rest stay in your inventory for the entire game. the inventory is a bar at the bottom of the screen you have to scroll from left to right, and there's so many junk items to pick up that you can easily spend minutes searching for every puzzle. and you don't know what items are junk without playing because while the heist and the items needed for it is planned out beforehand, getting those items always involves hilarious hi-jinks and inventory puzzles. and then the actual heists involve hilarious hi-jinks, inventory puzzles, and extremely exact timing. in a game running on shockwave. at something like five frames per second.

my family gathered around the pc and managed to get through it after many gruelling nights, but only because my mum repeatedly flirted with the studio's it support guy over the phone so he would give us hints.

[^1]: ::: spoiler like for example there's this one heist where a unique diamond necklace is being transported through stockholm in an armored van for display at a high-security museum, and they decide to intercept it en-route. for this they acquire 100 helium balloons, a big bone, a tiny dog, a flagpole, and a sandwich. guy 1 and his kid use the big bone to lure away a guard dog at the marina while the guard is distracted, then replace the guard dog with the tiny dog so the guard faints when he looks at it. the kid then sneaks into the marina to steal a dinghy, and together they mount the flagpole on it so it has a really tall mast. meanwhile guy 2 and 3 hide on a bus to its end stop, where there's usually a bathroom for the driver. when the driver goes in, they steal the bus but leave the sandwich so he has something to eat before calling it in. guy 1 runs up onto the roof of a nearby building to look for the van. when he sees the van approach a lifting bridge, he releases the balloons as a signal to the others. the kid approaches the lifting bridge in the dinghy with the really tall mast so it has to open. while the armored van is stopped at the bridge, guy 2 drives up next to it in the bus and opens the back door, where guy 3 picks the lock, climbs in, and starts putting the diamonds in his bag. but because guy 3 is a pompous ass, he stops a bit longer to pick up some champagne that's also in the armored van for some reason. at this exact moment the bridge closes the van starts moving with him inside. luckily guy 2 manages to also open the front door of the bus exactly as guy 3 steps out. victory! ...and then guy 1's wife gives the bag with the diamonds in it to charity because it's old and ugly and she didn't look inside and they're gonna be rich because of the diamonds anyway so who wants an old, ugly bag. women!