What happens when a studio built on flight sims and grand strategy decides to make a comedy adventure game? In 1992, MicroProse found out.
MicroProse’s Unlikely Adventure Game
Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender is a point-and-click adventure released in November 1992 for MS-DOS and Classic Mac OS. It was developed by MPS Labs, a development division of MicroProse Software, and published by MicroProse, marking MPS Labs’ first adventure game and MicroProse’s first real foray into the graphical adventure genre after years of focusing on simulation titles. The plot follows the swaggering, self-absorbed adventurer Rex Nebular as he’s sent to retrieve a priceless vase from a planet that officially doesn’t exist, and its irreverent tone helped it stand out in a genre that was, by 1992, increasingly crowded with earnest fantasy and sci-fi stories.
It’s easy to forget just how odd this project must have looked internally at MicroProse, a company whose reputation was built on painstaking simulation accuracy in games like F-15 Strike Eagle and Sid Meier’s Civilization. Greenlighting a broad sci-fi comedy through a dedicated new division was a genuine departure, and it reflects how badly the publisher wanted a foothold in the era’s booming adventure market.
Rex’s Sense of Humor Carries the Game
The interface is standard point-and-click, letting you explore colorful, cartoonish planets, examine objects, and solve inventory-based puzzles. Rendered 3D objects for many inventory items give it a slightly different visual texture from the flat 2D icons typical of other adventures from the period. But the real draw is the writing: dialogue and narration lean heavily into comedy, parodying sci-fi adventure tropes and Rex’s own self-important personality. Puzzle logic follows familiar adventure game conventions of combining items and talking to the right characters at the right time, but the constant stream of jokes and irreverent asides keeps the pacing lively throughout.
Tips Before You Start
- Read every line of dialogue, even the throwaway options — a lot of Rex Nebular’s best jokes are optional, and skipping them means missing both the game’s main appeal and the occasional actual hint buried in a joke.
- Examine items from multiple angles when possible; the rendered-3D inventory objects sometimes hide details a flat 2D icon wouldn’t have room for, which is a genuinely unusual thing to watch for in a 1992 adventure.
- Don’t take Rex’s confidence at face value — he’s an unreliable narrator of his own competence, and the game frequently punishes players who assume his first instinct is the correct one to follow.
- Combine items experimentally. The comedic tone extends to the puzzle logic, and some solutions are intentionally more absurd than a “serious” adventure game would ever attempt to justify.
How Rex Nebular Compares to Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry
Sierra had already cornered the market on comedic sci-fi adventure with Space Quest and on innuendo-laden comedy with Leisure Suit Larry, and Rex Nebular clearly knows it’s stepping into that territory. Where Space Quest leans on slapstick and Larry leans on crude humor, Rex Nebular’s comedy is more about deflating its own protagonist’s ego — Rex thinks he’s a suave hero, and the game is constantly proving him wrong. It’s a narrower comedic target than either Sierra series, but it’s a distinct one, and MicroProse deserves some credit for not simply trying to out-Sierra Sierra at its own game.
Legacy: MicroProse’s Road Not Taken
MPS Labs didn’t stick around the adventure genre for long, and MicroProse itself never became known as an adventure publisher the way Sierra or LucasArts did, which makes Rex Nebular something of a dead end in the studio’s own history rather than the start of a new direction. That’s a shame, because the writing here shows genuine comedic chops that a follow-up could have built on. What it did leave behind is a reminder that even studios built around hardcore simulation genres were watching the adventure boom of the early 90s closely enough to take a real swing at it, even if MicroProse ultimately decided the genre wasn’t where its future was.
DOSBox Setup
Install the game to a folder, mount it in DOSBox using mount c [folder], switch to that drive with c:, and run the executable. Our DOSBox guide covers configuring sound cards and CD-ROM support if you’re running the CD version, and our roundup of free DOS games is a good place to look for a shorter palate-cleanser afterward once you’ve finished Rex’s story.
Final Take
Rex Nebular represents an interesting pivot point for MicroProse, a studio built on flight sims and strategy games, taking its first real swing at narrative adventure through MPS Labs. The result doesn’t take itself too seriously, and its comedic writing has aged into a genuinely entertaining curiosity from the genre’s early-90s boom. The puzzle design isn’t as tight as Sierra’s best work from the same period, and a couple of the later-game solutions rely more on comedic logic than fair clueing, which can be frustrating if you’re used to more rigorous adventure design and expect every joke to double as a legitimate hint.
Even so, for adventure fans looking for something lighter and more self-aware than the era’s typical fantasy epics, it’s worth a shot. Rex himself is a genuinely funny creation, and that carries the game a long way even when the puzzle logic gets shaky in the back half.
Watch Gameplay
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