Dr Black, your story made me recall an old adventure I've played called Beneath The Steel Sky. Anyone played it? It had one of the best plots I've ever seen in an adventure game. It also had a very original concept for that time; to have a friendly npc robot follow you around, which helped you accomplish many of the puzzles.

A friend of mine (a writer) also told me of a very nice similar concept once. He had created a whole fantasy universe for some sort of Table RPG game, and in one of the planets the story went as follows:

The humans had built robots which in time the became completely depended upon. The robots that were in charge of security had only one mission inscribed in their boards. Protect the lives of the humans of that planet at all costs. One time, a major war started at that galaxy and the military force of that planet was insignificant compared with other major powers of the galaxy. The robots estimated that their masters (the humans) would lose the war if one of the major forces decided to attack the planet. So, they forced all humans to board ships and moved them to a smaller inhabitable planet where they dug tunnels and lived underground. The life on that planet was miserable and the conditions were extremely poor but by the robots' logic the quality of life was not relevant as long as the humans were safe. Now, all humans were enslaved by the robots and no-one was allowed to leave the underground tunnels, even though the robots were acting out of the very own rules they have been programmed to (kind of like The HAL in space odyssey). Obviously, you play a human character in that planet, trying to figure out a solution. There's no clear cut solution since even escaping the planet would put the inhabitants in risk due to the galaxy wars, but at the same time the life the character is living is not worth living anyway.

However, if we'd put all plot ideas mentioned here in a poll, I think I'd still vote for the one about you fighting your future evil self . I think that one was a real winner.

PS: Other Adventure games we could use as inspiration for a plot: Another World, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Time Tunnel and, why not, Leisure Suit Larry Also, Flashback was a great example of an adventure with Arcade elements (I think that genre was called Action Adventure then. Kinda like the original Prince of Persia). But then, we can't use point and click movement any more, and I'm not sure it would be very straight forward and simple to attempt a movement system similar to the modern Prince of Persia games. Maybe a little too ambitious for a first project.

Also, another idea. How about a game exactly in the style of Another World? Side Scroller, but you'd have to solve puzzles to go through levels and with a good story to back it all up. I like games where the camera perspective still looks like 2d, but it's rendered with a 3d engine and uses actual models. You still get nice 3d graphics, but the 3d element is not pushed in your face, and the camera view is much less confusing which enhances the gameplay. Kind of like the camera in Age of Empires III, as opposed to the camera at Populous III.

Other games that scream for a remake: Syndicate, Moonstone, Lazy Jones (Lazy Jones is ideal since each programmer can make his own mini game).