Phantasmagoria

Posted on February 3, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

A week ago, I wrote out a list of all the unprocessed games in my pile that are known to be interactive movies (there might be undiscovered I-movies left in the pile as well), in an effort to just get them out of the way first. Next up– oh, dear, it’s Phantasmagoria, Sierra’s beloved 7-CD I-movie classic. I wasn’t sure if I should bother with this game because I wasn’t sure which version I had. Only the DOS entry needs screenshots. It turns out that the same game has versions for DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 95, and that they all look the same, further advancing my theory that these I-movies are not especially complicated, programmatically. So I embark on an effort to collect a nominal screenshot set for MobyGames, and perhaps revise the entry’s description. So, DOSBox, don’t fail me now.

Phantasmagoria is the story of a young wife, Adrienne, and her photographer husband, Donald, who have just set up camp in an old castle. The game’s manual encourages the player to ask a lot questions. Okay, here’s one — how exactly does a photographer afford a castle? I’m assuming that the joint is a family heirloom of some sort. Anyway, it doesn’t take long before the nightmares start for Adrienne, and bad things start happening in the castle.

Everything works smoothly and I capture the screenshot set I was after. Plus, I finally got to experience the true horror of the game. Well, at least I got as far as one terrifying cutscene, where our heroine lays on a bed that cops a feel:

Contrast the above screenshot with the first one. It’s interesting to note that the game always goes to interlaced mode when it’s cutscene time. Not interlacing, precisely, but the original video is doublesized in the horizontal direction and every other line is black, or left undrawn, to save rendering time.

This isn’t the most obscure game on the planet, so I didn’t feel much need to spend too much time investigating it. Plus, I honestly wasn’t that interested. Here are some other random notes I jotted down along the way:

The game installs to the default directory of c:\sierra\scarydos. Novel.
The game features a friendly skull icon (seen in the first screenshot on the lower left part of the screen) who identifies himself as the hintkeeper. He helps you out.
I found a walkthrough that lists 277 easy steps to completing this game. If you have that much patience. Anyone up for a speed run?
The game takes place in or near the town of Nipawomsett, which I’m convinced must be an anagram for something. “pastime town”? “spa time town”? “impotent saw”? “want semi pot”?

Lost Eden Redux

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I’m glad to know that Gaming Pathology readers are as interested in this project as I am and shared in my disappointment that I couldn’t run Lost Eden. VAG came through with a suggestion to downgrade DOSBox. Unfortunately, even DOSBox 0.63 begs for mercy. I came up with the brilliant idea to actually run the game natively through Windows XP. I was hesitant to do this the first time since I remembered the instructions advising against running under Windows. The game actually does run in the WinXP Command Prompt, but without sound, and only in fullscreen mode. I can’t capture screenshots from any of my utilities and I can’t get the Command Prompt to operate in a window and still play the game.

Mans R. proposed and implemented another solution: A VMware image running FreeDOS. This turns out to work, though, again, without sound. No matter– the game has subtitles which are likely far superior to the voice acting (though the MobyGames entry mentions that some people thought the soundtrack was good enough to release separately).

So I can get screenshots using the VMware image. They come with VMware frames but I have a process to remove those automatically later before I submit them to MobyGames. This is Eloi, a character in Lost Eden, and he is old:

Remember, this is a game about a land of intelligent dinosaurs and the humans who coexist with them. So now I am able to view the intro FMV in all of its silent, subtitled glory. Given the length of the sequences between subtitles, the designers sure were proud of the FMV. It’s actually quite beautiful by 1995 standards. It speaks of a crumbled alliance between the dinosaurs and the humans. Then I am thrust into the first part of the game where I, Adam, the Prince of Mo, must wander around the Citadel of Mo — which is not nearly as large as it sounds, thankfully — searching for the long lost secret of what makes the citadel so impenetrable by T-rex’s. It’s also my birthday, or “coming of age” day, and everyone in the joint has a Coming Of Age Day present for me.

Here is a sample gameplay screen:

On the bottom, there are items that you have accumulated. On the top is your location and the number of characters presently in your party. Characters will come and go during the game, according to the manual. It looks like there are enough slots to hold at least 4 and perhaps up to 5 characters. Clicking on the characters, or right-clicking the mouse, takes you to the status screen where you can pan to individual characters, talk to them, or ask them questions regarding your items. Clicking on your character in this sub-screen will take you to game information (save/exit/settings/etc.). In the primary gameplay screen is a constantly rotating cube as a mouse cursor. You can point to where you want to travel to next, or perhaps whom you would like to talk to next. At first, I was a little annoyed that, unlike Of Light And Darkness, this didn’t appear to have hotspots to indicate where you could move. But, somewhat cleverly, the rotating cube forms arrows as it rotates to indicate possible directions of movements, and transforms into a scaling eyeball icon to indicate that something can be examined.

So far, this is just typical adventure fare. Allow me to spoil the game all the way up until you learn the secret for building T-rex-proof citadels: Wander around the citadel, familiarize yourself with places you can travel, including the citadel foyer, the main hallway, the king’s chambers, your bedroom, the mummy crypt, and the execution chamber. Eloi, the advisor is talking to your dad, the king. Pop says you can’t leave the citadel because it’s dangerous out there. Eloi meets you in your room to tell you to sneak out the side door with Eloi’s sister, Dina, to go visit Grandpa Tau, who’s dying. You stealthily cross the snow-covered plains with Dina to watch their old pterodactyl die. He gives you some items before croaking. You trek back to the citadel and visit the cryptkeeper. This is when he gives you your present of a courage amulet. You give this to Dina to give her courage to enter the executioner’s chamber to talk to the executioner because she has the ability to translate his gibberish. He then gives you your present– the tooth of the guy who designed the citadel. A clue! …

Bored yet? I sure was. I got a little further and figured out the secret to building the uncrackable citadels. Then I got a prism. I didn’t have the motivation to jump through the next hoop and figure out what to do with it. What I’m getting at here is that the proceedings are — at least the beginning of the game — rote adventure game tedium. Alas, I never got to see the strategy or RPG game elements.

Do you still care about the unbreakable citadel secret? There’s a giant lizard underneath the place blowing on a giant horn that apparently scares off the T-rex’s. I think that has something to do with it. Then there is the matter of keeping the citadels safe while they are still under construction. It turns out the secret here is harmonious collaboration between the non-T-rex dinosaurs and the humans. The dinosaurs are on construction detail while the humans fight any T-rex’s who drop by. Or the duties might be reversed. Either way, it didn’t seem that ~~earth~~Eden-shattering. But apparently, it would have been necessary to coordinate that kind of effort later in the game to construct more citadels in order to protect more humans, and probably to re-energize strained dino-human relations.

Lost Eden: Bug Report

Posted on January 6, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I knew this project would not be without its hitches. Tonight’s game is Lost Eden by Cryo. It is already in MobyGames but needs screenshots. I decided it would be useful to focus on games that just need screenshots vs. totally new games since I have a mounting backlog of games to insert into MobyGames (also working on that this weekend). It did not go well. Trying to run the game under DOSBox 0.65 has bad results. It brings Windows XP to its knees in a way that makes it nearly impossible to even bring up the task manager in order to forcibly terminate the emulator. I decided to try my luck in an OS that has a better reputation for stability — Linux — and things went worse. DOSBox freaked out in much the same way but was also capturing all input events. I was left with no choice but to assassinate the X server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.

I was able to capture the installation screen, though. Enjoy:

So, no Lost Eden unless, perhaps, I pull an actual DOS-based box out of the storage closet. But I don’t see why not playing it should stop me from reviewing it. I was sort of looking forward to this one since the manual includes a foreword by an old-school D&D fanboy who actually states, “These days the quest is on for the ultimate Adventure Game – the Interactive Movie.” This game was released is 1995 and with retrospect, that passage is absolutely hilarious. According to the MobyGames entry, the game was also released for the CD-i and 3DO systems, 2 other systems known for this type of FMV fare. MobyGames’ description also claims that Lost Eden is comprised wholly of pre-rendered FMV. Sure enough, the MultimediaWiki lists this game as using Cryo’s HNM multimedia files.

However, the manual makes it sound as if there are some other elements to the game, some kind of adventure/strategy angle. The story, in a nutshell, is that in this land called Eden, there’s an evil dude who commands T-rex dinosaurs to attack humans. You are a prince who lives in a fortress impervious to dinosaurs. Now that you have come of age, you are going to lead a quest to discover why it is that your fortress is so tough (the secret was lost) and work to build more such fortresses in different valleys so that other humans can also be safe. And, if you have time, you’ll also go after the main bad guy.

I would have loved to see how the game allowed the player to accomplish all of these goals using only pre-rendered FMV.

See also:

Lost Eden Redux

DOS Time: I.M. Meen

Posted on January 1, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Tonight’s descent into gaming madness is I.M. Meen, another title from Simon & Schuster Interactive, who also brought us the business-as-war FPS Forbes Corporate Warrior. The cover of the CD-ROM bills it as an “action-packed 3D learning adventure for ages 9 and up”. That’s all I have to go on.

When I examine the contents of the CD-ROM, I realize that this must be a DOS-based game (also, the game’s copyright date is 1995). This gives me the opportunity to properly configure DOSBox for this experiment. I had forgotten just how slick DOSBox is as I do not often have occasion to use it. The game’s audio configuration has no trouble detecting DOSBox’s Sound Blaster emulation facilities and I’m off and running.

This eponymous villain has the most curious pet peeve: He can’t stand the thought of goody-goody children studying. He’s a proactive wizard/mad scientist/librarian/whatever so he creates a special book that can trap children in a labyrinth. In the intro animation, Meen manages to trap two more children — a boy and a girl — in the maze-book.

When you begin the game, you select between playing either the boy or the girl (with no notable difference between their in-game abilities) and you can also configure the play and reading levels. You are then cast into a Wolfenstein 3D-style maze where you immediately run into Meen’s traitorous Gnome lackey, Gnick, imploring you to rescue the children imprisoned in this dungeon by solving some kind of reading puzzles. Offensively, either child can throw a right hook using the space bar. This turns out to be enough to dispatch the giant blue spiders that infest the labyrinth. The trolls shown below, wielding spiked clubs, can usually sustain 2-3 blows from an elementary school student.

I.M. Meen gameplay; facing off with multiple trolls

The red meter under the boy’s face is the boy’s health. I have not yet figured out if there is any way to replenish this health. And facing off with the numerous trolls in the dungeon tends to hurt an awful lot. Fortunately, there are some other limited-use offensive range weapons to be found in the game, including a fire wand and explod-o-fruit. These are picked up using a right mouse click and dragged into one of the squares underneath the power meter. To equip a weapon, drag it into the hand icon at the bottom of the screen. As for the other icons, the Meen icon brings up the game menu, the compass icon is informational, and map icon shows the auto-cartography feature which is incredibly useful in a dungeon crawl like this where everything looks the same.

An interesting item about this FPS-influenced game is that it appears to be controllable completely by a mouse if the player so chooses. Granted, that would be a bit tricky. You can move the mouse to various sections of the field and the mouse cursor indicates which direction the player will move when pressing the left mouse button. Further, the right mouse button throws a left punch. This is a fairly violent game by educational entertainment standards. Still, I think the game could have benefited from a strafe-punch option.

So where does the educational aspect come into play? When you see a scroll on the wall, approach it, press the space bar, and find yourself confronted with such a puzzle:

Correct the punctuation errors to free a fellow child. It’s interesting to note that the screen resolution changes from 320×200 to 640×480 for the text editor, and that the text editor is quite decent in that it actually supports word jumping with Ctrl-left/right.

I know that video games, just like any other form of entertainment, necessitate some suspension of disbelief, and that I should not think too hard about any aspect of them, particularly the storyline. However, I have the worst time understanding what Meen could possibly have against studious children. Has he had to deal with one too many know-it-all, smarmy little brats in whatever his day-to-day dealings happen to entail? Was he pushed over the edge by all those “My child is an honor student at…” bumper stickers? If you examine the above note screenshot that needs its punctuation fixed, you will see that it is written by Meen’s paranoid gnome henchman, Gnick. Gnick’s paranoid disposition in the game is inconsistent with the insolent tone of the note. However, his level of English composition skill could be in keeping with the low levels of education that Meen desires in those around him.

It could be that Meen is insecure about his own intellectual prowess and seeks to incapacitate the learning process for young children so they can’t possibly grow up to expose him for the fraud he is. I think I know people like that in real life.

But if you wish to peer a little more deeply into his mind to understand Meen’s motivations, here is the entire intro video for the game:

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Category: DOS Games

Phantasmagoria

Lost Eden Redux

Lost Eden: Bug Report

DOS Time: I.M. Meen