New Sherlock Holmes movie Watson still isn't fat

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 12/08/2011 2:24pm

In the history of horror survival games, Nocturne as well as all the Resident Evil games etc all came from and heavily copied Alone in the Dark's atmosphere and many play elements. If you go back and read the old reviews of ALL those games it's hard to find one that doesn't credit AITD for it all, and that's cool. AITD was a game-changer for me, personally, in what I expected from a great game: immersion.

Along with great game design came a great score of old, creepy classical tunes like Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre", etc that are on my Ipod to this very day.

Amazing that AITD is a 20 year old game and just watching this clip gives me goosebumps whenever I hear the floorboards creak...

And of course whenever zombies showed up, the music changed to something dramatic...AITD was the first game I can think of that had a "movie" experience feel to it from start to finish...a real chiller, especially if you just try to leave through the front door and end up falling into the Void instead.

Prior to that in 1992 the best games like this (3rd person, open ended adventure games) were of course the King's Quest/SpaceQuest/PoliceQuest series which I used to love. But that was pretty much it, fantasy or space or cops. Of course Sierra Online is today owned by Activision and the 3rd person genre has Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, the modern versions of Ed Carnby.

AITD built on those early SOL games to create the first real horror/mystery 3rd person game that I can remember and it had similar play mechanics as KQ or SQ but added things like lighting. A big differentiator was that for the SOL games, you didn't use the mouse...movement was with keyboard and you typed commands (e.g. "put cat on floor"). That was replaced around that time with using the mouse/menu driven actions instead.

In fact, I remember all those cool AITD lighting and sound effects in DOS required pretty advanced graphics/audio interface (original 8-bit Sound Blaster, baby) for that time. Simply rendering things like light and shadows were tough on the old systems..in 1992, the Pentium hadn't even come out yet.

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 12/08/2011 2:31pm

Do I have to say it?! ...How fitting, you fight like a cow.

Guybrush Threepwood and the entire pirate community are hurt and offended by your comments. And so are the citizens of Kyrandia.

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 12/08/2011 2:41pm

(Actually, while I am on it, I think the very first horror adventures where the ones made after the KULT RPG in 1989. But I have no idea any more how those were called. Also, check out Clocktower - that one was specifically awesome.)

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 12/08/2011 2:47pm

Originally Posted by Terror Tamale

Do I have to say it?! ...How fitting, you fight like a cow.

Guybrush Threepwood and the entire pirate community are hurt and offended by your comments. And so are the citizens of Kyrandia.

Well I was specifically talking horror survival though, and yeah I could mention lots of other 3rd person free movement puzzle games.

How about Maniac Mansion? 1987.

Kind of comedy/horror survival...the game had a Rocky Horror feel to it and looked like this:

Yep, this was Lucasfilm's very first game. In 1987, these were corporate-produced, state of the art computer game graphics and technology. No mouse, either.

Lots of tentacles, though, in fact the sequel was entitled "Day of the Tentacle".

The later games from this line is what became Monkey Island.

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 12/08/2011 3:04pm

Hehehe, that one, I never played.

Was a Legend Entertainment man, all along, and then the Monkey Islands.

And Kyrandia. Oh, Kyrandia.

Actually, I wasn't that much of a gamer, at least not compared to others.

But stuff like, for example, "Deathgate", which you could begin on Christmas Eve and had finished by Christmas morning? Awesome.