Phantasmagoria The Game

The 1st Part

If you like gore, adventure, puzzles, real-life gameplay, thriller, murder, this is the game you have to check out. It's one of my classic favourite game until now, launched since 1995-1996, played the game when i was like...11 years old? I found the game in a refuse dump along with other games(ALOT) outside my condo! where some Japanese family wanted to shift back to Japan and they threw all their pc software & hardware all away! Found a Joystick too worth around RM400 at that time =D. And so i came to find the game, which includes 7 cd's and a cover all together.

So without hesitating i went to my neighbour's house to check it out cause i don't have a pc at that time. I played it & i was totally crazy about it since then. So far of all the games i played so far, these is the only game that is so different from all, reason being they use real life actor and actresses for your avatar, even the environment are real! every scene every act, the result of the overall story depends on multiple choices u make throughout the game. I lost the cd's to a friend i lent it to. I tried to find back the game for life and couldn't find it anywhere, it's an uber rare game. But then...i managed to find it in Imbi last 2 years if i'm not mistaken in a very run downed shop in imbi, 2nd floor...Surprisingly all the shops which has all the games in the world doesn't have it but a small game shop not displaying anything has it! And it's the last copy! And they had the 2nd part of Phantasmagoria too! yes the latest one(which is also quite old)....anyway, here are the Plot and Intro of the Game! some screenshots of the Part2,

The 2nd : A Puzzle Of Flash(18SX alot of xxx scenes) =D & i meant like 5* scenes =p

So now i am keeping the game in a safe locker, as i know these type of thing, there is no value anymore, you can have all the money in the world but you just wont be able to find it...unless you bid from people who wants to sell it which i doubt they will..and heard that The Movie will be coming out too Directed by Marilyn Manson! Here are the Introduction+ ss of Part 1,

Made during the height of the "interactive movie" boom in the computer game industry, Phantasmagoria is notable for being one of the first adventure games to use a human being as an on-screen avatar. Actress Victoria Morsell spent months in front of a bluescreen filming the hundreds of actions players could direct her character to perform. The game was released on seven CDs to accommodate the massive amount of video generated by this process, the creation of which was contracted by Sierra to Kronos Digital Entertainment (who had previously worked on Sierra's King's Quest 6). Today it still stands as a record of sorts for the largest number of media cuts used in a game, though several other games — including an adventure game based onThe X-Files television series — have matched it in the sheer number of CDs used. However, if it were to use modern day video compression codecs while keeping the same resolution, the game could probably have shipped on as little as one or two discs. On the other hand, however, the seven discs were used to highlight the seven days, during which the story takes place - the game could easily fit about five discs, even without the advanced video compression. Also, it is worth mentioning that large portions of data were repeated on each CD, to avoid disk swapping when playing the game.

The game script was about 400 pages long, four times the size of a regular movie script, and an additional 100 pages of storyboards set the style for the over 800 scenes in the game. The game required four months of filming alone and over 200 persons were involved in the production, not counting the Gregorian choir of 135 persons that was used for parts of the music in the game.

Plot - Part.1

The story by Roberta Williams, somewhat similar to that of The Shining, revolves around paperback writer Adrienne Delaney, who has together with her husband Donald Gordon just bought a remote, enormous mansion previously owned by a famous magician in the late 19th century, Zoltan Carnovasch (Carno). Adrienne is hoping to get in the mood for writing her next novel and Don, a photographer, wants to photograph things. Immediately upon moving into the house, Adrienne begins having nightmares. Unbeknownst to the happy two, Zoltan the magician was into black magic and had summoned an evil demon which possessed him and made him murder his wives in grotesque ways. (Remotely connected to their favorite occupation - for example, in one of the most controversial film sequences the chubby Regina is force fed animal entrails through a funnel until she suffocates.)

As far as the townspeople know, the wives died naturally however tragically, but as Adrienne explores the house she starts to see visions of the murders taking place. She finds out that Zoltan met his demise when his last wife realized he was a murderer. She conspired with her lover to kill Zoltan by sabotaging the equipment for his most famous and dangerous escapology trick; inspired by "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe, Zoltan would escape from being strapped to a chair with a built-in axe that swung back and forth above him and lowering until it killed him, all while his head was covered with a burning hood. The plan went wrong and both the wife and the lover as well as Zoltan died, and the demon escaped into a secret room of the mansion. Adrienne unwittingly releases it shortly after moving in and it possesses Don. Seeking help from among others the repenting spirit of Zoltan and a 110 year old man who as a boy was a witness to the demon's escape, Adrienne manages to banish the demon forever, although by then the completely insane Don gets killed.

Phantasmagoria was a notable departure for designer Roberta Williams, best known for her family games like the King's Quest series. Featuring graphic gore, violence and a rape scene, the game stirred controversy over age restrictions and target audiences in the maturing game industry. It was banned in Australia while CompUSA and other major retailers refused to carry it. The game was never banned in Germany, but has an 18-Rating.

Plot 2 - Puzzle Of Flash
In 1996, Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh by Lorelei Shannon was released. Though still enormous in size — coming on five separate CDs — it was in no way as large as its predecessor.

Dropping the unique adventure game style interaction in favor of an interactive movie format, A Puzzle of Flesh was more expensive to produce and less popular with audiences tiring of video clip-driven games. Though some concluded that it was a substantial improvement over the original in several areas, others dismissed the game, criticizing it for its completely different atmosphere, lack of creativity, interactivity and excessive violence.

The plot of the second game in the series revolves around the character of Curtis Craig, a 30-year-old man working in a company managed by the enigmatic Paul Warner. Curtis' mysterious and traumatic past is a key element in the plot, as he pieces together his experience to form a picture of his soul, one whose discovery might lead to his demise. Harassed by quasi-delusions which seem all too real, Curtis aims to uncover the truth about his family, co-workers and most importantly, his own existence. As his delusions become more and more real and begin to have an enormous, terrible impact on his surroundings, Curtis must confront his fears or risk getting devoured by what lives within him.

A Puzzle of Flesh has a fairly standard interface, with the cursor shaped into the distinctive logo of WynTech, the company employing Craig. The inventory is accessible practically at any time, while events of some importance can be recalled using an option that plays the clip the player selects from any single chapter.

The game was a financial failure — probably the result of a rapidly falling interest in interactive movies, especially ones packed onto several CDs — and no further titles in the series were produced.

The US and German uncut-version was put on The Index in Germany. Not the heavily-cut UK version though.