Phantasmagoria - PC Games

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Despite being the brainchild of acclaimed game developer Roberta Williams, "Phantasmagoria" is not a re-invigoration of the point-and-click adventure genre, nor does it innovate those tried and true methods (like her highly celebrated "King's Quest" series before it).

Instead, Phantasmagoria offers to gamers - mostly the uninitiated and inexperienced - a game that is relatively pai... read more

Description: 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 f 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 on The X-Files television series have matched it in the sheer number of CDs used. Large portions of data were repeated on each CD, to avoid disk swapping when playing the game.

The game script was nearly 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.

Phantasmagoria was a notable outing 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 simply refused to carry it. The game was never banned in Germany, but had an 18-Rating. Despite the controversy (or maybe due to the controversy), Phantasmagoria was Sierra's best-selling game in 1995 and one of the best-selling PC games of the year. ... (more) (less)