Hi, Jenny!

I enjoyed "Phantasmagoria" because it was scary, but I felt a lot of the gory scenes were unnecessary and only there for shock value. They really didn't add anything to the game, IMHO.

Did the murder scene you referred to take place in the greenhouse? If so, I think it was dirt that Carno was shoving in her mouth.

Susan

No it was the one that you saw when you clicked on the mirror in the room that had the old-fashioned phonograph player and some kind of electrical chair in it.

I saw the one in the greenhouse in uncensored mode, so I know what that looked like. He shoved a garden trowel with a sharpened point into her mouth and then gouged the rest of her face with it. It was pretty gross. Not the sort of thing I wanted to see right after dinner.

Hi, Jenny!

Oh yes ... the murder in the mirror <shudder>! I thought all of the murders were grossly overdone, but I did enjoy the eerie atmosphere of the game, and how things changed ever so subtly from one day to the next.

Susan

Then there was the one in the dining room mirror, where he rams the woman's head down on a bottle so it splinters and cuts through her eye socket and into her brain. Later on you can find her body in a barrel in the wine cellar. Earlier on Adrienne had sampled the wine from one of those barrels and seemed to think it was tasty. I wondered if it was the same barrel. Yecch!

Hi, Jenny!

I thought that all of the murders were over the top. Now that you mention it, I do remember Adrienne tasting the wine from one of the barrels. Yecch is right <G>!

Susan

I probably love this game cuz I'm a big horror fan......and this was the first CD-Rom game I ever played and I love FMV and I just thought it was the coolest thing i'd ever seen. I couldn't believe that they could make games like that that were so fun and crazy and I felt like I was right there with Adrienne all the way and i loved it. It was so much cooler graphically than the King's Quest/Space Quest games and I love all those........(pant pant pant) Better stop before I can't.....i'm just getting started!!

I thought this game was too easy. I remember playing it over one week, probably the quickest I ever played a Sierra game. I also remember the murders being incredibly graphic and disturbing.

I'd like to play it again because it's FMV. At the time, I didn't realize this game would be only one of the few FMV games Sierra put out. The FMV was my favorite thing about of the game.

-emily

I checked out a few old posts from 1995-1996 about Phantasmagoria at Googlegroups last night. People had all sorts of opinions about it. There were some complaints that reminded me of complaints I've heard about Syberia - that it was too easy, that it was made "for the masses" and had no puzzles, or too-easy puzzles. Some people objected to it's single cursor, preferring an interface more like GK1, where you choose which action you want your cursor to perform instead of having it decide automatically. People would frequently compare it to Under a Killing Moon, which had come out the previous year and which also used FMV, though not to the same degree as Phantasmagoria. It's interesting that Ken Williams used to post on the newsgroups back then.

It's strange to think that Roberta Williams was working on Phantasmagoria at the same time she was working on KQ7 because KQ7 is such a different game.

Emily, if you're interested in playing it again, I can pass it on to you after I'm done with it. A very kind GBer gave it to me for free.

Hi, Jenny!

I thought the puzzles were just right. IMHO, it takes away from the enjoyment of a game if you're stuck on a difficult puzzle for what seems like forever. My only complaint was that a lot of the gory scenes were unnecessary and only there for shock value.

Susan

I never played P2. Phantasmagoria was an obvious attempt by Sierra, and Roberta, to take their games beyond the King's Quest genre. The attempt was finally realized in the GK series.

There was some gore and violence in P. But from past correspondence, complaints came, not from the fact that it was there, but from the fact that it was gratuitous. Did killing the cat, in any way contribute to the plot. Of course not.

Tim

Jenny, that's such a nice offer! Check your email.

emily

ps Ken has said many times on Sierragamers that Phantasmagoria is one of his favorite Sierra games. It's interesting to hear his take on it. It was obviously a huge risk for Sierra to take.

How could he say otherwise, considering?

Tim

Hey, Tim!

Nice to see you here :-)! I agree completely about poor Spaz, the cat. We already knew that Don was wacko and possessed, so it wasn't necessary to kill the cat to prove it. As much as I enjoyed the game, along with the eerie atomosphere of the mansion, I felt that the murders of Carno's wives were way over the top.

Susan

Frankly, I thought Amber was way spookier - and no cat-killing either. It would have made better sense to me if the cat had just run off and found a new owner. It seemed restless, like it knew something was up, earlier on. Was there actually a scene where the cat got killed? I saw the scene where Adrienne found the body.

But it does, forever, tell us how to enter a room with a newspaper, a key and a toothpick or an equivalent tool.

You did tell Diane that we could be found lurking in these environs. Perhaps she will appear soon.

Tim

Hi, Tim!

I told Diane about GAMEBOOMERS a couple of weeks ago, and she said that she joined. She finished "The Black Mirror" and is on the hunt for "Jack The Ripper". Wendy ordered his online and expects it early next week. I tried to wait for them, but I picked my copy up last Monday and my lack of willpower got the better of me <G>! At least I'll be able to help them if they get stuck.

Do you remember the first game you played that used the old "newspaper/toothpick-in-the-keyhole" trick <G>? I thought it was "Phantasmagoria", but there may have been one before that. I've played a few since.

Susan

My recollection is that Phas was the first. But I vaguely recall a similar incident in Aman-Ra.

Hard to tell.

Tim

Hi, Tim!

I think "Post Mortem" used it, as well as "The Black Mirror". Now I chuckle when I realize what's coming because that's the one puzzle I've got down pat <VBG>!

Susan