Alone in the Dark (MS-DOS) - Part 2

Today on Super Adventures, I'm going to try to beat the original Alone in the Dark!

This is the second and final part of my two-part article, so you'll probably want to check out PART ONE first. I wrote all about all kinds of stuff, even mentioned Resident Evil a couple of times.

One thing I didn't talk about though, and it's fairly important, is that the game came out in late 1992... so this is its 30th anniversary! It's getting a remake soon to celebrate and from what I can tell it's the kind of reimagining where they take all the stuff from the original game and put it to one side so they can make up a bunch of other stuff instead. I feel like it'll probably have better combat though.

Okay this is the last part of my Alone in the Dark playthrough and I'm playing this with the intent to finally finish it, so beyond this point the SPOILERS will be extensive. With any luck. I mean I can't make any promises here, you can count the number of true survival horror games I've completed on one hand, with all the fingers severed, but maybe this will be the first!

Alone in the Dark (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

Infogrames

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Release Date:

1992 (CD version 1993)

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Systems:

DOS, PC-98, FM Towns, 3DO, Mac, Archimedes

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the Guinness World Record holder for "First 3D survival-horror videogame": Alone in the Dark! I mean the original one, obviously. A sequel tried to steal its name in 2008, but the original proved too powerful and the PS3 release renamed it to Alone in the Dark: Inferno, so as far as I'm concerned this is the only true Alone in the Dark.

Well, except for the classic Uwe Boll movie I mean.

I know everyone that talks about Alone in the Dark also has to mention Resident Evil, but I think it's funny how the series both started off as critically-acclaimed genre pioneers and then suffered very different fates. Resident Evil has had seven million sequels and remakes, many of them pretty great, while the Alone in the Dark games have been racing to catch up to their own movie series down at the bottom of Metacritic. There's a bit of a disparity in how the two franchises are regarded these days, and it'd take a lot more than a terrible Netflix series to change that.

But I still remember how blown away I was when I saw the first Alone in the Dark previewed on the TV series Bad Influence! back when I was a tiny baby. It looked so much more advanced than anything I'd played on the Amiga, SNES or Mega Drive. I didn't know much about PC's at that point, but I was sold, I wanted one.

Then a few years later my family actually got a PC! I loaded up Alone in the Dark on it, pushed some furniture around, got killed by a monster, and turned it off to play Theme Hospital or Sam and Max or something instead. (I'm not a big fan of horror games to be honest). So I have played through first few rooms before, I'm very familiar with them, but otherwise I'm going into the game blind. I don't know what happens next or anything about the story.

Okay, I'm going to be playing the version I just bought off GOG (which I believe is just the 1993 DOS CD version), and I'm going to be writing about it in two parts. This first part is going to be a regular Super Adventures article where I stick with it for an hour and whine about how hard it is, but in the second part I am going to try to finish it. I want to see what this game actually is! So there will be moderate SPOILERS in the first part and hopefully some extreme spoilers in the second.

Eldritch (PC)

Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a look at another request: indie first person... video game Eldritch.

The word 'eldritch' is closely associated with H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories and is defined as meaning "unearthly, alien, supernatural, weird, spooky or eerie". I'm just trying to pad out this introduction a bit to be honest, because I've haven't even got a clue what this game is about. That suits me just fine though really, as it's been weeks since I've been able to come at a game armed only with absolute ignorance and be able to share my true first impressions of it afterwards.

Like always I'll give it an hour or two to impress me, then document my findings in the form of screenshots with words underneath them.

They Bleed Pixels (PC)

Here's another game requested by the internet: cute Lovecraftian horror platformer They Bleed Pixels, available exclusively on Steam I believe. Sorry if you were hoping I was going to play another obscure retro game, but hey this looks a bit retro at least. Plus it only uses two buttons, just like a NES game! Kind of.

(Click the pictures to see them at the original resolution.)

Quake (PC)

GOOD RETRO GAME WEEK, day 4.

Played using Fitzquake.

I love the Quake logo, they got it dead on perfect in my opinion. They changed it for the sequels and somehow made it just as perfect for them too.

I guess someone at id must really like nails, seeing as there's a nail on the logo, nail guns and super nail guns in game... they even got Nine Inch Nails to do the soundtrack.