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Phantasmagoria
Developer: Sierra
Publisher: Sierra On-Line
In some ways, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers was the last of Sierra On-Line's traditional adventures. Immediately after it was completed, acclaimed designer Roberta Williams (King's Quest) hopped on board the The 7th Guest bandwagon and began work on a full-motion video horror project called Phantasmagoria. When the game was finally released in mid-1995, it shocked many Sierra fans. Even though Sins of the Fathers addressed many adult themes, the distance provided by the comic book and bitmap graphic formats insulated people from the violence and sex. It was hard to be offended by something that was so obviously the creation of an artist.
 Meet Adrienne Delaney. |
No such distance separated the gamer from the protagonist in Phantasmagoria. You are right there throughout the travails of Adrienne Delaney, a young writer who has just moved into a haunted New England mansion (it's always a mansion, isn't it?) with her husband Don. The said mansion was once the home of a demented 19th-century illusionist named Carno, who was famous for the Phantasmagoria, a show where he simulated torture and murder for a paying audience. Guess you had to be there. Needless to say, the illusionist and his pals are still hanging around. Through the course of several days, Adrienne has become involved in the mystery of Carno's estate and several supernatural happenings that have built to the possession of her husband by a supernatural being.
 Adrienne encounters a ghost. |
This routine story was spiced up with the inclusion of several graphic scenes that would likely have earned Phantasmagoria an R rating if it had been released theatrically. There were a number of bloody sequences, including a gruesome ax murder near the end of the game, along with an implied rape scene that garnered a lot of controversy in the mainstream media. Games like this one made the growth of the fledgling Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) a given.
 Fortunes told here aren't very optimistic. |
Other than an enduring whiff of scandal, Phantasmagoria left no legacy to horror gaming. There was no sudden desire to depict graphic violence and sex with full-motion video; in fact, using full-motion video to present a game all but died out not long after the game's release. Still, the game was successful enough to spawn a sequel, Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh, in late 1996. It hardly received a warm welcome. Sales were poor, and critics savaged the game for its ludicrous puzzles (which included having to get your wallet from under the couch with the assistance of your pet rat and a granola bar) and childish treatment of serious themes, such as repressed homosexuality and psychiatric illness. About the only good thing that came out of that debacle was the realization that Sierra needed to revisit Gabriel Knight.
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