Phantasmagoria (1994)
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While a lot of early “multimedia” games were nothing but crappy FMV products with little to know play value or point-and-click adventures with nonsensical puzzles and questionable plot, there were some pretty good ones too. Phantasmagoria is one of those.
Phantasmagoria is in fact a point-and-click adventure but it was designed by Roberta Williams so you know it is going to be something better than average. This was a game with a huge budget. it cost over $4.5 million to make which for 1995 was massive. This game was also far larger than similar games of the time and spanned 7 CDs.
Fortunately, it all paid off for Sierra. Phantasmagoria was a huge hit and Sierra sold $12 million worth of games in the first weekend. This type of point-and-click adventure/interactive movie was reaching the peak of its popularity around this time and Phantasmagoria was one of the best in the genre. It was just the right game published at the right time for Sierra.
The plot of Phantasmagoria involves a mystery novelist (whom the player controls) and her husband purchasing a mansion once owned by a famous musician whose five wives all died under mysterious circumstances. Adrienne (the novelist) explores the mansion looking for inspiration for her next novel. Before you know it, a demon is accidentally released and bad things start to happen…
If you like point-and-click adventures of this type, then Phantasmagoria is a great one to try. However, since it has not been re-released to the best of my knowledge, you will have to struggle through trying to make it work on modern hardware or play on a vintage PC or Mac. A Sega Saturn version was also released but unfortunately it was only available for the Japanese market.
