Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click adventure horror video game designed by Roberta Williams for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows and released by Sierra On-Line on August 24, 1995. It tells the story of Adrienne Delaney (Victoria Morsell), a writer who moves into a remote mansion and finds herself terrorized by supernatural forces. It was made at the peak of popularity for interactive movie games and features live-action actors and footage, both during cinematic scenes and within the three-dimensionally rendered environments of the game itself. It was noted for its violence and sexual content.
Williams had long planned to design a horror game, but she waited eight years for software technology to improve before doing so. More than 200 people were involved in making Phantasmagoria, which was based on Williams's 550-page script, about four times the length of an average Hollywood screenplay. It took more than two years to develop and four months to film. The game was originally budgeted for $800,000, but it ultimately cost $4.5 million to develop and was filmed in a $1.5 million studio that Sierra built specifically for the game.
The game was directed by Peter Maris and features a cast of twenty-five actors, all performing in front of a blue screen. Most games at the time featured 80 to 100 backgrounds, while Phantasmagoria includes more than 1,000. A professional Hollywood special effects house worked on the game, and the musical score includes a neo-Gregorian chant performed by a 135-voice choir. Sierra stressed that it was intended for adult audiences, and the company willingly submitted it to a ratings system and included a password-protected censoring option within the game to tone down the graphic content.
Phantasmagoria was released on seven discs after multiple delays, but it was a financial success, grossing $12 million in its opening weekend and becoming one of the bestselling games of 1995. Sierra strongly promoted the game. It received mixed reviews, earning praise for its graphics and suspenseful tone while being criticized for its slow pacing and easy puzzles. The game also drew controversy, particularly due to a rape scene. CompUSA and other retailers declined to carry it, religious organizations and politicians condemned it, and it was refused classification altogether in Australia. The sequel Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh was released in 1996, although Williams was not involved.
Gameplay
thumb|280 px|right|alt=Still from the game with Adrienne Delaney looking at a desk. The games interface is seen at the bottom of the screen.|Phantasmagoria includes a user interface with a screen that shows gameplay and cinematic scenes, surrounded by a stone border with buttons and inventory slots. The game integrates live-action performers within the three-dimensional rendered environments of the game.
Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click adventure game that features live-action actors and cinematic footage, both during scenes between the gameplay and within the three-dimensionally rendered environments of the game itself. The game was made when interactive movie games were at the peak of their popularity, with the release of such popular computer games as Wing Commander III and Under a Killing Moon. the player controls protagonist Adrienne Delaney, who is always on the screen. The player can click certain areas of the screen to control her movements or make her explore specific places and objects. The camera angles and rooms change depending on where the player moves Adrienne. The game includes only four mouse commands: look (which changes to "talk to" when selecting a person), pick up item, use item, and walk. The mouse cursor is always an arrow, unlike in most earlier Sierra On-Line games, in which the cursor could be changed to represent different functions (like walk, hand, and eye) by right-clicking. The cursor turns red when it passes over an area where the user can click to perform an action. Once the action has been completed, the cursor will not turn red again. A chapter gauge on this screen conveys how much progress remains in a given chapter. On the left side of the interface is a red skull button, which the user can click to receive hints. On the right side is a red button with a picture of a closed eye, which displays any inventory item that the user drags to the button. The display shows a close-up image that can be turned in multiple directions. Williams said she did not want to get typecast in a particular genre, adding: "I felt I had more to offer than fairy stories. I wanted to explore games with a lot of substance and deep emotions." Although Phantasmagoria was her first horror game, Williams had created murder and crime stories in her earlier mystery games, Mystery House and the Laura Bow series. Williams was a fan of the horror genre, although she did not watch many horror films as a child after a traumatic experience watching Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) at a very young age. She began watching them again as a teen, and particularly enjoyed such films as Halloween (1978), and movies based on Stephen King novels, like Carrie and The Shining (1980).
Williams had wanted to make a horror game for eight years prior to Phantasmagoria, and had started to design one on several occasions, but none came to fruition. She felt the computer game industry and software technology had not yet reached the point where an effective and frightening computer game could be made. As a result, she decided to wait until CD-ROMs were faster and could handle real actors, which she believed was crucial for a horror game because she felt the player had to be able to empathize with the character to fear for them. Williams had been considering several horror story ideas for years before making the game. In one, the heroine answers a magician's advertisement for an assistant and gets the job, but the magician turns out to be insane. Another was set in the past, with the female protagonist getting involved in the supernatural life of a magician character. That idea evolved into a woman being married to a man who is drawn to a bizarre house that previously belonged to illusionists and is haunted by ghosts. During the writing stage, Williams was under pressure to ensure Phantasmagoria was a commercial success for Sierra. She also faced concerns from her husband Ken Williams, the company president and co-founder of Sierra, who wanted the company to focus more on lower-cost, combat-oriented animated games, and was also concerned about the level of violence in Phantasmagoria. In preparation for writing it, Williams spent six months watching horror films and reading horror novels, as well as reading books about how to write horror novels and screenplays. She also asked people she knew socially to tell her scary stories so she could identify the elements of fear. She immersed herself so deeply into the genre that she began having nightmares and had to scale back her reading. He conceived the ideas for most of the death scenes and tried to make each one different and original with what he called "fresh approaches to murder." To that end, she wrote the game in short chapters to break it into smaller, easier-to-play sections. and Kim White, Brandee Prugh and Brian Judy were among the computer artists. It was the first computer game Prugh worked on. Mark Hood, a veteran Sierra programmer, and Mark Seibert served as Phantasmagoria project managers. Seibert called managing the project "much more of a technical and managerial problem-solving job than I ever envisioned." Unlike previous Sierra games, it also involved managing a great deal of outside resources, such as keeping the studio and outside art contractors on schedule. In creating the look of the game, Hoyos drew particular inspiration from the films of Tim Burton, and he particularly tried to emulate the lighting, sets and "imaginative edge" of Batman (1989). Other influences included the films Alien (1979) and Hellraiser (1987). Hoyos started by designing the rooms, then created the furniture, Phantasmagoria had more than 1,000.
The game developers realized early during development that the game could not be completed entirely in-house due to the large scope of the project, and required working with Hollywood agencies, actors and special effects houses, among others. This added further complexity to the game's development and design.
Once the filming was completed, more than 20 two-hour Beta SP video tapes of footage had to be edited down to fit the actions of the game. The programming included editing the original video footage, and mixing the rendered images of doors, drawers, chairs and other objects into the footage frame-by-frame, which was necessary for more than 100 scenes. The game required more polishing and fine-tuning than most games of its time due to the many video components, and the programmers had to determine the desired frame rate, data transfer rate and desired resolution of the video elements. and more than the four or five discs originally expected. Roberta Williams watched the audition tapes of all the roles, and was involved with Mark Seibert in picking the actors. The only actor that Seibert chose without Williams' input was Victoria Morsell as the protagonist, Adrienne Delaney. Williams had watched other audition tapes for the part and was not happy with any of the choices. While she was on vacation, Seibert watched Morsell's audition and immediately selected her for the part. Williams was initially concerned that she was not involved in the decision, but later came to agree that Morsell was the correct choice. She had to work 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, for three months to capture all her character's actions and movements. Morsell and Homb started dating in real life after filming. Robert Miano was cast as the villain Zoltan "Carno" Carnovasch. He had previously appeared in several films by Phantasmagoria director Peter Maris.
The comic relief roles of Harriet and Cyrus were played by V. Joy Lee and Steven W. Bailey, respectively. Bailey had been an actor in Seattle for about three years, doing mostly stage work, as well as some commercials, television episodes, independent films, and industrial films for the United States Navy. Malcolm was portrayed by veteran actor Douglas Seale. Stella Stevens played the antiques store owner Lou Ann, Geoff Pryser played Bob the realtor, and Carl Neimic played phone technician Mike. 12 hours a day, shooting six days a week. The budget issues caused some friction between Roberta and Ken Williams. It cost $1.5 million to build and was overseen by studio manager Bill Crow, who said, "Phantasmagoria essentially started with the design and creation of the studio."
Sierra wanted the game to have Hollywood-quality film sequences, so they sought a director with experience in the film industry. They hired Peter Maris, whose previous experience was mainly of action and drama films, although some of his earlier films were graphic horror movies. Maris and Roberta Williams collaborated a great deal from the beginning of the process, with Maris explaining what he wanted in each scene from a filmmaker's perspective, and Williams explaining her desires from a game designer's perspective. Maris set up the camera angles and worked with the actors, using three motion-controlled cameras during the shooting. All filming was done entirely in front of a blue screen, and Miano had only done it once. Morsell in particular said she found it challenging because it was so physically constrictive. Such items as tables, chairs, doors or stairs that the actors appear to interact with are in fact constructed objects painted blue to match the blue screen, and were occasionally challenging for the actors to work with. During one scene, David Homb accidentally stood in such a way that his arm appeared to be going through the living room wall.
Morsell found it challenging to film a scene near the end of the game, in which Adrienne is pleading with Don while getting strapped into the chair with a guillotine overhead. Several different versions of the scene had to be filmed, and Morsell said it was difficult for her to work up the genuine emotion she needed take after take.
The chase scene at the end of the game, in which Don pursues Adrienne throughout the entire mansion, took a full week to film. Homb wore a prosthesis on his face to simulate wounds from Adrienne pouring acid on him. Only one prosthesis was available, and it was in such bad shape by the end of filming that Williams said "we were essentially holding it in place with the proverbial wire and bailing wax." Sierra commissioned Dave Macmillan and other Hollywood animal handlers from the company Worldwide Movie Animals to handle the animals. Two cats were required to portray Adrienne's pet Spaz because the cats were temperamental and each would have moments when they would not perform. The only solutions she saw were to allow less decision-making by the player, or to keep the flexibility intact but not allow any costume changes. Williams said she decided the latter option was ultimately better for the game. An orange shirt was chosen for the character because it was the best color to shoot against the blue screen. None of the characters wear blue, purple, gray or any shade of green similar to the blue screen for that same reason. The core special effects team for the game consisted of Lazzarini, Michael Esbin and Bill Zahn. Lazzarini said making Phantasmagoria was a much faster and more cooperative process than in the film industry. Due to the tight filming schedule, most effects had to be done in one shot with no cuts, so there was less margin for error. They created the effects for all the death scenes in the game, which included creating assorted body prostheses, burn makeup and what Lazzarini called "gallons of fake blood," with pumps installed to pump fake blood into it, and strings attached to either side so it could be pulled apart.
One scene involved a burning head, which was created by taking a cast of the actor's face, head and body with a plaster, then placing soft rubber over the cast to simulate human flesh. It was also treated so it did not release black smoke like a rubber tire when it burned. It proved difficult to make, and several attempts were made before the right consistency was achieved. and it looked so funny during filming that the crew kept laughing during takes. Most of the music is a mixture of real instruments with synthesized and sampled sounds, Themes for the music ranged from rock and roll to opera. For cinematic scenes, they watched tapes after the scenes were shot and composed the music afterward. This was a new process for Sierra and the computer game industry in general, but the same concept was regularly followed in the film industry.
The opening theme of the game features a neo-Gregorian chant, which was performed in studio by a 135-voice choir. with Sierra saying it would come out no later than the fall of 1994. The game was previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in June 1994, where it was announced the release date had been pushed back to October 1994 and that the game would be made available on two discs. The game ultimately required seven discs. and then February 1995, Phantasmagoria came out first for Windows 95, Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS, then for Macintosh computers in November 1995. A hint book by Sierra came out at the same time as the game. In response to all the delays, Vince Broady, executive editor of the monthly publication Multimedia World, said Sierra may have been attempting to avoid the same mistakes from the previous year with Outpost, for which the company released many advertisements and reviews, but then over-promoted and released before it was finished. Sierra spokeswoman Kathy Gillmore admitted that mistakes were made in marketing Outpost and Sierra had tried to fix them. but was typically sold for $69.95. and the company touted it as its biggest game to date. The game was given an "M" rating for "mature" audiences, meaning intended for audiences 17 or older. As a result, it carried a content warning on the box that said "contains adult subject matter." The game box prominently displayed this rating, as well as a warning on the back panel that the game contains adult subject matter inappropriate for children. It also encouraged parents to review the material before providing it to children and asked retailers not to sell it to minors.
The game itself includes a filter that players can activate with a password so that violent or sexually explicit content is censored. Sierra officials believed it was the first CD-ROM adventure game that self-censored upon command. Sierra producer Mark Seibert said: "There are some pretty gruesome things, and we're concerned about how that is going to impact parents who want to buy a good game with a good story line." Phantasmagoria was made available for digital download on the website GOG.com starting in February 2010 for $9.99.
Reception
Sales
Phantasmagoria quickly became the bestselling game in the United States, It grossed $12,000,000 and sold 300,000 units during its first week-end of release, By September, it had reached number one on the list among computer games and ranked third among all computer software, following Windows 95 and Microsoft Plus! InterAction, a magazine published by Sierra On-Line, wrote that no other Sierra game topped game charts as quickly as Phantasmagoria did. By the end of December, it remained at number three among overall software, and number one among computer games, and by January it was estimated as many as 500,000 copies had been sold. According to Sierra On-Line, its global sales surpassed 600,000 units by March 1996.
Phantasmagoria finished 1995 as the ninth bestselling game of the year according to an analysis by PC Data of sales by 42 retail chains. In January 1996, Phantasmagoria was the fourth-best seller among MS-DOS and Windows games, behind Microsoft Flight Simulator, Myst and Command & Conquer, and it was number six among all computer software. By February 10 it was number five among MS-DOS and Windows games, and by February 24 it was number 10. It received a boost in June 1996, possibly due to the pending release of its sequel Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, and jumped back up to seventh among bestselling computer software programs according to Computer Life magazine. One year after Phantasmagoria was released, it still remained in the bestseller charts, and more than one million copies were ultimately sold, making it Sierra's first game to reach that milestone. NPD Techworld, which tracked sales in the United States, reported 301,138 units sold of Phantasmagoria by December 2002.
Reviews
Phantasmagoria received mixed reviews. calling it a "masterwork" and "as close as it gets to a film you control," although he said not everyone would appreciate it due to its violent content. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+ and called it "one of the surest signs yet of computer games approaching the quality level of the movies." The review said it had some suspenseful and novel twists, but also some "horrific touches (that) seem a bit derivative, such as a Freddy Krueger-like nightmare in which hands pull you through a bed." USA Today writer Joe Wilson gave it three-and-a-half stars and called it well-produced, visually appealing, frighteningly realistic and "a much-needed change from normal fare," although he said the plot did not start to become interesting until halfway through. Ric Manning of the Gannett News Service wrote, "The graphics are terrific, but don't play on a full stomach." Steve La Rue of U-T San Diego found the game "visually opulent and interesting" with "dialogue a lot better than I expected, given the trite gothic novel plot," but also said he had to adjust to the "gradual, contemplative pace."
Computer Gaming World writer Arinn Dembo called the storyline of a couple buying a haunted mansion "a cliché so familiar that it needs no explanation," but said it still worked in a computer game because the player could directly experience it in that medium, rather than simply watching it in a film. Dembo also praised the game for featuring a female protagonist, though she said Adrienne was too much of an exaggeratedly feminine "girlie-type girl." Overall, Dembo said the game "achieved a new height of realism and beauty in a computer game" and was "an important technological leap, and represents a step forward for the whole industry." In a mixed review, Phil LaRose of The Advocate praised the game for having a female protagonist and excellent special effects, and said it had gone further toward merging the realms of film and game than any other computer game. He also said the game was too linear, with overly simple puzzles and a plotline with "so many recycled concepts in this game, players will feel like they've seen it all before."
Other reviews were more negative. GameSpot writer Jeff Sengstack said the expensive budget and long production history "do not necessarily translate into high quality gaming." He complimented the graphics and music, but considered "[the game] generally unchallenging, the characters weak, the violence over-the-top, and the script just lame." The Escapist writer Brendan Main said the game fell short of its ambition to change how gamers experienced horror media, and the juxtaposition of real-life actors on settings that were "ordinary, pixilated fare" was "odd and unflattering." In a 2014 review, IGN writer Kosta Andreadis said the game's special effects were still effective, and that Phantasmagoria wisely builds suspense and saves the violent content for the end of the game. But he said it was ultimately "less a bad game than a bad horror film" and said the execution, "although technically interesting, is extremely goofy, full of ludicrous situations, weird plot turns, bizarre dialogue, and dated costume choices."
Awards
Phantasmagoria earned an Editor's Choice Award from PC Gamer, It was nominated for Best Adventure/Role-Playing Software in the annual Excellence in Software Awards competition, known in the game industry as "The Codies," which are among the most prestigious honors in software development. One major newspaper claimed Phantasmagoria "makes a game of sexual violence." The Roberta Williams Anthology collection was also banned in Australia because it featured a one-chapter preview of the game. In response to the backlash, Williams said she believed computer games were subject to harsher standards than films and television, which she said often have more violent content than Phantasmagoria, in part because computer games are often regarded as children's entertainment rather than for adults. Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, and Lamar Alexander, the former governor of Tennessee, all asked the system to sell its stock. McConnell was particularly critical of the rape scene. They suggested a link existed between recent student slayings in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas, and the "increasingly violent world many American children enter when they sit down in front of a computer screen."
Legacy
The commercial success of Phantasmagoria had a positive financial impact on Sierra On-Line. Before its release, the company's stock rose in July 1995, up $3.875 to $30.875, which Vince Turzo of Jeffries & Co attributed in part due to anticipation of Phantasmagoria. Sierra's stock continued to rise after it was released. The company closed on the NASDAQ stock market at $43.25 on September 8, 1995, translating to a 73 percent gain in less than three months, which Turzo attributed partially to Phantasmagorias success. This improvement exceeded expectations in analysts' forecasts, and was thanks largely to Phantasmagoria sales. Williams later described Phantasmagoria as the game that best represented her career as a game designer. Shannon said the original game was a haunted house story in the style of a "late night creature feature," while her game has more science-fiction and fantasy horror elements, in the style of the works of Clive Barker and Tanith Lee. He also claimed Jan Davidson, the wife of Chairman and CEO Bob Davidson, personally did not like the game and "wanted it shut down." Due to these sales challenges, Williams said "there was no reason to make a third Phantasmagoria."