Missed Classic 110: ...A Personal Nightmare (1989) - Introduction

By Morpheus Kitami 

As an aside before I get to the main event, I would like to engage in a little self-promotion. For a while now I've had my own blog, about FPS and other shooters. Stuff like Doom, Wing Commander, Jazz Jackrabbit and the ilk. Currently, I divide games by FPS and everything else, and I'm near the end of 1989 and 1982 respectively. It is interesting, if you can stand most games from 1982 not being good.

https://almostafamine.blogspot.com/

 Box Office was apparently K-Mart's bargain software label, box art taken from Mobygames

Adventure International, as I'm sure you are aware, was Scott Adams's company, responsible for some of the first major home computer text adventures. Known for simple prose and later, simple graphics, these games were sold entirely on the merit of their puzzles, and for a time this went well. So well that eventually people in other lands started importing them, making the dreams of one very American company come true. In the UK, another company also calling itself Adventure International, imported Adams's titles and put them on such platforms as the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum.

And for a time this too went well, even after the death of their "parent" company they went along, first with games from other American companies, then with originals. Previously, Alex played Robin of Sherwood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon, which was based on a TV series. This was done with a modified version of the SAGA engine, or Scott Adams Graphical Adventure engine. Quite a few obscure licenses, which I'm sure appear on some clickbait Youtube video about 23 obscure licensed video games (Number 16 will cause you to lose control of your legs for the next six years).

If you can, read the advertised features. More importantly, it looks like I'm going to be killing a vampire and...toy soldiers

But with the rise of systems like the Amiga and Atari ST even this was starting to fail. You could have a stunning audio-visual affair that didn't just last all of five seconds. As such, text adventures, even ones with pictures were becoming regulated to the same part of history that contains films starring Lilian Gish, ancient history. As such they reinvented themselves. Not just as a graphical power house, but in terms of image. They picked up the license to create titles based on American horror icon Elvira, and reintroduced themselves as Horrorsoft. For their first title? ...A Personal Nightmare, commonly shortened to Personal Nightmare.

Until it was released, no one paid much notice to it. Well, outside of Germany. Wait, a company known for violent games was a-okay in the land of video game censorship? Huh.

Incidentally, its somewhat amusing that Elvira is associated with gore in horror movies and in her own licensed games, considering that she quite intentionally leans on the camp side of things. In fact she dislikes it, and stopped appearing in ThrillerVideo (a line of horror films on VHS) releases because they were going to include more cannibal and zombie films. Despite this, nearly every run of shows involving her has had such films in their line-up. (if you don't understand why someone might have issues with this, I suggest you look up the films of Bruno Mattei and Joe D'Amato)

With this we begin Personal Nightmare, the sort of red-headed step child of HorrorSoft's quadrilogy, often ignored in favor of the two really big reasons to play the Elvira titles and WaxWorks, the brutal combination of light RPG and insane puzzles. Now, while you all are betting on this and deciding whether or not I'll be making a request for assistance, I should point out my experiences with Elvira, the only game in the series I have actually played. It's the only game I've played because I still haven't beaten it. Not for a lack of trying. I think you're supposed to get rings, and I haven't seen one. Beating Elvira has been on my to-do list since around 2011. (not continuously, basically closer to like 6 or so attempts over the years)

Rather than try to describe the story in the manual, I shall simply reproduce it:

The village of Tynham Cross, nestled in the hills of Woldshire, holds many childhood memories for you.  Brought up a vicar's son, life was very quiet in this sleepy little village.  In order to pursue a more interesting career opportunity you left home many years ago and lost contact with your parents.  Consequently a letter from your mother came like a bolt from the blue.  The letter troubled you, you didn't know why but it seemed to be trying to tell you something.  On the surface it was just as ordinary letter from a mother trying to re-establish contact with her son but underneath there seemed to be something wrong, very wrong. Perhaps it was the reference to your father's strange behaviour. According to your mother, your father, the local vicar has started behaving very strangely and has developed a keen interest in the life story of James Hyatt, vicar at the Church of St. Anthony some three hundred years earlier.  Your memories of this particular character remain pretty vague but you do remember something about him being killed by his own parishioners, apparently in some bizarre ritual to rid the village of some devil or other.  Of course such events were fairly common in those times for it was during that period in history that the great witch hunts were going on and even something as simple as a failed crop usually resulted in some poor woman being burned at the stake or drowned in the village pond.  Anyway the tone of the letter seemed to beg you to come home and you have made preparations to visit as soon as possible. A second letter received only the day before your visit alarms you even further.  More a message than a letter it came from your father advising that he had made arrangements for you to stay at the local inn, The Dog and Duck, as he was having the house redecorated and didn't think that the work would be completed in time for your visit.  He had added that your mother's sister, Alice, had been taken ill and was currently bedridden and that your mother had gone to visit her in Campbelthorpe, hoping to return in time for your visit.  He also enclosed a brief brochure about the inn. You have taken the train and during the long journey have fallen asleep.

Make no mistake, we're fighting against the devil here. The manual continues that the objective of the game is to take him out, any of his human servants, and a few of his pets. The game includes a brief list of characters, so I think I should suspect some of these. We'll go over them as I meet them. As someone who has watched a few Giallo films, this reminds me of those. Basically, they're a cross between a mystery film and a slasher film. If you've ever seen some of the debuts in long-lived slasher series like Friday the 13th, add actual mysteries as to who the killer is in those, and you have a Giallo film.

One final note before I begin, this game allows one to play it as both a text adventure and point and click one. Unless the point and click interface is really crap I'm going to be playing that. And I shall be playing the Amiga version in SCUMMVM. Do let me know if the screenshots look funny to you, since this is a new install of SCUMMVM and I've been playing around with the settings so I get proper MIDI sound and don't have an image that's one inch long. I also just want to very loudly express my hatred of snappaks or whatever they're called. Pain in the ass to do things that the program could previously do without any fiddling.

Apparently my father in this game is Charlton Heston, a comparison I think a lot of fathers would like, I know mine would

We are treated to an intro. First, we see a priest, presumably my father the Vicar. Organ music plays amid a thunderstorm. How convenient, because there was one here in the midwest yesterday. Lightning strikes the vicar...

We see a demonic figure emerge from the flames...

If you're willing to look at this guy's ugly mug, you'll note that despite the obviously computer necessitated symmetry, there are differences between the two halves, curious

And jump scare.

Personal Nightmare. Guess that's why its usually called that. Elvira is drawn less evil-looking and a bit softer on this logo than in her own titles. I'd just like to give a shoutout to the genius at SCUMMVM who decided that you can screenshot the saved image dialog. I hate you right now. Not that much, since otherwise I'd have to cut out the window borders of my screenshots, and screw that!

If you look very closely, you can see that the governer's hair is a wine bottle

We begin in the local inn. Mr Jones, in the middle, is the owner of The Dog and Duck, and on the right is his wife, Mrs Jones. On the left is photographer and "enjoyer of drink" Jimmy Blandford. Without any prompting, Mr Jones gives me my key and lets me know where my room is. The clock strikes five, and Mr Roberts, the village registrar walks in. In case you couldn't tell, this is one of those real-time adventure titles. This game, from what I've heard, takes place on a very strict schedule. Considering the company, brutality is the order of the day.

Also, you can't get by with the point and click interface alone, and I doubt you can play it too well with the text interface alone. So you have a frankenstein combination. Type whatever command you need, click on whatever object you want to interact with, repeat if it's ask JONES about BUGLE or something, and that's the easy route. The easy route. This is also the kind of game where you can't get away with just taking everything in sight. If I take a beer glass, Mr Jones takes it from me, if I try to take the bugle, he has me put it back.

Mr Roberts puts his coat down. How far will the game go? Look in heavy jacket. He gets suspicious. Can I take it? No. Can I hit him? No. Okay, whatever. Jimmy's wife, Susan walks in. Notably, she doesn't sit down next to him, but rather Mr Roberts. Hmm. Interesting. I wonder if that means they're the human servants of the devil? I ask Jimmy about his wife. (if I asked him about Nice, France he'd say the same thing) "How could she? How could she?" Aha! My suspicions seem to be confirmed. I ask Susan about Jimmy, she's in no state to talk. Why is that, game? The governer and his wife seem to confirm my suspicions when I ask them, but there's no hard proof. Curiously, if I examine Jimmy, Susan says to leave her husband alone. Okay...

In death, Jimmy seems to be frozen in a pose reminiscent of walking, which is definitely not a space limitation or anything...

Jimmy leaves to the right, and then a screeching sound happens. I try to go east. Nothing. Do I need to open a door? It's already open. If I go north I get outside, and then heading east I can see Jimmy's body, having been run over by a car. In his hand he has a small key and a roll of film, continuing to say "How could she?" before dying. I take these and can take what remains of the license plate of whoever ran him over.

Even with the rozzers here it's Susan that cares if I do something to her husband

If I wait around, his wife comes out, playing the role of a good wife, sobbing and preventing me from doing anything further to Jimmy. This explains why she's in no state to talk earlier, poorly made triggers. Eventually a bobby comes over, and shoos me away. Then an ambulance. So, I'm going to end it here, where the mystery begins, but I'll also point out two problems I can notice.

The first is that before playing this I was under the impression that this game was a bit more clever than it actually is. What I thought, if you screwed around too much with the body, the officer would arrest you. Even testing this several times results in nothing. All this seems to amount to is that if a character is on the same screen as one of his precious items, you can't take it. Hardly that unusual, since quite a few games are centered around taking some precious item from a character who wants to keep it.

The second is the moving around in this game. Using text to move around seems like a fool's exercise and that compass in the upper left corner feels just as much so. From the starting screen forward/southwest leads to the kitchen, north/right leads to the front of the inn, while left/east leads to the hallway, which leads to the back of the inn. Unfortunately, it seems like you can't navigate without also figuring out where all these directions lead, because crossing the road and the like are done exclusively via the compass. This will be annoying.

Something I'm curious if it'll have any effect, I start with a full suit of clothing along with a suitcase with pajamas. Will the police ding me for public exposure? Or is it more fakery? I wonder if it also means I have an inventory limit, it'd be unusual for a Horrorsoft title to not have one, but this is the only non-RPG. One of these items must be useful for something down the line, but the question is what...?

Anyway, I guess I have three avenues of attack here. Find out what happened to my father, even if I already do; Develop this film so I can find out whatever unspeakable degeneracy Susan has been up to; Finally, see if I can find out who ran over Jimmy. Even if it's broken, it should be easy to figure out which car the license plate belongs to based on what part of it broke off. Assuming it isn't from out of town like myself.

This Session: 20 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 20 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.