Missed Classic 135: The Dark Half (1992) - Introduction

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Stolen shamelessly from MOCAGH.

Yeah.

Those of you who are wondering about the above statement fall into two camps. One is totally in the dark about this, and has no idea what's going. The other is wondering when someone made an adaptation of one of Stephen King's lesser works. Perhaps you might be wondering if it's connected to the movie. So, let's get to that background.

Stephen King, if you aren't aware, is one of the last truly famous writers, writing mostly in the horror genre, with over 50 novels and a considerable number of short stories. These are all generally pretty popular, with probably billions of books in print somewhere around the world if not more. When King started, this was not quite the achievement it seems now, people read more, and authors tended to write that much.

His first novel, Carrie, came after a long time of trying to sell a novel and selling his short stories in various magazines that existed then. It wasn't quite an overnight success, but it got there pretty quickly. Then came more novels, and adaptations of his novels and he's remained on top more or less since. It's hard to believe this in retrospect, but King could afford a cocaine habit in the '80s off his books. That's not something that could happen today to a writer who is just a writer.

Sometime after Carrie, King, for some strange reason, decided that some novels were too spicy for his own name and wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Some, I mean, the first, Rage, makes perfect sense, others don't seem any worse than what King wrote under his own name then. He wrote five novels under this name before someone discovered the connection. It also brings a new meaning to the phrase "He cut off his nose to spite his face"...

Not too long after this, King decided that this would make a great idea for a novel. Stephen King writing a novel about a writer having writer's issues? Unheard of! Throw in some random boomer music, an evangelist straight out of certain groups who probably shouldn't be named, and an unsatisfying ending and you've got something no writer has ever done before!

I make fun of King, because, well, if you can't make fun of someone whose made millions off his work, who can you make fun of? King's had some good ideas, but for the most part, looking back at what I read, he's good at moment-to-moment stuff, but some of those moments are questionable in retrospect and things like a plot or satisfactory ending are usually outside of his reach. He's still better than James Patterson.

Like most of his novels, this was turned into a movie, by King's friend and director of the first Halloween game I covered, George A. Romero. This was one of his big budget Hollywood epics since he got tired of scrounging for money. What did he get for his trouble? A picture he made in 1991 which got released in 1993 because the studio was having financial difficulties. It doesn't really matter how good the film is at that point, the well has been poisoned.

His hope and optimism, higher than the sun.

Capstone, for some strange reason, decided sometime during this troubled production to make a game off the movie. I don't know why, because after having seen the movie, I'm not sure how you could turn it into a game. The narrative just jumps around too much for anything but a very loose adaptation, and what there isn't doesn't really make sense as gameplay. Which is probably why everyone says this game sucks the big one.

Let's focus on Computer Gaming World, where the reviewer said the game was the worst one he played in the last ten years. (Link, because it's two pages) This, apparently, wasn't enough to get the game into their worst 50 games list, but apparently Blue Force, Inca II and Ringworld are worse. Plus Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller in the future. Twenty or so years from now, when I've played most of the flight sims on there, I'm probably going to describe the writers of this list as being full of something.

While researching the upcoming year, I found out that a famous adventure game newsletter, Questbusters, said that The Dark Half was an interesting and challenging game while their adaptation of Homey D. Clown was terrible. I'll leave that one for someone else, but it is an interesting contrast. I'll have touched enough Capstone games for me to want another to play. And for some reason a group of Russians made a fan translation of The Dark Half presumably because they liked it.

In the eventual future when TAG creates their worst 50 games list, at some point in time when the worst 50 games aren't just me, Joe and Will padding the list with random text adventures, of course I'm going to argue for Gram Cats at the number one slot...I hope, but that doesn't mean I'm going to say that Psycho and Emmanuelle shouldn't be on it...unless I genuinely think we've played 50 worse games on this blog.

But this isn't just a random game one reviewer said was the worst thing he ever played, the good people at Capstone sent CGW a letter complaining about how badly their game was rated. This is like if Muriel Tramis wasn't a sweet lady who didn't care that Ilmari sailed the high seas for all her games and instead called Trickster a little bitch. Seriously, what the hell is THAT wrong with those 50 games, some of which they didn't even put a sentence on, that they're worse than this?

(I can't put in as a video the video I want, so here's a link)

Starting the game, I get the Capstone logo and some menacing music to introduce it. Then a scene of a surgery. With no introduction. See, in the film we get to see our protagonist, Thad Beaumont as a boy writing, then experiencing a headache before being placed in the surgery. It's a very weird introduction, since it goes way too fast when there's animation and we get some odd voice samples, I suspect from the movie. Also, when I went to check on the internet for a video of the intro, the only internet review is praising the game. Huh. I also didn't realize that it was MT-32.

We get some credits. Hey, there's an entire quality control team here. I'm shocked, considering the reputation. Wait, ROTHSCHILD? I guess they weren't as busy with inflation as they are today, so they had spare time to make crappy adventure games.

We get the introduction of the story proper, kind of. A drifter figures out that Beaumont is Stark, tries to blackmail him, and he exposes himself for publicity. (The in-game newspaper is actually wrong, since Stark's books are supposed to be hardboiled crime) Man, Hutton looks like CRAP here. I do like the art and the music, outside of that. It's doesn't always make sense, but it is very moody. Then there's a newspaper showing a still from the movie, and then a shot of the open grave. The game begins.

Wait, are his eyes in his forehead?

Suddenly. With no real explanation of what we're supposed to do. As far as the movie goes, this oddly enough places us in George Stark's shoes, the twin that somehow comes to life after being killed, because I don't remember Beaumont being here at night. I could be misremembering, because I actually watched the film back in June or something because I thought I was going to be busy around this time. I note that in an oddity for a 1992 game, I have to bring the speed way down to 1000 cycles for the game to not move freakishly fast, yet this also screws over the sound if I do it during the unskippable intro. Blah.

There are about thirteen commands, which I don't necessarily disapprove of despite ragging on some games for having too many. The point is not that they have too many, it's that they don't really use them. Having look and search being two different things is helpful, because that way I can have the game explain to me that a drawer is a Victorian-era gift to Louis III or something that makes sense, and then search it instead of having to manually check each drawer myself. We'll see how this works in practice.

Anyway, here I can look at the open grave, which tells me that George was buried in the tombstone marked George and no other information or options. I can't use the travel command, that's quick travel, instead I walk to the right.
 

Do you know where Wolfe is?

Slowly, I end up here. It's the local cemetery digger, who has a name I don't remember, don't feel like looking up and the game doesn't provide. My condolences to the guy who played his role in the movie. Conversation is simple Lucasarts-style, except you have to re-talk to the guy after each conversation. (Maybe this is unique to him) Ask him about the grave, and he suggests some kids did it. I can ask him to unlock the tool shed, because he's a rational and smart human being.

I bet I'm going to need the least useful thing here.

Inside is the most useful selection of items I have ever been given off the bat in an adventure game. That's...somewhat worrying. We get rope, an extension cord, a weed whacker, a shovel, the cemetery digger's lunch, weed killer, gas, flashlight, a toolbox, a jar with the green inside and a bucket. What are these arrows though? Can I explore other walls of this room? No, this causes me to leave.

Apparently we didn't spot someone right outside the cemetery.

Meanwhile...something happens somewhere else, looks like someone's getting killed. Who and what? We'll find out next time...

This Session: 0 hours 5 minutes

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