[samIamsad]

He, I discovered these nice sites, while replaying some of the classics:

http://www.nemmelheim.de/horrorsoft/
http://www.if-legends.org/~adventure/Horrorsoft.html



Did you play these games? I first saw Elvira on a friend's Amiga. The music, the graphcis, the eerie eeriness, ya know. It blew me away. Never mind that it's a B movie gone game like all of this company's games that came thereafter (except for that silly brat Simon, that is . More whining about him later...).


The jaws of cerberus

So, there's Personal Nightmare, which I only briefly played. I always got killed during night. Then there's Elvira Mistress Of The Dark and the sequel, The Jaws Of Cerberus, two classic "rescue damsel in distress from the clutches of evil" kind of stories starring a digitized Cassandra Peterson, the lady with the big' Uns from Spookesville, USA. Pros: graphics, sound (Amiga version only, some of the MIDI tunes in the PC version are HORRID), interface, puzzles, spells, combat, exploration, bOObs. Cons: Mazes. Make a mistake, like wasting important item A on spell B, and it might well be that you can't finish the game anymore.



We don't take ourself that serious, do we?

Sadly, in 1992, the company behind all of this changed its name to Adventuresoft, after having released its last gem: Waxworks. I still remember the day it arrived it in my mail box. I had recently upgraded my Amiga 500 to 1MB RAM (required) and opened the box with sweaty fingers. 10 disks! A manual! A cop y protection wheel! And a small book containing a story called "WTF happened before all of this?". Oh joy!


OMFG!!!!1

Later that night I found myself peeing my pants while exploring a graveyard and getting my insides ripped out by brainless zombies over and over again.Oh, there's gore. Plenty of it. In fact, Waxworks probably is three times as gory as its "predecessors" combined. Rumor has it that 5 disks were wasted on the dozens of very graphic death sequences alone. You get your arms and legs ripped out by mutant plants growing in a mine shaft, you get eaten by alligators in an Egyptian pyramid. And many of those sequences are even animated. Sure, it's a bit over the top. But, I'm a sucker for scary games, and these were are very good start for the 13 years old I was back then.

There were talks about another one of those horror adventures ("This time you'll be exploring a haunted carnival..", they said), but sadly, as told earlier, they opted for Simon The Sorcerer instead. Nothing against Simon, but heh...


Game over.

So, did you play these games? I was only able to finish Waxworks, so, excuse me, I've still got some work to do.

[Kolzig]

Yeah, I've played the first Elvira game on my Amiga when I was young.

Mostly I just watched when my brother played it, I got nightmares if I watched it too much,

Spoiler:

like the damn eagle/owl whatever that attacked the protagonist and dug out his eyes when you went to that one cabin near the woods...

I have that game still in my closet somewhere, and also I think I bought that Jaws of Cerberus Elvira game a year or two ago, but haven't yet played it. I saw it once in motion at a friend's place years ago though.

[samIamsad]

Thehe, yes, I remember that. My little brother watched me playing, too. He couldn't sleep one night. He was scared from

Spoiler:

seeing the sleeping vampiress in that one bedroom, who, once you approach her, suddenly awakens and..

I blame Lucas Arts for the demise of Horrorsoft. Because Monkey Island was all Mike and his son Simon Woodroffe seemed to care talking about in interviews made during the Simon The Sorcerer days. I hope they're back on track again with their Cthulhu game. If it will ever see the light of day.. Mike once said: "Horrorsoft isn't dead. It's merely sleeping." Or something like that.

[samIamsad]

Recently finished the Ripper part of Waxworks again. No fighting whatsoever until you finally HIM. The plot has it, that you're playing the twin brother of mad Jacky, so you're constantly fleeing from the police and the raging mob in The Streets Of London(TM) (Whitechapel district, of course), who mistake you for the killer. All the while trying to figure out the Rippers' whereabouts. You visit pubs, you talk to panders, you deal with thugs, you break into shops and houses, it's still some fun.

Here are some vintage reviews (on some pages you have to scroll down for the English ones):


http://www.classicgaming.com/amigare...lnightmarezzap (Personal Nightmare)

http://www.classicgaming.com/amigareviews/elvira1.htm (Mistress Of The Dark)

http://www.classicgaming.com/amigare....htm#elvira2aj (The Jaws Of Cerberus)

http://www.classicgaming.com/amigareviews/waxworks.htm (Waxworks)

[Tanukitsune]

They have the Elvira Horror Pack over at the Adventure Soft store, in case you didn't know...

It includes Elvira 1,v Elvira 2 - The Jaws of Cerberus and Waxworks, they are supposed to be remade to work on W98, I have XP and had to use DOSBox...

[samIamsad]

Oh, I completely forgot about that. But as said, some of the MIDI tunes aren't that nice. Funny thing is: I bought Elvira for C64 first. A conversion done by the (now defunct, I think) Flair Software. Didn't look *that* bad - keep in mind they had to work with 16 predefined colors and a resolution of 160x200 pixels.

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Oh, I completely forgot about that. But as said, some of the MIDI tunes aren't that nice. Funny thing is: I bought Elvira for C64 first. A conversion done by the (now defunct, I think) Flair Software. Didn't look *that* bad - keep in mind they had to work with 16 predefined colors and a resolution of 160x200 pixels.

What is that supposed to be a pcture of? What I can make of it is that its someones decapitaded head on a plate but they dont care about the fact that their missing their body because they have a row of delicious cucumber slices infront of them

[Tramboi]

"Personal Nightmare" was pretty nice but my copy crashed at some point :'(

Elvira was sort of cool too.

[Kurufinwe]

I really liked Elvira. It was rather difficult, but not too much and it was generally fun (provided you played the game in the order the game expected you to; the fights were just too hard otherwise). It had some pretty clever puzzles too.

I never liked Elvira II, though. It was just more of the same, but with more monsters, more mazes, more spells, more ingredients, more everything. In the end, it was just too big and overwhelming, and I think I never bothered finishing it.

Waxworks was great, but some levels (especially London) were awfully difficult (both the fights and the puzzles). I really loved the pyramid, though.

Originally Posted by Karmillo

What is that supposed to be a pcture of? What I can make of it is that its someones decapitaded head on a plate but they dont care about the fact that their missing their body because they have a row of delicious cucumber slices infront of them

I thinks that's exactly what it is.

At some point in Elvira II, you find a plate on a dinner table with some sort of lid over it. And, when you remove the lid --- tada! a head. Though I think it was not just gratuitous gore, but that there was a puzzle associated with it. I can't remember what it was, though.

[Karmillo]

Originally Posted by Kurufinwe

At some point in Elvira II, you find a plate on a dinner table with some sort of lid over it. And, when you remove the lid --- tada! a head. Though I think it was not just gratuitous gore, but that there was a puzzle associated with it. I can't remember what it was, though.

Did you have to use the head to make shadow puppets to scare the grave digger into opening the tomb door for you?

[Kurufinwe]

Originally Posted by Karmillo

Did you have to use the head to make shadow puppets to scare the grave digger into opening the tomb door for you?

Not exactly, but she did keep saying: "I am Maureen, the cucumber-eating demonic head!"

Or is my mind playing tricks on me?

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by Kurufinwe

Waxworks was great, but some levels (especially London) were awfully difficult (both the fights and the puzzles). I really loved the pyramid, though.

The first time through I had to use a walkthrough for the pyramid and London. For the puzzles, of course. In London, there are no fights 'till the very end, and that one fight ist just point&click,click,click,click,click.... I instantly fell in love with the graveyard section of the game. And the mining shaft. Creepy! That's weird, though. I never liked the pyramid. Can't remember the plate puzzle from Elvira 2, either. Mh, play it again, sam!