TechStuff Classic: The Full Motion Video Era - Home Gaming

about arcade games. This one's about home video games. If you're not familiar with full motion video, these are games that incorporated live action video into the games themselves, to varying degrees of effectiveness and hilarity. So let's listen in on this classic episode. We're not covering every single imp

title because oh no, certainly not they were. There were definitely a lot of them, and many of them honestly not worth our time, and some of them were you know, kind of never really heard or seen from again, like stuff that either got released but barely was was adopted at all. So we're just really concentrating on the really famous ones, particularly some that some of our listeners have

asked about, including this one from sewer Shark sewer Shark. Yes. Uh. This this was for the three D O eventually a CD which had come out, I believe in that was what we decided. And uh, one of the earliest console games to use FMV, maybe the first one. Uh. And you're you're flying as a You're playing as a pilot

who flies a ship that flies through sewers. Uh. It's set in a post apocalyptic future where everybody's moved underground, but there are rumors that there are some places above ground that could still be habitable, but the government is very much about, you know, keeping those rumor under under check. And you play a pilot who's trying to find um well one, trying to fight this kind of totalitarian government

and to trying to get to the surface. And so you had all these sequences where you were flying through pipes and that was all full motion video stuff, and you really uh kind of had sprites on top of the video that represented monsters that you had to shoot.

So it's so in a way it was kind of similar to that previous game where you had the vector graphics crosshairs on top of the yeah, cobra command, So it's similar to that in that sense, except this time they were sprites, not vector graphics and yep, and you also had lots of full motion video with your your your compatriots as well as the villain, and they were all ridiculous, over the top hammy actors kind of kind of awesome. Yeah, we're both actually big fans at that

school of acting, I think. Yeah, I mean, if it's if it's done knowingly, it can be it can be a real blast, but even unknowingly it can be kind of a sort of a charming train wreck. Yes, yes, oh, I mean, and so much so that Sega decided to ship it along with their Sega CD system. Yeah. So this was one of those games that actually was pretty popular, only in the sense that people who bought the Sega c D system also got a copy of Sewer Shark. A listeners DJ and Daniel, both on Facebook asked us

to mention this one. Yeah, so thanks very thanks for reading in guys. Now here's another game that I played a little bit, The Seventh Guest, which was a kind of a mystery game. It had a lot of puzzles that were sort of missed like in nature, like, uh I remember one specific puzzle you're you are presented with a cake, and the cake has tombstones and skulls on it, and some pieces of the cake don't have either tombstones or skulls. And you have to remove five pieces of

cake at a time. They have to be consecutive, they had to touch each other, and each time you remove them, you have to have two tombstones, two skulls, and one piece of plain cake. So you had to figure out exactly how did you remove those so that you would get all the cake removed, you wouldn't be stuck. It's kind of like those puzzles you would see where you'd have you know, uh, like in a do you know what you're just shaking your head over now, I'm just

I'm just that sounds like the worst puzzle ever. I that that sounds like the kind of puzzle that I happened upon sometimes in video games and just go maybe I would like to go read a book. I I think of the puzzles that you would find in Uh, this is gonna be a regional reference for some of you guys out there. A cracker barrel, Yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah, the little wooden triangle where you have the pegs and you have to try and make the

pegs jump each other until you're only left with one peg. Yeah, it's kind of like that. They had other puzzles to not just that one, but they also had all these live video segments where there were other it was supposed to be people who had attended a party at h this house years ago, and you are incounter ring the remnants. They're they're kind of psychological imprints. Okay. Yeah, so sort of like a murder mystery dinner party, except everyone is

already dead. Yeah, and you're you're the one solving the mystery. Um and and the acting was pretty pretty spectacularly awful. If you have ever attended a like cringe worthy murder mystery dinner theater type thing, that's what this was in video game form. Uh. Still kind of charming, but definitely I'll show you some video after this podcast is over so you can appreciate it. But well, we'll try to. We'll try, by the way, to put video of as many of these as we can up on social media.

The ones that are the ones that are socially acceptable. They sound they sound very charming. Yeah, this this next one not so much night trash. This one was also mentioned by a couple of our listeners on Facebook, Paul and Daniel, thank you guys for writing in about this one. It was it was a multi platform game. It was big enough that it was all over the places on Sega, C, D, three, D, O, Mac and PC. And it was a survival horror title, right yep. And it got got some attention from a

little group called the United States Government. So this is right around the time when the US government was starting to get concerned about video games and the content inside them. Yeah, and what they were doing to our children. Um, which I I just dramatically overstated, because I think that it's a very dramatic overstatement that yeah, okay, I do believe

in the rating system. And this is actually one of the games that helped create the ratiostom in a roundabout way, because people started saying, hey, uh, there's some slightly scandalous content on this. You're just selling it to any kid who walks in. That's kind of weird use, you know, Mortal Kombat and Doom and stuff. We're Doom, Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. We're held up as examples of the

won't someone please think of the children. We've got more to say about f MV games in the home gaming world.

But first let's take a quick break. So here's the thing. Uh, they the video game industry elected to create the s r B rating system because it meant that it kept the government out of doing it for them, because that was essentially what the government said was, you need to create a waiting or we will And they're like, well, whoa, we will totally do that because we don't want to have too much regulation in our industry because that hurts innovation,

it hurts the developers. So here's the question. What exactly was going on with this game to make it so scandalous. Well, it was kind of creepy, you. Uh. The basis of the game was that there were these monsters called Augers that are kind of like vampires, right, and you are trying to capture them, and you're you're trying to view them remotely and secretly by using hidden cameras that are

placed throughout a house. Coincidentally, that house is also playing host to a slumber party of young ladies, so a lot of the video involves you looking in on rooms that young ladies are in. There was no nudity in this game, by the way, the way it sounds like. It sounds like it it got really pretty like Porky's esque really quickly. It wasn't. It wasn't that it didn't go that far. So there's no nudity in the game.

But there were moments where you know, clearly it was trying to appeal to a more base level in people's nature. It was it was sexualized, and some parents realized that their kids had it, and then they had not really

signed off on it. The yeah, I heard one of the game developers, uh defend this game by saying, look, you you're trying to save people here, that it's the option of the game is to after the bad guys, not to peep on people, and that you think, yeah, but the game mechanic is pretty much feeing on people. So I mean, I don't know how much you can defend it. But again, it wasn't like the most It seems tame in comparison now, especially when you look at

the content that's in some games. You also have to keep in mind that by we're talking about folks who had been growing up with video games since the late seventies early eighties, and this is something we've seen in the industry overall, as gamers have aged, the content inside games has become more and more quote unquote mature. So yeah, and it makes sense because these are the people who are remaining customers of video games even as they get older.

So I think that was also what we were seeing by by nine three, we're talking about a lot of people who were in their teenage years who had grown up playing video games like you know me, although at this point I was only going to be a teenager for a very short time. But there were some decidedly squeaky clean video games that included f m V out around that time. But let us not forget about missed a very popular game. It's incredibly popular game. It was

the best selling PC game for nine years running. Um. It also came out and it wasn't a a heavily FMV based video game, but it did have that FMV element. It had some live action video that characters would interact with you through these these books that you would open and and you know, it was like talking through a portal, but the portal was a person person video. Yeah, um, and yeah it was. It was a darling in the market.

It was a darling of reviewers. It is kind of credited with driving personal CD ROM sales and had sequels coming out for the next ten years plus. Uh. They started in with Riven and continued using fm V elements up through the fourth game in the series, Revelation, which was released all the way out in two thousand four.

After two thousand four, I think that's when we started seeing graphics engines improving to the point where the luster was really taken off of f m V. It was a lot cheaper and easier and more beautiful to create animation for stuff like this. You would go with like

a CG type thing that was procedurally generated. This, you know, depending upon the game, but you know, you could have games where you would have a CG scene and your character can move around and actually view it from different angles. Cut scenes are still largely fm V to some extent.

But um but yeah, I agree that by that time we were starting to see the sophistication of the game engines themselves take over, where some of the less um appealing aspects of FMV were no longer a concern because you could you could work around it, you could do something else instead. Um You Missed was also one of

those games that very quickly appealed to female gamers. Um one of the reasons why it was so popular and non gamers in general, people who wouldn't pick up normal video games because they were perhaps too fast paced or too violent, or too difficult on a learning curve kind

of way to get used to the controls. Missed was it was a very basically controlled adventure, point and click sort of thing where all you had to do was was moved through an environment and solve puzzles, and it was a little bit less intimidating I think for your average human person. It was also really visually appealing and had great sounds, great soundscape. So it was one of those games where it appealed to people on a level that that basic you know, standard video games didn't like

they weren't. It wasn't twitch based, you know, it was. It could be intimidating if you ran into a puzzle and you had literally had no idea how to even start. There were there were a couple of puzzles and in Missed, I did play and I do still love Missed. It's got a very dear place in my heart. Well, the next one has a dear place in my heart. Frankenstein through the eyes of the monster, and you play as

Frankenstein's monster, who has a woman's hand. By the way, that's a big dramatic reveal in the very early part of the game. Goodness, this hand belongs to a woman. I'm not okay, I'm not sure how gendered hands are precisely, but you can tell because his other hand very different. Uh. So, you were playing as the monster, so you're seeing everything from the monster's perspective, so you only see any part of the monster if the monster puts it out in front of his face. Um, and you are trying to

regain your lost memories. You have no memory of what you were before the experiment that brings you to life. Dr Frankenstein is played by Dr franken Further himself, Tim Curry. He choose scenery so hard in this in this game, he's one of my favorite scenery. Yeah, he's he's bonkers. Dr Frankenstein is. The first time you see him is when your your character's eyes open on the on the medical table and he's going on and about how he created life, and then he celebrates by injecting himself in

the neck with something you assume morphine. But you don't know. Um, and uh, yeah, it's a it's if you do anything wrong, or you do enough wrong things, he shows up and kills you and then says something you know, like you have, very snarky and very British. So Tim Curry will appear again on this list because Tip Curry not a man to turn down a job. As its turns out. Um, I would not say that Frankenstein Through the Eyes of

the Monster is a particularly good game. It was another puzzle game, another point and click puzzle game, very much like Missed, but with a very different you know, theme and tone to it. By point and click, we mean that you could just use a mouse to point. It's something that you wanted to either move towards or interact with and then just click to do that thing right. And so you It's one of those games where you had to figure out which thing is needed for whatever

situation you were in. Uh. And depending upon the way the game was designed, you would either end up with the right result, no result, or with Frankenstein. You know, Tim Curry would kill you. Uh. There was a game called Ripper, which I first thought when I started watching the video that I owned the game, but then I realized I didn't own the game. I owned a CD that had Ripper as a preview, and it might have even been Frankenstein through the Eyes of the Monster now

that I think of it. So this was another point and click game set in twenty and you are trying to solve a series of murders that mirror the Jack the Ripper Murders Victorian England. But this one had some really all star actors in it. And we've We've got Christopher Walkin, John Frees Davies, Karen Allen and just married it. Yeah.

You're gonna rip lightning and corrap thunder. Yeah. Uh, you guys should be thankful I did Burgess Meredith and not Christopher Walkin because my walking impression is the worst thing in the world. But uh, and I love doing it. But you played, you know, this game, and you had to try and solve the murders. The preview to this is phenomenal, you guys. If you learn nothing from this

podcast other than this, it'll still be worth it. Go to YouTube and look for the Ripper video game preview because also it features the music of one of the best bands in the world, Blue Oyster Cult, and uh, and their song Don't Fear the Reaper, which I also remember from that preview that I got on the c D where the Don't Fear the Reaper came on and I was immediately impressed. Then we have a game that I believe you played, Lauren. Yes, this was the X

Files game. Yeah, we were mentioned this. I remember you. You brought this one up in the Worst Video Games I think, Yeah, it's pretty high on my list. It was another point and click adventure. It came out for the PSX, the PlayStation one as some people might call it,

and also the PC. And you you played as this FBI agent character that was invented Holly for the game, who defined Molder and Scully as far as I can tell, Because it was really expensive and time consuming to get David to Coveney and Jillian Anderson to actually come shoot um and a bunch of the other characters from the show, Um, Mitch Pledge. I never learned how to say excellent as

a d skinner. William B. Davis, who played the cigarette smoking Man, Stephen Williams who was Mr X, and the whole Smoking gun NERD trio for Hickey, Buyers and Langley all had small roles in this thing. This tells me where where in the X Files Lord happened. Yes, it was actually in the Lord. It was set specifically, I believe in season three sometime in nineteen six makes sense for Mr X. Yes, so it was actually shortly yeah

O MG, spoilers. Um. And that's this is partially because the development took four years and six million dollars um. It was all prompted by Fox's specific interest in having Italie in game for The X Files when they ordered it. The shows in season two and was really starting to roll. Yeah, they were as one of those shows that was getting kind of runaway popularity despite Fox's best efforts to keep moving it, moving the X Files to different time slots. Yeah. And in f m V terms, this game was an

absolute blockbuster. I mean it had this Hollywood talent involved, and it sold about a million copies, which, uh, they at least made their money back at that time. That was a really impressive. You also have to remember that the video game industry at that time wasn't the giant beheamoth that it is today. Right. You know. However, the reviews and the player responses to it weren't spectacular not all of them were as negative as I was, but

but I have very strong feelings about it. It took up like seven PC c d s or four PlayStation CDs. There's nothing that really keeps you immersed in a game like having to change out one disc for another continually. Yeah, personally, I just like it so much because I got stuck in a in an action sequence bug that I never could get around, and I was like, well, I guess I'm not playing this game anymore. And this game is broken and it's done, and we still are seeing lots

of FMV used and cut scenes and support roles. The Command and Conquered games are really well known for that. Tim Curry reappears. He um he was in Rent Alert three as a Russian type character, and uh, if you can just imagine what Tim Curry would sound like doing his best horrible, over the top Russian accent, then you're you're the way there. Civilization too had him as your

members of your council. I love that because, as I recall, the person who was in charge of telling you how happy or unhappy your people were was essentially an Elvis impersonator. And yeah, and you're the way the game worked. You would go through different eras. Right, you go through the ancient era, so there's Elvis in a toga. You go to a medieval era, so there's Elvis in a doublet Uh. In the modernel era, you'd have you know Elvis. So

it was it was, it was a blast. And then you had other like the super dorky science nerd guy, the gung ho uh military dude. It was those performances I actually really really love. I wouldn't say that they were all nuanced or anything like that, but they were entertaining. Other games that our listeners have suggested, we talked about where the Wing Commander series from Origin, a lawnmower Man, Corpse Killer, Ground Zero Texas. We're gonna take another quick break,

but we will be right back. So many of the game companies that made fm V based games, especially the ones that were solely FMV, no longer exist. They either went out of business or they got acquired by another

company and folded into them. Uh. It's just one of those games that, again the pre production was really expensive and time consuming and old Simately, we began to learn that players seem to prefer gameplay and interaction over the visual qualities of exam perhaps questionable visual qualities and so again. Using it as like a cut scene is one thing, but to use it as the basis for your gameplay really limits you. I've got a quote here that I wanted to read out from one Jason Vandenberg, who was

one of the programmers on the X Files game. This was a quote from Edge magazine, I believe, back in the late nineties when the game came out, and he said, working on the x Files proved to me that interactivity and drama directly oppose each other. Thus interactive cinema is limited at best and doomed at worst. That was a devastating realization. Drama is all about being a helpless witness to events. The moment you give the viewer agency, the

emotional spectrum shifts from tension to curiosity. We could never get past that fundamental thing. Curiosity kills tension, and you end up with a puzzle game with a rich, detailed background behind it, which sounds like missed, which sounds like missed what you know and I and I wanted to read it out because I thought it was a really interesting and very strong perspective, especially coming from a programmer

of one of these games. However, I'm not positive. I mean, when you really get down to it, all video games are interactive to some extent. Yeah, and then, and I don't think that curiosity always kills tension. You can have very tense, very excellently crafted moments. However, perhaps with video it's so pre planned and predetermined that it is starting to kill off a little bit of that spontaneity that

you get. Well, yeah, when you have no control over what someone you're watching does, I can see where the tension comes in because you know what you would want that person to do in that situation, traumatic irony. So you've got you've got that moment where you're like, don't go, don't open the door. You know, but if you're and if you're the player and you are playing a game,

you don't have to open the door. So I think that's what he's saying, is that or you're just curious to find out what happens if you do open the door, And so that's where he's going in with that tension thing. Well, I mean, I mean I definitely played most through most of Again, for example, Silent Hill my my favorite thing to reference on this show. Apparently, you know, like knowing that I had to open the door and just looking

at it. Yeah, see, I'm with you there. I think that you can totally have interactivity and tension if you if you structure the game properly. I think you can have both curiosity and drama. I think both things can coexist. I think of games like The Last of Us, which had amazing moments of drama. And you know, I don't I can't speak for everybody, but I really cared about these characters and I got to control them quite a bit, so it wasn't like I was just watching a movie.

So I'm not sure I entirely I see what he's saying, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with it. Well, you know, I don't know. I think that there's a point in there about trying to balance something inherently interactive, like a video game, with something inherently and are active. Yeah, like a like a film, like a regular film or television shop right, because you're you're mixing the types of tension that the viewer or the player is experiencing, and

it gets awkward. Well, and you know, when you're making a video or an animated film, or whatever. You can really craft that to evoke a specific emotion and be fairly certain that most of your audience is going to feel it if you have done your job correctly, right right right, because you you have forced them into that perspective. They can't change They can't they can't make the camera look away, they can't focus on something else, you know,

without themselves physically doing it within the theater. Sure, but when you suddenly take away control of someone who is used to having control in the scene, I think that's where the frustration of FMV enters. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's certainly an interesting balance here that that uh. And again we see this played out today in video games, where you will see innovative gameplay introduced to try and differentiated game from others, and people react in a very

dramatic way to that. Either they love it or they hate it. But it's it's one of those things where I think we see that that interactivity is what gamers, and I you know, not all gamers, but I think the majority of gamers really are eager for. And that's it for this classic episode the full motion video era

of home gaming. I feel like now that that phrase is no longer applicable, I mean the full motion video era, because we have had more FMV games since, and some of them have been genuinely really interesting, not just like

this sort of cringe e kind of experience. There have been a few that have been truly remarkable, And as I said, I think at the end of the last episode, I really should get Justin McElroy on the show to talk about FMV gaming and you know what what impact that had and continues to have and what makes a good m FMV game. Is a good FMV game one that isn't cringe e or is the cringe factor a big part of it? And uh, he's certainly an enormous

fan of FMV games. He did a video series I believe when he was still with Polygon I think, or maybe it was even with Joystick where he talked about them. So I would love to get him on the show. But anyway, if you have suggestions for future topics, let me know over on Twitter. That's the best way to do it. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.

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