Digital Pictures FMV Collection coming to XBOX!

[Kid Ice]

When I saw the topic I thought, "Finally, a reason for me to get an X-box".

Cool idea, but I'm not a fan of the "fake" topics either.

[anagrama]

Aw, come on - railing on Anthony1 for his AV-fetish was soooo 6 months ago. Get with it, kids...

[LiquidPolicenaut]

I actually have Sherlock Holmes on DVD and it actually doesn't play that bad. No lag time at all but, oddly enough, I liked playing it more on my Sega CD for some reason. They also released Dracula Unleashed on DVD and I wonder how that one came out. It's probably the same...super-crisp, bigger screen DVD quality video, but a bit harder to naviagte with a remote and not a controller.

[davidbrit2]

Damn, don't you wish this was freaking true?

DUDE, TOTALLY. And the XBox version of Kriss Kross Make My Video will be FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Frankly I don't see how releasing a compilation of a bunch of games with shitty acting and almost no gameplay - and that gave the Sega CD it's horrible reputation for shit games - could be anything but a bad idea. You would have to pay me to play Sewer Shark.

[Kamino]

WTF? This makes no sense...

[Neil Koch]

I actually have Sherlock Holmes on DVD and it actually doesn't play that bad.

Yeah, but that's a point-and-click game. It doesn't need specific timing like Dragon's Lair.

[Anthony1]

Ok, forget the whole TV thing. I won't mention that anymore.

It's just when I get excited about playing something, I can't help but think how cool it's going to be on my 113 incher. And I will say that when the XBOX 360 comes out, I will be talking about how it looks on my Theater, I'm not going to be able to help myself then.

But I will refrain from talking about the 113 incher until the release of the XBOX 360 in November.




As for the Full Motion Games from Digital Pictures, I'm going to defend "some" of their games till the day I die.



Are the FMV games really video games?


NO.


Are they really interactive?

NO.



Is the acting as cheesy as it can possibly get?


HELL YES.




I'll admit all of that. I know that. I understand that. But I still think that "some" of them are damn fun entertainment, if you take it for what it is, and not wish that it was more interactive.


It is what it is.


Ok, so you don't have real control over anything, and it's basically a video game version of the choose your own adventure books. But I take them for what they are, and still enjoy them.

At least some of them.



The Digital Pictures game that I keep playing right now is Ground Zero Texas. I just love this damn game. Is the acting the most cheesiest acting ever? Yep. But still, I find it to be quite enjoyable. Is the shooting very accurate or precise? No. But I still find it enjoyable. There definitely is some skill involved in some of these games.


The whole point of the Full Motion Video games to me, is to do whatever I need to do in the game to be able to see all of the movie. That's what it's all about to me. I want to see all the video in Ground Zero Texas. So I want to survive in the game and get as far as I can. Same thing with Sewer Shark. I still haven't completely finished that game and gotten to see the tropical island that the fat dude lives on.


And Night Trap, don't even get me started on Night Trap. Night Trap was a damn inventive game if you ask me. And it has Dana Plato in perhaps her finest performance!


These games have this really early 90's corny flavor to them, that I love. Now, do I like all of these Full Motion Video games?


Hell no. Some of them suck super bad. Like Corpse Killer. That is the most laughable FMV game that I've played so far. Quaterback Attack is pretty damn crappy too.


But I think that there are some truly redeeming FMV games out there, if you take them for what they are, and understand their limitations and just go with the flow and give them a legitimate chance to entertain you.

It's kinda like when you watch a truly horrible movie, and the movie is just so damn horrible that it's actually somewhat entertaining.


SO STEP THE F OFF WHEN IT COMES TO DIGITAL PICTURES



TOM ZITO, I GOT YOUR BACK, BRO.

[evildead2099]

Phantasmagoria, which came on 11 CD's, is simply not a better game than the old Sierra games, which will fit on a 1.44 floppy.

Phantasmagoria didn't come on 11 CDs; the original came on 7 CDs, while its sequel came on 5 CDs.

It's not quite fair to compare Phantasmagoria to Sierra's older, classic point-&-click graphical adventures. Phantasmagoria is more about storytelling than it is about solving adventure-based puzzles.

[evildead2099]

I want to play an edition of Night Trap that actually lives up to the audacity of Joe Lieberman's hyperbole.

[shopkins]

Night Trap 2006. It needs to happen. All pornstar cast this time with explicit sex, but violent enough to get an AO just for that. I'd like to see how Sen. Clinton would respond.

I really like FMV games, despite their cheesiness. I never really cared for the ones like Night Trap, Ground Zero Texas, Double Switch or any that make you watch more than one location, but the more linear ones like Wirehead, Timegal, Revenge of the Ninja, Space Ace and especially Road Avenger are good cheesy fun, even though the gameplay boils down to memorizing the patterns.

I would like to see a collection for a modern console, a port that was good enough that it was still playable, because I'd like to see what the video in some of my favorites looks like in full resolution. I really don't think that's going to happen, though.

Casual gamers might have nostalgic memories of Space Ace, Maddog Mcree and Dragon's Lair machines, but I doubt many of them sit around thinking about how cool Wirehead or Ground Zero Texas was. The most likely one is Night Trap, and only because it of the scandals that surrounded it.

[Jorpho]

DUDE, TOTALLY. And the XBox version of Kriss Kross Make My Video will be FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Ouch!

Night Trap 2006. It needs to happen. All pornstar cast this time with explicit sex, but violent enough to get an AO just for that. I'd like to see how Sen. Clinton would respond.

Why stop there? Go for Night Trap: The Broadway Stage Musical!

Surely most of Digital Pictures's games would function adequately on an ordinary DVD player? (The unfortunate pauses in the DVD versions of Space Ace, etc are apparently only evident in some varieties of hardware.)

[zmweasel]

I just picked up a dirt-cheap copy of "Game Over," an atrocious 2003 direct-to-DVD flick that incorporates footage from several Digital Pictures games. Here's an Amazon.com link.

Featured DP titles include Prize Fighter, Corpse Killer, Quarterback Attack, Supreme Warrior, and the unreleased Maximum Surge. (The packaging hypes Walter Koenig and Yasmine Bleeth, who appear in the Surge footage, as the stars of the "movie.") It's kind of neat and kind of weird to see this stuff with DVD sharpness instead of FMV fuzziness--Prize Fighter, in particular, since it was only released for the SEGA CD.

According to the end credits, the DP footage is now owned by a Canadian company called Cybercinema Interactive. I couldn't find a website, though--only an online resume of a fellow who worked on a PC version of Kids on Site for CCI.

Anyway. This is probably the closest we're ever gonna get to a DP collection.

-- Z.

[Anthony1]

I just picked up a dirt-cheap copy of "Game Over," an atrocious 2003 direct-to-DVD flick that incorporates footage from several Digital Pictures games. Here's an Amazon.com link.

Featured DP titles include Prize Fighter, Corpse Killer, Quarterback Attack, Supreme Warrior, and the unreleased Maximum Surge. (The packaging hypes Walter Koenig and Yasmine Bleeth, who appear in the Surge footage, as the stars of the "movie.") It's kind of neat and kind of weird to see this stuff with DVD sharpness instead of FMV fuzziness--Prize Fighter, in particular, since it was only released for the SEGA CD.

According to the end credits, the DP footage is now owned by a Canadian company called Cybercinema Interactive. I couldn't find a website, though--only an online resume of a fellow who worked on a PC version of Kids on Site for CCI.

Anyway. This is probably the closest we're ever gonna get to a DP collection.

-- Z.

I remember reading about Maximum Surge, did that come out for the PC? The word back in the day was that Maximum Surge was going to be the FMV game that finally got some respect for being closer to a real video game. Somehow you actually moved your character and could duck or dodge or something.

I would love to try Maximum Surge out.

Somebody needs to get in contact with Cybercinema Interactive and see if they would be willing to sell the rights to a company that would actually do something with them. I'm tellin ya, they need to transfer the footage to HD, and remix the sound for 5.1 sound and re-release the games for $19.99 on Xbox. They could sell them in 2 packs. Like Night Trap & Ground Zero on one, Sewer Shark and Double Switch on one, etc, etc.

or somebody needs to send them a link to this post. Maybe it will inspire them to do something with that IP.

[pacmanhat]

Something about this doesn't check out...

If these were to be restored, you wouldn't just need the rights. You'd in all likelyhood need the original video footage, which could potentially prove much harder to get a hold of (I'd wager that some of that stuff no longer exists). Additionally, while the hype for retro games is HUGE right now, gamers DO have standards. And I'm pretty sure that these games would fall below that standard. By a large margain.

If this actually happened, though, I would totally pick them up. I'd love to suffer through a restored version of some campy crap, laughing at it from start to finish.

[zmweasel]

I remember reading about Maximum Surge, did that come out for the PC? The word back in the day was that Maximum Surge was going to be the FMV game that finally got some respect for being closer to a real video game. Somehow you actually moved your character and could duck or dodge or something.

I don't believe Maximum Surge shipped for the PC or anything else, alas. (I have the PC version of Night Trap only because it includes a too-short DP-produced documentary on the controversy surrounding the game.)

The "Game Over" footage and magazine previews from back in the day lead me to take an educated guess that Surge was a modestly improved tech-sequel to Ground Zero Texas, much like Double Switch was a follow-up to Night Trap, and Supreme Warrior a sequel to Prize Fighter. The also-unreleased Citizen X (unless you count the $15 beta burns from Good Deal Games, and I don't) is much more of a traditional video game than Surge woulda been.

And, yeah, "Game Over" definitely whets the appetite for a DVD version of Night Trap. Maybe a resourceful FMV fan will contact Cybercinema Interactive via York Entertainment (the distributor of "Game Over"), or Insight Film & Video (the producer), or Avrio Filmworks Releasing (the, uh, releaser), and find out what the hell's the deal.

-- Z.