Video Games
Fan Turned ’90s Game ‘Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh’ into a Feature Length Film!
Despite a whole lot of controversy and outrage (it was outright banned in Australia!), the 1995 point-and-click adventure game Phantasmagoria was a massive success, becoming one of the highest selling video games released that year. Just one year later, Sierra On-Line released the sequel, known as Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh.
Over 20 years after the sequel’s release, one fan has taken it upon himself to cut the game’s FMV clips straight from the original CD-Rom files and turn it into a feature length horror movie that runs just over 2-hours long. His name is Matt “Skibz” Parsons, and he’s calling it Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh – The Cinematic Cut.
Parsons explains, “Being both a diehard adventure gamer and a rabid B-movie aficionado, I’ve long had a soft spot for ‘Phantasmagoria 2’, which rests snugly at the crossroads of both. ‘P2’ is a bonafide gaming curiosity for its unusually extensive use of FMV, enough so that a common criticism is indeed that it’s too MUCH like a movie and too little like a game; so I figure…why not make it the movie that it could have been?”
“Over the course of six days, I basically just slapped together a sensibly-ordered series of video clips from the original CD-ROMs (roughly 220 files) and pieced them together in OpenShot, with a few bits of actual editing here and there,” he continues. “Still, there’s only so much anybody can do with what’s provided: there’s a few unavoidable jump cuts, continuity errors, audio skips, plot holes, etc. due simply to the fact that this was designed as a game, not a cohesive movie. Likewise, the non-linear conversations with Dr. Harburg come off as oddly paced and a majority of exposition regarding the Threshold Project is lost due to it being in-game text, but really, this is – what I believe to be – the best possible outcome for this experiment.”
You’ve played the game, now we invite you to watch it!
Much like many series that made the transition from 2D to 3D open worlds, Konami’s two Castlevania forays on the Nintendo 64 weren’t exactly the best. Still, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is considered the better title when compared to Castlevania 64, and now thanks to one fan’s discovery, it’s been made that much better.
Courtesy of IGN, YouTuber JupiterClimb recently posted a new video revealing that he has discovered the famous Konami Code (well specifically, a variation on it) in the 1999 action-platformer. Inputting the code unlocks all four characters from the very start, their alternate costumes, and the game’s Hard Mode difficulty. Meaning, you won’t have to unlock each character and their alternate costumes by rescuing the children found throughout the game. This also remedies the complaint that Reinhardt and Carrie weren’t available from the beginning of the game, as they were in Castlevania 64.
To get with the goodies, punch in C-Up x4, C-Down x4, C-Left x2, C-Right x2, C-Left x2, C-Right x2, L, R, and Z in the main menu. Create a brand new save, and instead of just having Cornell as the only character to select, you now have Reinhardt Schneider, Carrie Fernandez, and Henry Oldrey all available.
That’s not the only code to have been discovered for Legacy of Darkness. JupiterClimb has also revealed new codes that allow players to max out their inventory, max out attack power and sub-weapon, and even give you 99 jewels. Sadly, these only work on the Japan and European versions of the game, but they’re still cool to have handy. As JupiterClimb speculates, these were most likely debug codes for testing the game, and weren’t removed for the PAL and Japan releases.
Of course, you’ll still have to deal with the finicky camera and the frustrating platforming, but we already knew that.
Meanwhile, if you’re hankering for some newer Castlevania goodness, keep an eye out for V Rising and its Legacy of Castlevania crossover content, coming May 8th to PC via Steam.
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