It Came From The Desert

Cinemaware's B-movie homage pushed the vision of interactive cinema to new heights

- ALEXANDER CHATZIIOANNOU

You awaken in a bed at Melville Memorial Hospital.

Nurse Judy, concerned as ever (it’s not your first visit, after all), fills in the blanks as a throbbing headache hampers your efforts at recollection.

Driving along the road linking Beverly’s Drive-in with the National Guard Armoury, close to the southern border of Lizard Breath, you met the local greaser gang, the Hellcats, who wanted to play chicken against the big-city nerd. You didn’t flinch — but neither did they. Now, everything hurts, and it’s tempting to rest for a while. So far, your investigation has raised little more than the suspicions of the town authorities and the locals’ hardly concealed ridicule. But you have to get back on your feet, gather some evidence, and try to convince anyone who might listen that this community is about to be destroyed by giant radioactive ants.

For decades, game-makers and players alike have dreamed of the ‘interactive movie’, a videogame that combines the visual spectacle and complex storytelling of cinema with the newer medium’s open-endedness and direct engagement — the ability to affect what’s happening on screen. Even the earliest, experimental ‘movie games’ were able to look the part — those FMV titles that briefly dominated in the ’90s and analogue-video prototypes such as 1974's Wild Gunman boasted at least some Hollywood glamour, and filmic credibility. But because they relied on prerecorded footage to achieve those effects, any interactions afforded to the player were limited.