Retronauts - 552: Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Phantasmagoria 2! Jess O'Brien chats with two of its actors (Paul Stetler and Ragna Sigrunardottir) about this kinky and queer 1996 FMV disasterpiece. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, I went to Dimension X and all I got was this lousy hetero relationship. It's Phantasmagoria 2, a puzzle of flesh. Hello and welcome to Retronauts this week. We're covering Sierra's Fantasmigoria 2, a puzzle of flesh, the 1996 sequel to Fantasmigoria, one, that is barely related to it, largely because the Fantasmigoria IP was originally intended to be an anthology horror series that we unfortunately were robbed of. But before we get into that, who the heck is speaking right now? This is not one of the usual hosts of Retronauts. I'm the new girl. It is instead me. Jess O'Brien, aka Voidberger, you might know me from my previous giant bomb experiences where I was the video producer. You may also recognize me from a smattering of other retronauts guest spots, but also you may recognize me from a couple of video essays I produce here and there, one of which being about this very game, we are discussing today. But who am I discussing this with? Well, I have a treat for you. Introduce yourselves, dear guests, alphabetical order.

I don't know. No, the star needs to go first. Oh, should the star go first? Sure. Hey, everyone. My name is Paul Stettler, and I was the actor who played Curtis Craig in that game oh so long ago. And?

My name is Racknasauru Nardochter, and I played infamous Therese in the same video game. Oh, my God, two of the actors from this heckin' FMV game. How magical is this? Thanks for hanging out with me. Oh, my gosh. Sure. You just can't get enough of this game. It's got its hooks like you, isn't it?

Well, yeah, like, you know, when you get kind of, when you get recruited to be a retronaut's host, you think, what game do I not mind researching the absolute crap out of? Or have I already done a bunch of research on, guess what? This is a big one of them. I'm fascinated with this game. And, like, before we do the massive trivia dump that is retroactive. Not's podcast format. What's our experiences with this game? I was talking to Rognah before Paul came in because he was late. I'm calling you out. But Rognow is saying that she doesn't play video games at all. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. Where have you been?

Yeah, I know. Where have I been? In Ballard, in Seattle. Yeah. Never left Ballard since then. Nice. Well, I think most people, up until a year or so ago, I guess a couple years ago now, I'd never played a game either, including the game that we were in. It's just, I think many actors of our generation, that just wasn't the world that we were brought up in. And so we, you know, continued to do the things that we do. And then this whole genre of gaming came through. And I'm just now discovering it and finding all kinds of joy.

and loving it and seeing why people like it so much. Raghna, it's not too late. You can get into gaming. I know. Paul keeps telling me about different games that I'm like, what game was that again? And then I forget. And then I mean to text them and ask him again,

and I forget again. So yeah, yeah, because I have just too much time on my hands. Yeah, you know? This is a really good time sync of a hobby. Got to say, like, oh, so much time will you enjoy wasting on gaming? For context with me, my relationship with this game is I did not grow up with this game. This game came out in the 90s.

I was a bit out of the age demographic. I think I was eight years old when this came out. Sorry to make you guys feel old. Sorry. But I first played this in late April or early May, 2015, which is somehow eight years ago, crazily enough. And I don't know what got it on my radar at all. I don't know who suggested it to me, because this is a game that, like, when it came out, was, like, very under the radar and then it kind of got a resurgence later, which we're going to talk about. So maybe it was related on the tail end of that, like, kind of cult resurgence of it. But before we get into all that, let's do some, like, you know, plot overview stuff. In Fantasmagoria, too, a puzzle of flesh, we play as office throne. I can't wait to hear this, by the way. I'm dying. Maybe you'll answer some questions that I have.

about the plot. So, yeah, the plot's kind of wild in this game, which I, it's one of the reasons I'm absolutely drawn to it is that it's so weird. But yeah, the plot of this game is we play as Office Dron, Curtis Craig, played by Paul here, as he tackles his boring job and his not so boring personal problems, his past struggles with mental health, his S&M explorations, which are largely involving to. Reese, played by Raghna here, his homosexual feelings for his best friend Trevor, and a lot of

office drama, which includes a bunch of murders he may have done in a freaky fugue state. You know, is he hallucinating or is he actually being tormented and mocked by a strange creature from Dimension X? Spoiler alert, it's the latter. It's the weird guy from Dimension X messing with him the whole time. And it looks a lot like Curtis, by the way. He does. When you don't see him in like spooky monster, like special effects makeup, which I love the monster effects in this game. Oh, my God. Anyway, but yeah, Curtis's fate and mysterious past is intertwined with this freaky-diki creature from this dimension via the evil pharmaceutical company he works for. So we got corporate conspiracies, alien ghouls, sex, violence, and a surprisingly nice depiction of bisexuality as a little. treat. Like, what a game. It has it all. Including an impossible first puzzle to get out of your apartment that basically everybody gave up on the... It's a great game if you ever can get out of the apartment.

Me and Rogna were talking about that, how she did try to play the beginning and could not get past the beginning. And I was mentioning that, like, well, like, not only are, you know, point and click adventure games of the era, like very, very hard. Part of the reason that it was hard is because I think at least I can't like, I'm not saying this like I completely 100% am sure of this fact. I think they were trying to sell guides and trying to make you call the helpline to get more money out of you. Because you're 12 years old. You can't solve these stupid ass puzzles. But yeah, this was something that a lot of adventure games were somewhat notorious for was having very obtuse, very bizarre puzzles.

And right out of the gate in Fantasagoria 1, the easiest task in the world. which is to get your wallet out from under your couch. Everyone's had to do this once in their life. Oh, my wallet fell somewhere in a weird, unreachable place. What do I do to get it? And Paul, do you remember the answer for how you get your wallet out from under the couch? Of course I do. It's like what everybody does.

They take their pet rat and bring their pet rat down to the floor and they tell the pet rat to go get the wallet for them because it's much easier to do that than to pick up a 45-pound couch and just move it to the side and pick it up. yourself. That's what you do, right? And you have to lure him back out. You have to lure him back out with some granola you find in your apartment, too, a little granola bar. So yeah, totally normal way to solve a totally normal problem in your totally normal life. But as I mentioned, I think, this is an FMV game. So we've got live actors on, you know, usually the format was live actors

on a computerized CGI background like the previous Fantasmigoria one was live actors on a CG background this however

was done on like real sets real locations all stuff like that and yeah was there anything in particular that like drew you to

to this gig as an acting gig or was it more just like well it's a gig same right time right place sort of situation it's funny

because Rockman and I auditioned together we have the few you know, I came in really late to that, to the process. And the only person I auditioned with, I believe, Rakhna was you. And other, because I, you know, they had, they had an actor lined up out of L.A. who dropped out kind of at the last minute. So they were, they were scrambling to find someone. So I know that, you know, it was a gig. It was a, you know, we didn't know anything about this world of, of interactive movie games. It just was, you know, it was a very

strange call to get from your agent. It seemed a little sketchy. Yeah, I heard the production crew was really green on this. Lots of college kids on the production crew or something like that. Who have all gone on to incredible careers. They were very smart to get, you know, they plucked these young, talented filmmakers out of, you know, film school. So there was really a lot of their very first jobs, if not their first,

pretty close. And so they came in and just did a dynamite job on the, I mean, I think part of what makes this game, anybody who hasn't played it. And it's tough because, you know, everything was condensed so much that you don't really see the real true artistry of the cinematography and the lighting and such. But you get a sense of it. And it's so much more interesting looking than any other FMV game simply because of the fact that we didn't have green screen.

that we had this incredible crew that shot, you know, had some beautiful, you know, shots. You know, I talk a lot, Rachman and I, you know, as the game went on, they ran out of money. So all of the, there's some scenes that have some beautiful cinematography. And then there are some scenes where it looks like the camera's just on a tripod with a couple of candlelights. And that's what happened because they ultimately couldn't afford to keep going. And yeah, at the very end, you do end up on a, on a computerized CGI set when you go to a Dimension X. Spoiler alert, you go to Dimension X at the end of the game.

But that was like the only, to my memory, the only like place that you weren't on a physical set. And that was I assume a blue screen. That was always supposed to, that, that world was always supposed to be, you know, a CGI green screened. That seems like a huge. But it was supposed to be a little more involved

than it ultimately was because of the budget constraints at the end. Right. I mean, like, I can't imagine how expensive it would be to dress a set to look anything like this alien world. It's probably far cheaper. to do it's C.G. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get some details on puzzle of flesh. Where did it come from? Who made it? What's its deal? And to do that, we have to backtrack a little bit to the game that started it all, started the series, the first Fantasmagoria, which was released in 1995. It was a point-and-click adventure horror game featuring full-motion video footage of live actors composited on those computer-generated backdrops. And it came on a whopping seven discs due to all that footage. I can't imagine, like, because I was little and I didn't have, like, a computer that could play these things anyway, but it's like, oh, my God, constantly swapping out disk because there is way too much data to be dealt with with these FMV sequences. But this game was written, the first one, by Roberta Williams of King's Quest fame, who you recently chatted with. Isn't that right, Paul? I did, yeah. I guess the sort of backstory is a few, back in the pandemic in 2020.

I had a, you know, we're all just kind of sitting around and a lot of, had a lot more free time on our hands. And I had realized it was the 25th anniversary of the making of our game. And Rakhna and I, and I think most of the actors, you know, we had just gone on, hadn't really thought about it. We realized that people were enjoying, you know, that there was a large group of fans around the world that, that it was enjoyed this game. And they would reach out to us occasionally. But it was a strange thing. We didn't quite know how to engage or. we should engage. So I took the step and thought, well, I'll just do a, I'll reach out to the people

who made the game and we'll do a little retrospective oral history project. So I brought Rockman and some of the other actors and we ended up talking about that, called it Conversations with Curtis and did a really fun sort of, you know, memory piece on the making of the game. And then since then, I've continued to do this. And now I'm playing some of these games for the first time and talking to the people who made them. So we've always wanted to talk to Roberta Williams. And she and her husband Ken came out back into the world of gaming recently and with a new version of colossal cave. And so they were pretty busy, so weren't able to get them. So just recently, we finally got Roberta to sit down with us. And I got her to meet

her, you know, the actor who was the lead in that game. Right. Victoria. Morsel Hemingson. And they hadn't seen each other in 25 years. So it's really neat to kind of create a reunion for the two of them. So that's on our channel. Everyone go watch that conversations with Curtis on YouTube, which I'm going to talk about more later. But, yeah, you also played Fantaspegoria one with Victoria, Marcel, which is also another pro-click, like, you know, as someone who came.

I was an episode of Rockna joined me for, I played our game for the first time, too, and I had you come join me for an episode or two, I think of it. We got to slog our way through. Yeah, I probably just sat there and watched. I don't know. I don't know. Like as someone who's like background is in making let's play videos, which are gaming walkthroughs basically,

that's like such a thrill to see, like the people who were directly involved in the game and the characters in the game doing essentially a let's play of the thing they were doing of that. Like, that's hilarious. I love that. It could not be more surreal because you put yourself in the little box off to the side playing it and now you're watching your 30 year younger self in the game and

you know plus I'm terrible at these puzzles so I'm able to get past anything so like you can't get that anywhere else I don't I don't know any other uh people who were directly involved in a game like this doing let's plays of those games like that's the most unique you can get what a what a little treat I just love it uh but yeah getting off track here anyway the original premise of the original Fantasagoria. It was kind of like a haunted house story. It's way different than puzzle of flesh. But the protagonist, Adrienne Delaney,

moves to a huge, perfect for a point-and-click game mansion with her husband, who eventually becomes possessed by a demon and driven to kill her, not nearly as complicated as a plot of the second game. But yeah, total filming took about four months, 12 hours a day, six days a week, a total of $800,000 was originally budgeted

for Fantasma Goria the first one but it ended up costing $4.5 million so they managed to find the budget for the first one. I don't know what happened with Puzzle of Flesh. They really checked out on you there.

The owner of the company is at the realm. I think you find the money. But, you know, it's a good thing that Fantasma Goria won ended up grossing $12 million. So they made gangbusters

with that game. So, of course, they're going to get a sequel, you know, when you do that well. But something I think is interesting about Fantasmagorean One is I feel like it has this reputation for being like hyper violent, like extremely violent. Like that was like the vibe that I had like when I played it myself when I was an adult. And then I was playing and I was like, where's all the guts? Like I thought this was supposed to be wildly violent. And it's a really slow burn until things. go absolutely nuts in the last like 10 minutes of this game. Like they really made you wait for

the exploding heads, I guess. It was so interesting. But like besides the violence, the game attracted a ton of controversy for having a sexual assault scene in it, which was a very big deal because this is 1995. Games are still largely believed to be children's toys by much of society. And the development of this game was happening fairly hot on the heels of the 1993-94 U.S. Senate debate over violence in video games, which would ultimately result in the formation of the ESRB, which is the organization that rates all of the games, like you rate a movie.

They did not have that before then, which is kind of wild when you think about it. But anyway, as a result of the sexual and violent content, some stores refuse to carry Fantasmogoria One, some countries heavily censored it, and Australia refused to classify it. So you could not buy it at all in Australia, I believe. and all these things would happen again with the sequel, including being outright banned in several countries.

So that's one thing to have in common with each other. But anyway, the first game was a crazy success. It did get mixed reviews, but it was one of the best-selling games of 95. And like I said earlier, grossed about 12 million bucks, which I converted that to today dollars. That is $23.5 million. Whoa. And when a game sells that good, obviously you're going to get a sequel. So now we get to talk about puzzle of flesh.

And first off, big difference here. Roberta Williams, not involved in, I think, anyway in this game. Definitely didn't write it. And I've read two explanations of why this might be true. One was simply that she wasn't really interested in writing another one. I think she didn't want to get typecast or something like that. And the second was that she had obligations going on developing King's Quest 8. And both of these sound totally plausible.

So the writing and designing of Puzzle of Flesh went to Lorelai Shannon, a staff writer at Sierra, who seems like the loveliest person from the couple of interviews that I found of her. And me and Rognow were talking about how, you know, you can confirm that she's lovely. Yes. I mean, I haven't seen her in 25 years or talked to her, but she was lovely back then and she seems to have stayed very, very pleasant and nice. Absolutely. Yeah, she's the best. And I did get to talk to her as part of that project we did a couple years ago. So we got a chance to sit down. It's hard to get her to sit down and talk about it. You know, she was reluctant. She's hard to pin down, isn't she? Yeah, yeah. Because I tried to get a hold of her when I was doing research for a video essay I did that I'll bring up whenever it's relevant in this big, big podcast here. Yeah, I could not get a grip on her. So I was impressed that you did. So congratulations. It took a lot of gentle reminders, but yeah, eventually got there. But she's great. And, you know, and I can just jump in a little bit because I did talk to Verda. And so I think both of those, I think the first one isn't as true as the second.

She was definitely pulled in the direction of having to do King's Quest 8, and that was happening at the same time. I don't think that, I think she was very interested in doing another phantasmagoria. I don't think she had, she may have had a couple of ideas for stories, but they weren't fleshed out. And Sierra was, you know, there was a lot turmoil going on at that time. Oh, boy. Are we going to get into that later? Yeah. I think what I found from her is that they were already in the process of selling it.

And so I don't think she saw much more of a future beyond whatever. I don't think, I don't know when they ended up going down. But I think that she saw the writing on the wall and needed to finish the thing that, you know, her baby, which was the King's Quest series. That would make sense. That would make total sense. Thanks for the competition. They had to ultimately farm that out. And then the idea I think originally was that they were always going to be separate stories anyway.

So it made sense to let somebody else take the crack. Yeah, totally. And the lady that wrote this, Lorla, she was just like a staff writer at Sierra. I don't think she had like helmed any major like stories herself beforehand. So we've got this super green camera crew that's super talented. We've got this writer who's, like, super fresh and is on this big project for the first time. Another recurring person for the first game, by the way, is Andy Hoyos, who is the art director of Fantasagoria I. And he was the full director of Fantasma Goria, too.

And you also talk to him, right? You talk to most people involved with those. There's like a handful, a smattering of people, I feel, that haven't been represented yet on your YouTube channel. I feel like I've created the most thorough. oral history project of a game that almost nobody knows about in the world. Oh, it's a beautiful niche we're in, people that care about this weird thing. But yeah, what else I got here? Released in 1996, Fantastic Gory Puzzle of Flesh, that's only one year after the first game, which is insane to me.

How the fuck is that possible? I don't know how. I can't imagine the crunch. It was also shot entirely out of sequence, which I don't know. how standard that is in like your normal acting life. I don't know if you guys could speak to like, I feel like I would be incredibly confused if I had to portray a character and it was shot totally out of sequence.

Like how do you keep track of motivations or be consistent? I have no idea. I don't know. We just do it. I guess we're good at it. Just learn your lines. There you go. Show up and learn your lines.

Wow. It's just that easy. Anyway, anyone can do it. It's just that easy. Well, it's also, it's also these characters, you know, with, I guess with the exception of Curtis, but even Curtis to a certain degree, they weren't the most complicated individuals. You know, we were playing, we were playing archetypes a lot.

And so in terms of really having to keep track of where your character's head is at or what their journey is, the journeys are pretty simple. So if we happen to be at the office, and the office is about flirtation or what have you, that's pretty simple. And then, you know, when we get to the borderline or whatever, you clearly, we've moved on to some other things. So it's, it's not that hard to track them. I kind of feel like mine was a little bit in sequence. I mean, you were, you did so much longer shooting times.

Well, that's true, because all those location shots were at the end of the shoot. all the stuff, the early stuff was on set. And so that was kind of earlier in the game itself. So that makes sense. Huh, that does make sense. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of scenes with Teresa are on location somewhere. Were they?

Gosh. A bathroom. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what is location. Like, you know, as someone who's not involved in production, like, I don't know what's a real place and what's a set. You know, I know that the restaurant you guys hung out in was like a real

restaurant but like production wise. The borderline was too. Yeah and like production wise like I couldn't tell when something was a built up fake set somewhere and what was a location because I thought like you know it looked real to me. It looked good like good lighting good short up you know the walls weren't wobbling on these sets or anything like that you know it didn't look bad.

But anyway this was speaking of being shot on locations this was shot in Seattle with some local actors like you two but also a couple of folks flown in from L.A. and I think San Francisco, if I'm not terribly mistaken, which probably wasn't great for the budget to fly in these people for this thing. And yeah, there was a couple of major things that Fantastic Gloria II did different from one. And firstly, we're down two whole discs. The first one is, this one's only five, and the other one was seven. So I don't know if technology got way better in one year or what. But, and anyway, as I said at the top, puzzle of flesh has almost nothing to do with the first game besides, I think, one Easter egg that reveals that the previous protagonist exists in this world, and she's still writing books, and she lived, didn't get her head exploded, canonically confirmed. So that's good. Yeah, like, Fantasicoria, one was more of like a haunted, housey creature feature sort of vibe to it. And I feel like puzzle flesh is a lot more like sci-fi.

It has a bit of like a Clive Barker, S&M Gough sort of vibe to it. It's pretty different from, you know, kind of goofy ghost story, haunted house stuff. And the violence in Puzzle of Flesh is like way more, way more evenly distributed throughout the game as opposed to like the sudden blast at the end of hyperviolence. But it doesn't matter. It still got banned in like Singapore and censored in Australia and all that stuff. And yeah, like you guys had way more real, you had real sets, real locations. Fantaswan was all CG.

I don't think they had any physical sets in that. I think it was all on a green screen, which I assume is pretty difficult to deal with as an actor because you have no idea what you're looking at or doing. That's interesting. Yeah, I've seen some of the footage or backstage footage or pictures from them, and it was. I mean, they just walked around on this big blue set

and everything was on boxes, and it must have been so difficult to kind of go through all that. I remember seeing Ian McKellon. complaining about like all the CG that they had to do in The Hobbit and how like he wasn't like with any other actors ever and like Laura the Rings was like all real with the people in the room with you

they were doing like these forced perspective shots and all these classic like actual real camera tricks and practical effects and like here he is talking to a tennis ball and he was like horrendously depressed about it he was like the worst experience so hey you guys got to at least be in a physical space

That's nice. Yeah. Puzzle of Flesh was also criticized for being less interactive. The Fantasmagoria I, which you could actually, like, click around and have Adrian, like, move about in the scene. Like, it could position her in different places on the scene, whereas, like, Curtis would just, like, be in a scene just kind of fidgeting. I think they called them fidgeters where you're just kind of standing there, like, barely looking around and just breathing and trying to not move too much, but enough to look like you're not a JPEG. And yeah, you couldn't, like, tell him to walk someplace. It would just, like, you click somewhere, and it was a new scene with him in a different spot.

And that got the game some heat. People were like, this is hardly a game. What the fact? I can't even move my character. This is stupid. And puzzle of flesh also got some heat for being too easy while simultaneously having that absurd puzzle with the couch and the granola bar and the rat. Like, it's famously silly and obtuse. And there's also a final puzzle that is, like, a trial.

and error nightmare of like fixing an alien's Wi-Fi router is basically what you're doing. It is like a complete total nightmare. So I think it's really funny that like there's simultaneous reviews of people being like, that's bullshit and too hard, and that's way too easy. This game's too easy. And unfortunately, as you can guess from those review points, puzzle of flesh was pretty universally panned upon released. a lot of the reviews called the plot absurd and silly.

Some said they didn't care about any of the characters or their problems and that the violence and sex was gratuitous, keeping in mind that there was another review that said the sex and violence was too tame, saying, like, trust us, there's nothing here you couldn't find on the shelves of a local video store. Probably true. Oh, so nobody knew why they didn't like this game, I think is what it comes down to. opinions about that. And those bad reviews may have killed off any chance of the Fantasmigoria IP being an

anthology series, but it's probably more likely because Sierra pretty much imminently kicked the bucket pretty soon after this. Puzzle of Flesh came out on the tail end of FMB games popularity, and they were naturally on their way out anyway, basically. because like the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 were existing. They happened, they were happening. It revolutionized how games looked at how good they could look while still having genuine real-time interactivity with the player.

Total game changer. So that plus, you know, Sierra Online also got caught up in some sort of a counting scandal the year after. So lots of drama. that made a lot of key members bail, I presume Roberta is one of them. And by 2004, Sierra was disestablished as a company and just kind of got consumed by various corporate mergers until like a brand name was like renewed, revived by Activision in like 2014. And then it went away again. I don't know.

It's just boring and messy how it all went down. They went out with a whimper. I didn't know any of that. Yeah. But like, what a pity. You have this promising series, like, abruptly stop after the second one. Like, it breaks my heart. But that's all the boring trivia stuff. Let's gossip. Let's chit chat. So did our game, a flash? Did they not make as much money as the first one? I don't know. Not even close, yeah. Not even close, huh? Because, like, the first one, like, was a breakout hit. Like, it was crazy, crazy. popular it was a phenomenon and so I wonder like how much of the you know lukewarm to say it even nice as possible to the point where it's not even true negative a lot of that reaction I wonder how much of it was just like you know the the fact that the first one was so beloved and did so well it's like what chance does the sequel have to catch up with that you're already working

against this like this huge phenomenon but I think the main thing was that everybody was like so into the PlayStation 1 and N64 coming out, it was just like, it left everything else in the dust. Like, why would you even bother with this old crap? Everyone was also tired of FMV games. There had been a lot at that point. Between like 90, I want to say like 91, 2, and 95, there was just a ton of these games, like a decent amount of these. So I think people were just like fatigued by it too. I don't know. I'm kind of guessing, though. I wasn't there. I was little. Yeah, I don't, I can't, you know, there's so many reasons that, yeah, you put the point to a number of different reasons why, you know, it came first. It had a female protagonist. It, you know, it's a good, old-fashioned kind of ghost story. Puzzle of Flesh is a much more psychological, you know, delving into sort of more psychologically existential kind of things. I think it's, you know, you look at them, both now, I'm finding, as I'm starting to play games and as people are interacting, that people

love the game that they were introduced to, whatever the series is, the first game that they played that got them hooked on whatever that series is, that's always their favorite. They always go back to that. So true. It's the one that you fell in love. It's the one that you got into. And so the fact that the second Fantaz had no connection to the first whatsoever, I think that could have been, people may have been turned off by that,

that they didn't have their familiaritys that they liked from the first one, that they had gotten, you know, they had their heroes and the people they want to see and their villains and all that. But I think if you just put them side by side, everything about Fantas too, and I just give them credit, whether you story-wise or not, they improved in every direction. I agree, yeah. I'm biased, but I'm sure you are too because you're in it.

But I mean, I've learned to like the game more. When I first read the script, and I think, you know, Rachna, you and I, we all just, we kind of would cringe sometimes at the, at the, you know, the kind of be movie quality of some of the stuff we had to say. And so I took me a long time to really see what they were really doing. I've always liked that psychological aspect of it. You know, I know that Lorelai was a huge fan of movies like Jacob's Ladder and Angel Heart and things like that, movies that I loved as a kid that was like, is this really happening or is this in this. person's head and what's real and what isn't. And, you know, he's clearly had a mental breakdown. Is he really okay?

Or, you know, I love all that kind of stuff, you know. But yeah, I think that, you know, for whatever reason, it got buried. And there's a lot, there's a lot in there that has so much more depth than I think other games of that time, of all the FMB games of that time. Yeah. Like part of me, I mean, like you said, there are loads of factors that conspired. against this game doing well at the time. And a large one is just like the social atmosphere of 1995-96

was working against it, not just like the industry atmosphere where people were tired of FMV games and moving on. But like gamers are a lot more, I think, sophisticated these days. They have consumed a lot more diverse media than the ones in the 90s because there's simply less stuff to consume also. and also less places to talk about it because the internet was pretty new. But now you've got tons and tons of forums where people can discuss and obsess and throw out theories about like, what does this mean? What does that mean?

Did you catch this? All that stuff. So games are more complex. And I think gamers got more complex and a little more like discerting maybe in their tastes. But things were simple in a bunch of different ways back then. Plots were simpler. You know, games were still. like, you know, recovering from being seen as children's toys.

So there was this, you know, bias against seeing them as anything besides something for babies. So. You know, it's funny, Jess, you know, you did this really great video essay on this game. And if anybody listening to this hasn't seen that, they should. It's really fantastic. And you really, I'm sure we'll talk more about this. But, you know, Lorelei was unafraid and, in fact, pretty bold to tackle some pretty heavy issue. you know, in terms of sexuality and, you know, identity and all that.

And, you know, we've found that this game is really, as I've been doing this YouTube channel, many people have come, you know, has basically said that this game was their first introduction ever to the normality of queer culture or of sexual identity. And, but that said, the more right now I think about it, there's probably a backlash to that, too. For everybody who was like, thank God, there are people like me, there are other people are like, ugh, I don't want to watch this. Yeah. You know, why would I play this stupid game that has, you know, homosexual undertones and bondage

and all these other things? So I think, you know, this game pushed the envelope quite a bit. And when you push the envelope, you're going to get some kickback, you know. You're going to be niche at the very least. least if you push the envelope in this many directions. But yeah, like the, you know, y'all would probably know better than me because you were older than me at the time. But like the 90s was not a great time to be queer.

And, you know, gamers are not, you know, only recently I think has, I want to say the last 10 years, I feel like has been a huge positive shift toward just general acceptance of queer folk and trans people. I mean, nowadays, Jesus Christ, stop the Republicans. Sorry to get political on the video game podcast. But, you know, this is a very, like, subversive political game for doing that at all. And I think that the mentality at the time was pretty prevalently, ew, toward gay people. Very prevalently, ew.

This came out, I think, less than six months or around six months before Ellen DeGeneres came out and like pretty much devastated her career, which was soaring at the time. Like she suffered like a huge, uh, ridiculous, cataclysmic backlash to her career. Uh, you know, people's feelings on modern day Ellen aside, you can pretty objectively say, like, that was pretty nuts. Uh, and is an example of the, the general zeitgeist, how people felt toward queer issues and stuff like that to make such a crazy huge deal of it to ruin this person's career. all that stuff. So I think a lot of gamers especially, you know, if you go into this game,

you're going to come out of it being like, this game was weird and I don't like it. It's too weird. Everything about it's weird. It's about aliens and it's about S&M and it's got this like Clive Barker-ass party city monster that's torturing me. It has like all this mental health stuff in it. And also I think the protagonist is gay. All of it gets kind of lumped into like too weird for me, like two weird for gamers of 1996. And especially like at the time, and I cover this in the video essay, which thanks for risen me up on that. I think that's the term kids use these day, risen. But the prevailing thought is just like there is no such thing as bisexual men. That is not real.

And bisexual women are just super slutty. Like, that is, that was the thought at the time is that bisexual women are just really, really skanky, and they're going to end up being one or the other. And bisexual men were just, they were just gay. Like, there was no such thing as bisexual men. And that was a very prevailing thought in, like, all of the media at the time. So I think it was just like a really concentrated, just burst of everything about this is too weird for the gamers of the time. It's funny, though, because, you know, Rockna and I didn't know each other well, but we were in the same community. But, you know, we lived in Seattle in the theater community.

And so we were in this little, I don't think, I don't know, do you agree, Raqna, that that we were around and comfortable around people of otherness? Right. It never felt like, you know, we just lived in a different world than everybody. Right. Yeah. When you're saying all this, I'm like, none of this seemed weird to me. even in the 90s and it's like, yeah, okay, so yeah. And it's like, is that because we were

in theater or? Yeah, you know, I mean theater, you know, theater has quite a reputation for being incredibly liberal in general. Right. Just the arts. The arts in general. Like, you know, you go to an art school and it's just like you just, you are with these

same people. You're with people that are from places that are different than yours and mingling with people and working with people that are not syshet or whatever it's going to undemonize those people because they're not an other

anymore. You're in the same field. You know, you work together. Yeah, none of it felt like out there to me at the time. And I think also just growing up in Iceland, we're not as puritanical and

kind of church going and you know, what can I? You're a bunch of heathens. We're just a bunch of the heathens and I'm proud of it. So yeah, it didn't seem like we were breaking any major, you know, boundaries at the time. And I only kind of saw that later when I, you know, the other people's reactions to it and hearing about it.

But at the time, I was like, well, so he likes mine too. Yeah, okay. Whatever. I don't even think I thought about it. I was like, oh, yeah, that's just one more in the competition for trees. I love that it's a love that it's a love, it's a love parallel I guess. There's three different love interests in this game.

So you've got, you know, Therese, who is just like the kind of like the temptress, the seductress sort of role here, who like kind of represents, like the, it's like an escape from normality. This whole game is about like what people expect of you, I think. That's how I interpret it anyway. Like, you know, Curtis is supposed to be normal,

but he's not. He's supposed to be sane completely, but like, you know, having any sort of mental breakdown is like, you know, viewed as a huge, huge flaw that is wrong with you. Mental health was treated even worse back in the 90s than it is today. So, which I see a lot of media back then. That's just like using crazy people as just like a point of intrigue and terror. You know, it's not very empathetic to the crazy people. But I feel like this game does a lot. with regards to humanizing mental health, which is also absolutely crazy for... Speaking of pushing the envelope, you know, Laura, Lerlite writes, I mean, the game has about, I don't know, up to maybe 20 minutes, if not more, of Curtis in therapy, like literally

just talking to his therapy. I mean, how many games does something like that? At the time, I would venture to say zero. And it's something that the gamers at the time would not be receptive to. Now, of course, the therapist died of grisly death, but before that, there was some pretty good conversations going on. And also, like, you have to consider that, like, the demographic that not only this was targeted at, but the only, I would say, I don't think it's a terrible stretch to say, the only real viable demographic at the time for games was either children or young adult men, like 15 to 20 like you know it was the teen boy demographic that this was aiming at basically like oh sex violence crazy S&M and having those and then go to therapy and then go to therapy yeah like

you lost the audience there right and also the protagonist has a obvious crush on a guy he's friends with like very very overt like Curtis straight up says in therapy that I have feelings for my friend Trevor and like if I could we would all run away together and like be a poly couple basically in the woods somewhere like that is so subversive and something that you know your your 12th grade brother is not going to be into if he's playing a game it's not you know not in the 90s at least so that was like a crazy thing to put in front of the audience worth you know it's a game that I have found, you know, there's a small but mighty group of people who love these games from the 90s, who particularly love adventure games and FMV games. But I don't think a lot of

people are even aware that this exists. And I think it would be interesting for someone who's maybe hearing this for the first time. It would be really interesting to hear more people discover this game for the first time, as opposed to going back to, like, you, for a few years ago. Yeah, yeah. Like, when I first played this and I was just like, oh, I hear this is weird. I guess was just the gist. Like, this is weird. You might like this. Okay. And when I, you know, first, the instant Trevor came on screen, I was bracing myself because I knew that like 90s media was not very nice to gay people. Here comes the mincing, you know, stereotype that's here to just be gag character and like the first scene with Trevor he does kind of feel like that a little bit so

I was like roll him I was like oh here we go here we go like brace yourself to be insulted by this stereotype and very soon into the game like you start actually hanging out with with Trevor because the first scene is just like Trevor being introduced is just him joking around yeah with Paul and he's he's hamming it up like he's being hammy to to me I'm sorry called the character Paul he's hamming it up to make Curtis at ease and stuff like that just joshing around basically and like you get him in these other scenes where he's not being performatively like that and it's like oh my god like I've never seen this sort of dimension on a on a queer character in a 90s anything game especially and that was like that totally threw me off and made

it was one of the things that made me really interested in this game that it was subverting that expectation of like here's this cliche character he's here for laughs and like the only like cliche downside of Trevor is that he does get killed in the game you're it's called bury your gaze and this is unfortunately one of the ones that do it but at the time it was just kind of considered like here's an easy way to get pathos you know is kill like someone's best friend or something like that and this guy's best friend happened to be gay uh one of the love interests at least had to die Therese also dies. Yeah, we all die, basically.

Everyone, everyone, but the safe hetero relationship lady. Jocelyn, the third person in the love parallelogram, does not die. And the two endings of this game are either, you know, Curtis goes to Dimension X, and it's just like, I'm not supposed to be here in this dimension. He's actually an alien that got body swapped, sort of. child swapped with a normal human child, used in an experiment. And the Curtis, Craig, we've been playing this whole time is a weird alien, who doesn't even know he's a weird alien. So one of the endings is him just being like, I have to go back quote unquote home. I can't live here. Like,

it's not sustainable is kind of how I felt about that. So it says goodbye to Jocelyn, goes in the big scary portal. That's the end of the game, basically. And the other ending is him doing the opposite, which is, you know, denying his nature and going back to Jocelyn because, like, I think there's a vibe of, like, he feels bad to abandon her, like, just like a sad relationship. So he's kind of doing what's expected of him, which is, you know, you're supposed to be with the girl at the end. And it's heavily implied that this is not sustainable at the end because, like, it shows Curtis looking miserable in this relationship while she's just like glomming on to him be like, oh, we should go on vacation, da-da-da. And, like, you're looking absolutely like you're

going to go apes shit any second. Like, you can't tolerate any of this. And then your hand warps into a scary monster hand under the table. Oh, no. It has a to be continued vibe to it. So maybe he did end up killing her. She's probably dead. She's probably died five minutes later. I don't know. I don't know if happily ever after is possible. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I think people were way too rude to this game. In conclusion for me, like, you know, I think people were way too rude to this game. In conclusion for me, like, you know, I think for me, and maybe I'll get some heat for this, I think Puzzle of Flesh has a better story and more likable characters than the first game.

Like, I read that one review where it's like, I don't care about these silly characters and their stupid problems. And it's like, what? Like, did we play the same game? These people have, like, pretty unique problems. Too many problems. A lot of interesting problems. Well, it was interesting playing the game for the first time. You know, I had seen a lot of footage.

of it. And back in the day, I used some of that footage for, you know, my reel and such. But so I had seen it. I always thought it was well, well shot. And there were some, particularly the therapy scenes, had some real, really good writing and performance. I was going to say. But I'd never really played it. But what's interesting when you do play it is that there is a mood that this place and Gary Spinrad's score is just tremendous. And it really sucks you in. in. It's a lot of that droning office life. You're at his computer, you're checking his email. You really didn't feel like you've been at work all day and that there's something not quite right in the place that you're at. There's something about it that kind of, because it takes a while. And that's what I'm starting to realize about games that create these moods is that you can, the atmosphere can really draw you in. And that surprised me when I finally played it. I'm a huge fan of atmospheric games. Don't even get me started on Silent Hill.

Yeah, this will be an entirely different podcast. But no, yeah, like the mood, the vibe of this game, like it has this really awesome, oppressive, like looming ominous sort of unease to it that's really like effective for what it is for being like you're just looking at these stationary scenes with a guy in it and you're doing puzzles and stuff like that, that are some of them are total weird nonsense and some of them are a little more normal. Like, oh, you use a hair pin to pick a lock, classic.

But like, and then after all this oppression, all of this like atmosphere that is like totally like wearing you down and getting you in the headspace of Curtis, you know, feeling a little crazy, seeing a couple weird like, did I just see that sort of things? Like one of my favorite things in this game is your emails, which seems boring. But the more you read your emails and interact with your computer in this game, the more you notice very strange little subliminal messages popping up. There's like hallucinated emails that like don't actually exist later on. You go back in and it's like that's gone. You get an email from hell making fun of you. It's so interesting. It's so funny. And then like after all this stuff, you go to this therapy scene and this beautiful therapist's office is lit. like it's in heaven. Like it's like this beautiful like golden hour light coming in through the curtains and it's so cozy in there. The music is so much lighter and different. And it feels like

a place of healing. Like it feels like this therapeutic, a relief from all this stuff, which is like, you know, therapy at the time was seen as like only the most neurotic people do this. Like Hollywood people go to therapy or really crazy people. Or them are. Yeah. But, The mafia, yeah. People with crazy problems go to crazy people talking time. So, you know, just so subversive, so interesting. And I think like having that therapy scene not just like happen at all and be really well written and stuff like that, but like the whole lighting and atmosphere, like the physical atmosphere is like so different. And it's like you're playing this game and this happens and you're just like surprised in all sorts of directions. Like all of a sudden we're in therapy. Huh? What? Awesome. It takes its time, too. You know, it's just you, you are, and you can't leave the therapist office until you go through all the stuff. So you actually, you're forced to go through Curtis's therapy, which is a learned. I wish therapy worked that way.

Stay here until I'm done going through all my stuff. By the way, I think the thing that we really need to talk about that doesn't get enough attention is Teresa's incredible carpentry skills. Oh, my God. Right. I know. And that was all cut out. I was so bum. Oh, my God, for context.

Teresa does a sexy little surprise for her fuck buddy Curtis at a certain part in this game where she, like, breaks into his apartment. And it's like, oh, okay, like, that's weird, first of all. Okay. Very industrious to begin with. You know how to pick an apartment lock. Weird. But then, like, it's like, oh, cool. I guess they're just going to have sex or something.

And it does, like, a hard cut to like this. absurd leather and chain bondage system hanging from the ceiling and Curtis, poor Paul, is just like suspended in this absurd trapeasery of S&M stuff and saying like, I don't know much of, I don't know about this, Therese, like, oh, it's like, how did she install this stuff in the ceiling? What the hell is this? Oh my God, what was that day like shooting that being suspended in like chains and leather and stuff like that? Didn't we go shopping together? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did. With Lorelei. They took us with Lorelei to the local S&M mall, I guess, and we fitted for our outfits. Seattle's cool.

You have a whole S&M mall, damn. It was just a store, Paul. It was just a stay. Damn. I wonder if that story is still there. I can't, I don't, where was it on Capitol Hill? I think it was. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, links in the description. Everything about that day was just flat out weird because, you know, we talked a little bit about it. Yeah, it was. So in that scene, Terese is offering up this, this new way of exploring sexuality through bondage. in S&M, and she breaks into his apartment and gets them all gussied up in his leather and she's got the whip and all that. And then he hallucinates that his father, who'd been murdered, we find out by the evil corporation that he now works for, he hallucinates seeing his dead father, you know,

sort of zombie-like father in the corner while he's about to be seduced. by Therese. That's bad enough, but what most people don't know is that the actor who played my father, again, my father died, or Curtis's father died when he was a little boy. So the actor who played the father was the same age as me at the time. Who happened to be who, Raqna? My now ex-husband. So her husband at the time. And I do believe that. they have a daughter and I do believe that new I think even that day the daughter was in the green room hanging out with the other actors or whatever so I'm in a room with rockina playing

terese we're both in our and our S&M garb and then her husband is playing my dead father who ultimately has to give me some weird he gives me a kiss or something yeah it's like it's it cuts away before contact is made, but he kind of goes in for like this like demonic like full open mouth kiss. Like, oh my God. That was a, yeah, that was, that was a day. It was already Freudian enough in, in context

in the narrative. And now it's like, oh, this is weird like in real life too. I love that story. Oh my God. The poor daughter. Oh, my God. Your poor daughter was in some room being like, what's mom and dad doing today?

What is this? She's probably just happiest could be playing the ping pong machine or whatever oh yeah there was like an arcade there was like an adam's family pinball machine in there right right something like i read about that somewhere there's some like cute behind the scenes photos that you have posted on uh on your your youtube channel where it's like you know downtime photos she was she was like five at the time i think so no yeah yeah okay she wouldn't have remembered it even if she saw anything weird yeah yeah no but she hates theater So maybe that's why.

Ha ha! Yeah, we ruined some. Yeah, we started early, not liking this. Oh, my goodness, what else? I just, I could talk about this damn game forever, honestly. But, like, I, yeah, like, I think the, you know, backlash to this game was just so disproportionate to how interesting the, like, like, like, I think, I think there's tons of stuff going on here. I just, I just don't get it. I found all the characters likable, except, you know, the villains who are excellently cheesy villains.

I just love. It's funny. I think that the backlash was the backlash at the time, but I think that thanks to people like you and a number of people, the great thing about time is that, you know, you're able to uncover things that that didn't, you know, that's why there are cult classic. Some things just weren't able to be embraced at the right time. But, you know, Ross Scott of Accursive Farms did a fantastic, you know, review of it. Of course, Spoonie did that very funny, you know, a very well-deserved kind of mystery science 3,000 kind of thing. But even so, it was done with reverence and a sense of respect. And so I think a lot of people have come to this game with fresh eyes, so since that first backlash.

So I don't think it quite has the same reputation that it. did back then, you know, more than anything, it's just not as, it's just not on most people's radar, you know. Which is a shame. Like, you know, a lot of people say, like, use a phrase ahead of its time for things that I feel like, yeah, it was about the right time for that to happen. I feel like this actually was because you can tell it was because of how much people, it did not resonate at the time and how much like it is slowly getting a little bit more of a niche, you know, appreciation. And yeah, like it being this kind of cult B movie status because it is like it has a lot of like extremely

charming B movie elements to it like I was saying like the the villains are very like hammy in excellent ways you know and a lot of the dialogue too in the office especially me tons you had all the best lines though you had all the best lines yeah yeah like all of your like super like seductracy sort of fun cheesy stuff you got to do And then, like, you have that awful guy, Bob that you also work with in that office who is just cartoonishly. What an asshole. Ooh, you hate him. Also, the evil corporate man.

Paul Warner. Paul Warner, you immediately are like, that's a bad guy. Because it's just like, look at him. Of course he is. Like, he's acting like a bad guy. It's so cheesy. It's just perfect. I also, like, total aside, his office is so funny.

I love his whack-ass office. There's like, I don't know, a dozen or two taxidermied animals. Yeah, the art department went wild and nothing. All over it. Also, like, your office that you're in pretty often has this incredible color palette of like this super bright magenta-ish purple, contrasted with, like, lime green. It's like, oh, my God, like, woof. imagine having to work in this ice you get to go to everybody's cubicles too

throughout you know because Teresa has her cubicle Trevor Jocelyn and all the folks but I got I really should reach out to whoever the art director was of that game and include them in this ever running series but you look at all the cubicles

and they're really well I mean they're just they're over the top but like I think one of them is a bazillion clocks Trevor's has maps and globes And I forgot what Teresa's. Each one of them had their own sort of theme to it. Yeah.

And they all look very, very lived in and, uh, maximalist, uh, in design. But definitely like, you know, you can sense a vibe of a character here. It's like, oh, like, Trevor must be well traveled. Maybe he likes traveling. And Jocelyn has all of these, like, tons of plants and whatnot. Right. Uh, in her, in her office. And like, Curtis is, uh, a little less maximalist.

There's a lot of toys. Yeah. I wonder why it's toys, though. I don't know. I'm going to find out. You don't know. Because you switch with a little boy. You're still a little boy.

Technically, I never grew up. You never grew up. Hark, it's foreshadowing. It's environmental storytelling right there. You really didn't date outside the office, Curtis. I didn't need to. Curtis was in high demand. It's funny because it's like, you know, I could not be more of a, and even

in that game, they, you know, I'm about as a normal a person without, I am not by any means, a, you know, the office hobby. I'm not going to degrade myself. I'm not the office haughty. I'm a perfectly, you know, handsome guy, but I'm not that guy. I've never been. And so it's just hilarious playing the games, being like, what is it going on? It's the alien thing. It's a alien thing. I think it's, yeah. He's got some alien, you know, charisma. I think it's the alien charisma. Absolutely. Absolutely coming through. And humans have some magnetic draw to it that transcends everyone. I think Bob had a crush on Curtis, too.

I think he was just, like, mad at himself about it. I remember reading Stranger in a Strange Land a long time ago, and the main character with that, everybody was just drawn to him because he was like this Jesus character or whatever. But I think he had a little bit of that. It wasn't necessarily for his wonderful personality. or, you know, he's like this very, besides having an incredible list of, you know, unique problems, personality was Curtis is just some guy, just a dude.

Nice guy, you know, he's normal, he's fine. There's nothing like really, not particularly standout, you know. Anything, yeah. I mean, I guess that's like, that's common in a lot of game protagonists just to be relatable enough, like, right in. as neutral as you can so that the people playing it can put themselves in that part. So you can't make them to any one thing. Otherwise, not everybody will be able to put yourself in their shoes. Hence the immediate recoil to all of the homosexuality in the game. Like, ah, I'm identifying with this man. Oh, no. He's interested in a guy. No, no, no, no, no. No, no. How dare you.

But yeah, like, so scandalous and, like, so scandalous and, like, modern eyeballs, less scandalous, I would hope. But yeah, like, what do you think is the legacy of this game, you know, like, I feel like Spoonie, his play-through, was probably the thing I knew about the most before I played it myself. I knew that, like, it was this culty game that I know that Spoonie played. And it was like, I never watched it myself because I just wasn't really my style of video at the time. Like, I didn't get his sense of humor or something like that. I forget why. You know, I think the legacy's like anything, it's changing a little bit.

I think Spoonie certainly, he brought it to the forefront of people, got it on people's radar. And for years, it was a game to really enjoy watching him make fun of it. But then I think there was a little bit of a back, not a backlash, but I think other people, because they watched Spoonie's version, they went and played the game and they thought, oh, there's more to it than just this. And so then it became like, you know, the fact that we're talking about it today, it's starting to find, people are seeing more of the dimensions in the game than that was originally intended. And, you know, it would be, who knows, you know, it's a, as I've been doing this YouTube channel, I mean, there's just so much retro interest these days. And there's a lot of really interesting FMV games coming out now. Yeah, I mean, because you can do it.

It's, I mean, they figured it out. And it's done, you can do it cheaply and you can do it with incredible, it can look really amazing. Games like, was it a contradiction? You know, that's so well done. I mean, a lot of it's a little more, a little bit more point and click or just choose your own moment, but there's some real opportunities for doing FMV again at a high level that wasn't available in the past. And so I know that there's been, you know, people have reached out with some ideas.

So this idea of maybe a Fantas three, but again, it all comes down to the rights and is Activision finally going to give it over? it is Microsoft, and if Microsoft does take it, are they going to be more open to, you know, letting people dive into the archives a bit? So there's a lot that, a lot of unknowns, but I think there would be a market for, not just Fantasmigoria, but I think there would be a real market for bringing back some of these classic FMV games and adding a modern twist to them and revisiting them in some new way. Yeah, like, absolutely. And like, thinking about the budget that I quoted earlier where it's like this cost $800,000, but Fantastic Warrior One ended up costing

$4 million to make. It is so much, you know, if you are a very intrepid indie developer, it's not going to cost $800,000 if you wanted to make your own FMV game with your own green screen in your house as long as, you know, you can't, you don't mind starving for three years while you develop it. But like it's a lot more like games are a lot more accessible. in a lot of ways now, but making games is also a lot more accessible. Like, you couldn't have made that without a huge

studio, professional cameras, a big like, specifically green screen studio with like the little they had these like treadmills that are colored green so you can walk, have a walk cycle and stuff like that. Like, it's a lot more possible

to do that. So yeah, I'm wondering if more FMV games are going to have a bit of a we're overdue for a renaissance is all I'm saying. Absolutely. I think it's starting to happen in some ways. UK seems to be the ones that are doing it the most with San Marlowe and Diavecki Studios. They're doing some really interesting things. Have you played that game not for broadcast yet, Jess?

Oh, God, it was on my, that was something that was like on my list to check out. I think it's going to be right at your alley. It's really good. Totally forgot. And yeah, I remember being like, ooh, interesting. And then I forgot to put it on any list of my. It's really fun. Yeah.

Yeah, I want more anthology horror series. Like, you know, like, that's one of the reasons I was like, the big reason I got into Silent Hill was because the second game had nothing to do with the first game. It was just like the big departure anthology thing. That's very, very, very little. It's not a sequel to the first game. And when it came out, gamers were mad that it was not a direct sequel. And as a result, the third one is. But then people were just like, oh, but the second one was cool.

you know, like, we're very mercurial sometimes. We're like a cat that can't decide if it wants to go in or out of a door, you know. So I just, I want, I just want more anthology horror stuff. And I feel like Fantasma Goria was such an, I don't know, the first and the second game were both like just intriguing interdimensional feeling. Like, you know, like they're not related, but they're still like, is there, there is some sort of underlying world because the second game says that. Adrienne exists in that world. So it's like, that's interesting. I was thought they made a mistake that they didn't have sort of like the Marvel universe.

They should have had a moment. They should have had a cameo in Fantas II where Adrian briefly showed up. And there was just that little interaction. And then there should have, if that series had continued, it would have been fun to see how you could connect these unrelated stories and connect them in some way. I would have loved that. You know, it's funny. I don't watch these.

Rockney. But I never watched this strange, stranger, wait, what's the Netflix series? Stranger Things. But apparently their last season, a lot of people talked about it being very, very similar in story and plot to Fantas, too. Huh. Well, yeah, there is like the, yeah, it's like an interdimensional, child-related. I totally spaced on it.

Imagine hopping horror thing. minute they're over, I'm like, what was that about? I just want more like, I mean, like, you know, metaverse, like, not metaverses, like, cinematic universes where it's just like everything's interconnected. Like, I'm weary of that in movies, but I don't mind it so bad in games. Like, I don't know if you've ever heard of Alan Wake or any of that either of you. But it's a cool game that I think, you know, you would vibe with well, although it's like a, you know, it's a game game. It's not a point and click. You have to, like, you know, have

some sort of skills with a controller and, you know, hand-eye coordination to do it. But, like, it has, like, little hints here and there of, like, being connected to, I think all the other games that this developer has ever made. Oh, wow. Which is, like, I think they've made four or five, I don't know, maybe six games. But, like, they all have, like, not just references where it's just like, oh, cute nod to the other game. It's like, that's, like, that's really happening in the canon, in the world, in the story. It's referencing this character that has nothing to do with this. And I didn't know they lived in the same fictional universe as this person. What does that mean? And now Alan Wake 2 is coming out pretty soon. And I'm like

so jazzed about it. It's like, whoa, where is this going? That's crazy. I just, I want more things that are like that, but aren't like continuations of the story. Like it's anthology-esque, but they're referencing each other in an interconnected way. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. If there was a third Fantasmigoria, what kind of vibe do you think it would be? Because the first one and the second one are very different,

like, thematically and vibes-wise. How do you bring Teresa back? That's the thing. That's the thing. You see, I have no interest in speculating without that. So there has to be some other dimensionality where the ghosts of other people come back. But I don't know.

I mean, I do think that you have to be true to the nature of it, which is it should be a completely different story. But at the same time, the two protagonists from the first two survived, they don't know each other. So if there is some way to realistically have their paths cross and that whatever that path is sets in motion the story of whoever, maybe it's the child of, one of them or so you know so there there would be some i had this idea a while back was i think of that that it's the story of i don't know somebody's story some new story who you know goes through whatever they go through and then they kind of get dropped into this dungeon like environment and in that dungeon is or whatever that is whatever that sort of holding zone is he runs into Curtis and Adrian.

And for a short period, the three of them have to work their way out. And then he or she disappears. So there's just a little moment where they actually have there. I think Curtis, with the hand at the end, the alien went into Jocelyn. Jocelyn and the first, what's her name, Adrian? Yeah, Jocelyn and Adrian end up being together. They can be the new team that fights crime. Jocelyn is the new alien monster.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, because, you know, they need body swaps. I've heard an interesting, like, headcan and a fan theory that Jocelyn is also from Dimension X or is working with Paul Warner. Warner, yeah. How did she get into that? How did she get into that? She seems like she knows more than she's letting on.

This final room, which is like, you need codes, you need key codes. cards to get into this very secret, you know, government-style conspiracy basements. I do not have my carpentry scales. I know. Like, how did, how did she get in there? She doesn't have clearance. She doesn't have my scales. No. Clearance or carpentry, neither are represented in this character. So it's very mysterious. And I do, I do like that it's like, it was probably just some sort of little script. Like, we just need an ending. There you go. She's in here. Whatever. No one's going to think about it. It's like, okay, like 25 years later, somebody's like, wait. a minute. How the hell are you in here?

Yeah, hey, ooh, what an interesting game our listeners might be thinking, but how do I play it? I was thinking that, too. Like, how do you play it now? Good news, Raghina. It's easy. It's easy to get your hands on your very own puzzle of flesh because it's only six damn dollars on Steam and on GOJ. And it's definitely worth six dollars, in my opinion, obviously. Six dollars? Come on.

Yeah. It's pretty accessible. And I don't, I know that I played it on the Scum VM engine, which made it, again, my partner, Daniel, who knows the stuff way, way better than I do. He was the one who organized it. But he, that apparently is the easiest way to play it without getting, you know, bugs and things like that. I think I also played it on Scum VM as well. Yeah. obviously however unfortunately the developers of that game won't see a single cent of your 600 pennies because sierra is extremely defunct uh so i guess it just goes to like steam or gog or the publisher i don't know where the money actually goes in a case like that where it's like not abandonware but it's like so old like owned by activision i know that but i don't i mean all of um all of sierra's stuff is owned by them but again i don't know enough to to talk any further about that.

Listener, if you know anyone that works for Activision, put in a good word for the phantasmagoria intellectual property. I think it is time for it to be revived. I was also curious, like, because I'm a little collector, like little trinkets, and I was like, oh, what if I owned physically Fantasmogoria, a puzzle of flesh? And, like, it's actually not as expensive as I expected it to be. Like on eBay, I saw prices between $15 and $60 personally.

But the thing is, I refuse to buy this unless it has the badass box to display a win. Because I love the cover of this game. It's got Paul, like you're kind of like tearing your chest open and there's this crazy like hellfire in the cavity. And it's like, whoa, like what's happening there? was that like a separate like photo shoot or is that from like yeah that's great question yeah it's funny i've been on you know i've done enough plays in my life where you're on the poster or whatever and i've never i've always felt like it just i wish i was not on that poster or i i hate the way that the layout was or whatever but i have to say that that image was really cool um you

know it's rare that you can see yourself and go oh okay i like the way that that they did that Yeah, I do remember it was, again, I got cast late in the game, so it was pretty quick. Once I got cast, it just all went by, we had like a medium three weeks before we started shooting. And so it was that they had planned that out. They clearly knew what that was going to be. And I went into a studio. And they just had me go in and do that. They kind of told me what I was supposed to do and, you know, sort of ripping my, sort of like almost like a coat.

I'm pulling like a shirt, like I'm, you know, but it's my flesh and there's fire and underneath and all that. So when I finally saw it, I was like, oh, okay, that's pretty cool. It's evocative imagery. It makes you think what the hell is this about, you know? I was curious, what do you think the title of this game means a puzzle of flesh? Because I think it applies to a couple different things. I don't know if I got much. I guess what I just picture is that there's a lot of exploding of flesh and how do we put it back together?

Literal. So kind of the game being, you know, put the pieces back together. Well, you know, it's a mouthful, isn't it? Oh, it's such a long title, isn't it? And I remember when I first got it and I'm trying to tell it. You know, it was a big deal. I got cast as the lead and a pretty big budget. sag thing and and then when I told people the title it was a little like you know

it didn't it wasn't as cool as I wanted it to sound you know um Fantas McCory itself is kind interesting although it without knowing the definition of it it it does sound like it could you know what is it it could it's borderline porny sounding you know right yeah I think maybe there was an element of that Or like splashing, like S&L kind of splash together. Right. And then you add puzzle of flesh, and that doesn't help the, you know, that certainly, you know, feeds into the porniness of it. So I was a little worried that people were like, oh, great, you got a gig in a porn, you know.

So I don't know. It's a good question. I think, you know, certainly the puzzles in the game, the puzzle of his his brain and not knowing if he's sane or not. there's a lot of, you know, well, there's not a lot of, in terms of sex, showing sex on film, it's pretty tame, you know, there's really very little nudity or anything, but there's the flesh of, you know, people exploring their sexuality and all that. I don't know. What do you think? What do you think? It's a, it's a theme that kind of hits a bunch of little different points, sort of. I think, like, the most basic read of the title, positive. of flesh, I think it could be referencing the final puzzle in the game where you're fixing that alien Wi-Fi router because it's like this biomechanical puzzle. Like it's living and breathing and it's got like a heartbeat and it's got all these little

knobs and twisty tourneys and it's all like it looks like guts, like you're playing in some guts and like it's a horrible puzzle. It's a really bad trial and error gauntlet nightmare puzzle. And it's like maybe they named it after the world's worst puzzle. that ends the game, the final most hardest thing. But no, I think it's a, you know, that hits on a little bit, but I also think like, you know, thematically, yeah, like, Curtis doesn't know who he is. And like, you know, he's not only having like this crisis of sanity, but this crisis of, like, what do I do with my life?

Like, you've got Jocelyn pressuring him to, like, be more serious about their relationship. He doesn't know if he wants that. Like, he's very indecisive, our boy Curtis. You know, he, like, refuses to make any solid decisions about the things that are puzzling him socially or romantically in his life. And I think that his bisexuality is puzzling and slightly disturbing to him. He doesn't know what to make of it. How does this fit into my life? Can it fit into my life?

So I think it's just the idea of, like, figuring out the puzzle of you. You're a puzzle of flesh, aren't you? You are. And also, you know, he's got like an alien doppelganger in like a hell dimension that's trying to hijack his body. So that might be part of it too. Good time. Good times. But yeah, I mean, I think that's all I got for Fantasvigoria, too.

A puzzle of flesh. Any final thoughts before we go into like various plugs and stuff like that? No, just thanks for having us. It was right on to, you know. Yeah. It was so cool. Me, you, Raghna. I've met Paul before because I was on an episode of, conversations with Curtis. But I haven't met you before, and it was really nice to meet you. It was

really nice to meet you. It's nice that we had a little alone time. Got to shoot the ship, Paul decided to wake up and tune into the podcast. To my defense, I did organize the whole thing. You did. I got everybody involved and I set the time and I made sure everybody was there. I just forgot to show up myself. That's the only thing. You were the big interim, uh, because I didn't have Rogna's information so you're like oh like can I invite Rogna? I was like oh yeah sure dude absolutely

not expecting to meet another actor from this game so what a thrill but yeah listener if you crave more behind the scenes info you got to check out two major places the second of which I'll toss back to Paul but first I want to talk

I would tell you people about this absolutely precious fan site that has been running since 1998 if I'm not mistaken, and it has this ancient geocities feel to it. Actually, it's a tripod site, if anyone remembers Tripod, the web hoster. It's by a fellow named Anthony Larmey, and the URL is anthonylarme. Dot Tripod.com slash Fantaz.com slash Fantaz2. Dot HTML.

Really good, memorable URL there. But, wow, I just love this website. website. The passion that oozes from this site is just absolutely charming to me. He did some interviews back in the 90s, I think, with Lorelai Shannon and a couple of different people. I think Andy Hoyos as well. I don't know if he got any of the actors, though, to talk to him. I don't know who this man is, but I love that his 25-year-old website is still alive. The images are still hosted on it. This is like a miracle of the Internet that this is around. So, like, Like, what a beautiful little time capsule.

Do check it out. That's Anthony Larmey's site. His last name is spelled A L-A-R-M-E. But the second place I want to recommend you check out. If you're fascinated by Fantaz 2 is by our very own Paul Morgan Snetler over here. Talk about your project that you've brought up a little bit already. Yeah, it's a YouTube channel called Conversations with Curtis. And as I said, it was born out of COVID-related boredom

and realizing that it was the 25th anniversary. So, you know, if there's, there's all kinds of interviews with actors and the director and writer and editor and different developers and crew from the game. So there's all kinds of really great interviews and conversations about that. But since then, I've been introduced to video games in general. So we do, we stream, you know, when we can a couple times a week. usually classic adventure games and my partner, Daniel Albu, just an absolute genius game developer out of Israel, who is a huge fan of Sierra Games and Fantas II specifically. He and I will host these games and these live streams.

And Jess has agreed to be on one coming up, so she'll be joining us for a cool game. The crossover of the millennium. Yeah. It's been fun. So what we do is we try to, I try to play these games that have been around for a while. And then when I get interested, then we try to reach out to some of the people who made them. So I want to know, before I talk to anybody, I want to at least know, I want to, I want to experience the game myself. And then we reach out.

And so we just spoke with Roberta Williams. We're about to release an interview with Ron Gilbert of Lucky Island fame. So all kinds of cool stuff there. And I was going to say one other thing, and I can't remember what it was. Yeah, I guess that's it. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. And, oh, here's the thing I was going to say, Daniel, if you go to Conversations with Curtis.com, Daniel created a fan game called Fantasmogoria, F-A-N, Phantasmagoria,

Dimension Next. And you can actually enter the world of Fantasmigoria, too. And it's filled with clips from the old game. as well as scenes from interviews with people that we had. It's this wonderful amalgam of our, we have our Patreon members in there who have left messages for Curtis on his email or on his voicemail. It's super fun, incredibly, incredibly creative.

And Daniel put that whole thing together. And it's well worth your time. You can spend a good 15, 20 minutes in there and see all kinds of cool stuff. So you should check it out. Is this like a browser game? Yeah, and it's a point and click, and it's, it's just like, it's absolutely like you're in Fantasmogoria too, but there's all kinds of cool little Easter eggs in there that you wouldn't recognize, we wouldn't notice.

Oh, that's so wonderful. Oh, my God. And of course, Ragnah, tell us what's up, what you're working on, what you do in these days. What am I, I'm working on having my team graduate and not having too much. make lunches and have a kid in the school system for the first time in 33 years or whatever, 30 years. Wow. So that'll be a newfound kind of freedom.

But other than that, I am just a busy gardener. And that's about it. And I should be painting. Rokna is a very accomplished painter. And I don't know if she, I'm not sure you've been painting much of late, but her work is stunning, and we talked quite a bit about it and shared a lot of her images on our interview a couple, you know, a year or so ago, but she's very modest about it, but she's just, do you ever get a, I mean, I'm not even sure. Did you ever post, is your stuff available

to look on at online, Raqna? Do you have a site? I have like a, I have like a Facebook art page. That's it. That's lovely. I love that. I have her for originals right, right over here. That's so sweet. Oh, my gosh. Are you two, are either of you still, like, you know, acting in the Seattle scene there? Or is that kind of petered off because of COVID, basically, or whatever? Oh, it had to peter up way before that for me. I'm almost, I'm in and out.

I've stopped, you know, when I started having kids, it just became untenable to do that full-time. I still occasionally will, I did a show, I guess it was last year? a year ago. I did a play about a year ago that was here in Seattle and then did a co-production in San Francisco. So that was my first play in a couple years. And so nothing on tap. But yeah, if the timing is right and scheduling is right. And my kids are not out of high school yet. So I'm still driving and coaching and doing all that stuff. So theater is a young person's game. It's just because it's weekends and nights. And, you know, your schedule just doesn't work with the rest of the world.

And it's a big bursts of activity followed by lulls, I assume, right? And there isn't a lot of camera work in Seattle. No, there used to be, but not anymore, yeah. Huh, really? Yeah. Weird. What changed? Vancouver.

Vancouver. Oh, Vancouver. Those bastards. Yeah. It looks so much like Seattle and it's cheaper. And then Portland, even. Yeah, Portland, yeah. Oh, I didn't consider that.

Huh. Interesting. No, nobody comes to Seattle. I should come to Seattle. I have friends and stuff. Let's hang out in Seattle sometimes. But yeah, thanks so much for joining me. Both of you. Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having us. What a thrill. It's always so neat always to talk to the guy that played Curtis Craig. I've only talked to you twice or three times. But now I get to say the same thing about the lady that played Teresa. I never, I didn't see that one coming. Not something I expected to happen in my life. So how fucking cool for me. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for hanging out. And thank you, listener.

I've been your host, Jess O'Brien. You can find me online under the handle Voidberger on pretty much every website that currently matters. Twitter, that new blue sky thing that may or may not be the new Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Patreon, all that stuff. I also have a stream archive and Let's Play Archive on YouTube under the handle Voidberger Gaming, by the way.

You want to watch stuff like that. But that's it from us. for tuning into Retronauts. I'm looking to your fairy joy You're still you see Only end for me There's no room in my heart There's no room in my heart

For forgiveness now There's only room for age Oh hey!