Six Forgotten PS1 Adventures to Enjoy While on Lockdown
By now, it's safe to assume you're one of among billions who are (hopefully!) only leaving the house for necessities, but otherwise staying home and locking out the rest of the world. If so, I can sympathize -- I was furloughed from my non-essential job at the bookstore last week, and have suddenly found myself with a shit-ton more free time than I expected. So, like every other nerd with more time than sense, I dove into the old retro game stacks and decided now is a great time to re-acquaint myself with some classic adventures, both from the free-roaming and point-and-click genres. And since Mom always told me to share with other people, here's my reminder to the rest of you that these forgotten PlayStation 1 titles really did exist.
So get to rememberin'.
1) Dracula: The Resurrection
Seven years after the events depicted in Bram Stoker's novel, the fanged one has somehow recovered from the fatal sun-tanning he received at the hands of Quincy Morris, Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, Van Helsing, and Jonathan Harker. Harker's wife Mina suddenly departs for Romania. She leaves behind a letter explaining she feels drawn to Dracula's castle, and pleading for her husband not to follow.
Jonathan has no intention of letting his wife journey to a place where he barely escaped with his life, and sets off to find her. His travels lead him to Transylvania, to the doorstep of the Borgo Pass Inn where he elects to stay the night, both to shelter from the cold and get directions to Dracula's castle. He soon learns from the frightened old innkeeper that some of Dracula's servants have been making trouble in the area. Uh, spoiler alert, I guess, if you didn't read the title, but it's because Dracula's back and thirsting for Mina's blood.
So you best put on your puzzle-solving cap, sharpen your kukri knife, and settle in for a long night. Ol' fang-face is in need of some killing, and Simon Belmont's not answering his texts.
Dracula: The Resurrection is a standard point-and-click adventure game from French developer Index+ (now known as Microids), and published here in the US by the now-defunct DreamCatcher Interactive in 2001. It's a moody, atmospheric, adventure with excellent facial animations and decent enough voice acting, which sticks just close enough to the source material to make it feel legitimate. While clearly some liberties were taken (Jonathan Harker looks entirely too much like Keanu Reeves, and the original story's climactic battle portrayed in the opening cinematic doesn't unfold exactly as Stoker wrote it), writers Jacques Simian and François Villard keep it real enough that only an obsessive originalist will be bothered by the changes. For a PS1 game, the graphics are gorgeous (every screen is panoramic, meaning you can look around 360-degrees to examine your environments) and the ambient sound as you explore the various locales is layered with moaning winds, squeaking rats, lapping waves, creaking floors, and crackling fires. Being entirely story-driven, it's impossible to die, thus perfect for genre newbies. Even without a FAQ, you should be able to finish this one in about 5-6 hours, although the load times are enough to add an hour or more to that total depending on how much backtracking you do.
Here's a playthrough without commentary if you want to see what you're getting yourself into before pulling the trigger on that eBay auction:
But wait, as the saying goes, there's more! This is just the first part of a series. After you've conquered this one, you can move on to...
2) Dracula: The Last Sanctuary
Picking up where the last entry left off, Dracula: The Last Sanctuary again puts you in the boots of would-be vampire killer Jonathan Harker as he goes on the offensive now that Mina has been rescued from Castle Dracula. Brought to you by the same writers and designers as Dracula: The Resurrection, this is another gorgeous, atmospheric point-and-click adventure with the same attention to detail and graphical flair as the original. Presented in an identical 3D panoramic fashion, this 2002 release packs a jaw-dropping amount of graphical fidelity into its two CDs.
So, yeah, turns out the whole reason Dracula summoned Mina to Eastern Europe is because he knew Jonathan would follow her. In order to complete his master plan, Dracula needed an artifact known as the Dragon Ring, but because it was buried in consecrated ground, the gnarly one couldn't retrieve it himself. Mr. Harker, of course, was bound by no such restriction, and brought the ring to Castle Dracula as planned after being manipulated by Dracula's servants to dig it up.
The plan hit a bump when Harker killed the three vampire sisters and escaped Transylvania with the ring (and Mina) safely in tow. Harker thinks he's safe because he's back in England, with the Dragon's Ring in the care of Dr. Seward, but Sir Fangs-A-Lot's about to drop the bloodiest diss track of 1904 on London if he don't get his lady and the Ring back like, immediately, if not sooner.
And you thought shit got real in the last game?
The Last Sanctuary may be more of the same, but how can you argue with more of those amazing graphics (like, seriously, how is this a PS1 game?), that excellent atmosphere, a longer play-time -- expect to spend around 10 hours with this one assuming you don't cheat your way through it with a FAQ -- and a chance to explore classic locations from the book like Carfax Abbey and Highgate Cemetery?
The only barrier to entry might be tracking down an inexpensive copy of these games which, as late-release titles with small print runs, can be a little pricey. Fortunately, GOG.com has both of them, as well as the third title in the series, Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon, available in a package deal for $9.99. At under $3.50 per DRM-free game, that's a great price and assuming you have a PC built within the last fifteen years, they should run just fine.
If you want to see for yourself what's in store, here's the commentary-free longplay courtesy of "World-of-Longplays":
Once you're sick of fighting centuries-old undead with superhuman strength, or if you just want something that will keep you busy for a hell of a lot longer, try tackling...
3) Juggernaut
Juggernaut is a beast worthy of its name. This three-disc monster from developers Will and Tonkin House was unleashed on Japanese audiences in 1998, and made its way across the Pacific one year later, where it was ignored by virtually everyone thanks to the release of the Dreamcast and the hype for the forthcoming PlayStation 2.
Juggernaut places you in the persona of an unnamed male protagonist who is home alone, expecting a visit from his girlfriend Sarah, who never shows up. Several hours go by with no explanation until our boy gets a call from an older man who tells him there's no time to explain, he just needs to get in his car and haul his butt over to Sarah's house right away.
Surprisingly, instead of calling the police or trying to find out more about this mystery caller, that's exactly what our hero does. He arrives to find the door unlocked, and Sarah tied to a chair, watched over by a man who says he's both a priest and an exorcist. Sarah, it seems, was examining a bottle given to her by you, when it slipped out of her hands. It broke on the floor, and this released the demon which had been bound inside it by a powerful sorcerer years ago. Naturally you had no idea you'd gifted your lady friend a bottle of Satan's Finest, but it's too late to return it now. After witnessing apparent poltergeist activity, Sarah called her priest begging for help, he arrived just in time to bind her, but casting out this possession is beyond even his talents.
The only hope, he tells you, is for the one she loves to take leave of his body and enter Sarah's soul to cleanse it from the inside, piece by piece. Thus, girding your loins and swearing to never buy another piece of junk from an antique shop as long as you live, the priest performs a ritual which tears out your spirit and yeets it into Sarah's mouth and down her esophagus (the way to a woman's heart is, apparently, through her stomach after all!).
You awaken in a nightmare-scape of vivid visuals and dream-logic, armed with only a pendant which allows you to save your game, and the determination to do whatever it takes to break the demon's hold on your beloved's immortal soul.
Or, as we who work in retail refer to it, "Thursday".
Juggernaut is one of the most unique point-and-click adventure games I've ever played on any platform, not just the PS1. You know how almost every one of them has that brutally random puzzle where you have to do some chain of actions no one in the history of doing things (except for a game developer) would ever come up with? Juggernaut is the 'hold my beer' of this trope, but it works. The devs made a game which takes place entirely inside another person's soul -- there's nothing but dream logic holding everything up.
That's why placing a painting of a forest pathway on an easel opens a specific pathway in a forest, why you need to set two different stopwatches to the correct time, and why the LP you found randomly on the ground was recorded at 78 RPMs on one side, but 33 RPMs on the other. This is a game about making sense out of senseless things, where riddles about submerging bags of blood into oceans are completely normal, and doors play music to help you determine which one you should walk through. Assuming you don't cheat your way through with a FAQ, you're looking at a solid 20-30 hours of playtime navigating a series of four surrealistic and abstract worlds all representing different parts of your girlfriend's psyche, all set to a phenomenal soundtrack. Sounds to me like the perfect prescription for your stay-at-home woes.
Just to give you an idea of what you're looking at should you take up the challenge, this playthrough courtesy of World-of-Longplays clocks in at over 11 hours, and that's with the runner knowing what he's doing:
If that's too weird, messed up, or expensive (Juggernaut didn't get a huge print run, and a complete copy will set you back over $50 at this point), then maybe you'll have some fun playing...
4) Echo Night
From Software, the same diseased minds which brought you King's Field, the Dark Souls of the PS1 generation, produced this free-roaming 3D horror adventure in 1998. Publisher Agetec translated it for the US market in 1999, and everyone overlooked it because it hit shelves ten days before Square introduced the bishonen romance simulator that is Final Fantasy VIII.
Echo Night casts you as Richard Osmond, a young man unwittingly caught up in a mystery surrounding his father Henry, and a passenger liner called the Orpheus which vanished back in 1913. Summoned to your father's house by a call from the police, you look through your dad's belongings, including his diary, and come to the realization he was not the man you thought he was. Your dad was involved in some mysterious stuff, and the mystery only deepens when, upon gazing into a picture of a ocean liner, you find yourself drawn into a bizarre world of long-dead spirits crying out for justice.
The only way to get home is to help these ghosts transition to the afterlife, but each one needs something specific to facilitate that crossover, and some of them are upset, psychotic, or insane after having been cooped up on the Orpheus since World War I. The trick is to figure out how to help them without becoming one of them. Good luck!
While the graphics are dated even for a PS1 game (From Software and Agetec were both low-budget houses in the late 90's), the story, setting, and atmosphere are all unique and excellent. Virtually every ghost has something to say, so expect a lot of voice tracks streaming from the CD during your play through. Unlike other adventures on this list, Echo Night features four different endings depending on how you handle things, so despite a short scenario length, there's some replay value lumped in there. Finishing it off the first time will probably take you around 6-8 hours, with subsequent playthroughs taking about half that.
Due to the timing of its release and low print run, physical copies of Echo Night are now stupid expensive on the secondhand market (disc-only copies without the original jewel case, artwork, or instructions routinely sell for upwards of $50, while complete copies can fetch nearly $100 depending on condition), the good news is that Sony released this one on the PlayStation Store back in 2015. You can therefore snag a digital copy for your PS3, PSP, or PS Vita for only $5.99. That's one hell of a bargain if you don't already have it, making it the most easily-accessible game on the list.
Dfactor Longplays did a full walkthrough on this one five years ago, so take a look and see what you think:
If it's not what you were hoping for, or you've already finished it, then you can always try...
5) Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness
Inspired (loosely) by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and developed by the same studio that gave the world Dracula: The Resurrection and Dracula: The Last Sanctuary, Necronomicon is a European-only PS1 release from 2001 that you'll have to import if you want to experience on console, but which got a North American release on the PC as Necronomicon: The Gateway to Beyond.
I'll dispense with the pleasantries and note, right off the bat: Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness is one of the most difficult and demanding point-and-click adventure games I've ever played, and the story it tells is just as convoluted and enigmatic as anything Lovecraft ever penned. William Stanton's journey through 1927's Rhode Island isn't based specifically on any one Lovecraft story, but rather takes scenery and plot points from a number of them to create a sort of Frankenstein's monster of a tale: you'll catch references to The Dunwich Horror, The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward (especially this one), The Nameless City, The Strange High House in the Mist, and more if you're familiar with the mythos.
But unlike other 3D point-and-clicks of this nature, Necronomicon does not play nice. You can (and probably will) wind up dead multiple times through this adventure, though it's rarely without some type of warning. Whether or not you catch that warning is another story, but there's no randomness factor or anything else. If you end up a ghoul for the rest of your life, you've only yourself to blame.
This one also relies heavily on the adventure gaming tropes of the old days, so bring along some graph paper for maps and a notebook to write down clues and any other information you want to remember because the game will not do it for you. A general knowledge of the occult will help immensely as well, especially astrology which factors into the story in several places. Necronomicon is not for amateurs, that's for sure, and it's definitely not for people without patience to scour areas for clues and talk to everyone about everything. Trying to pass this one by randomly using every item on every puzzle spot will see you dead within the first hour. If you aren't the inquisitive sort and need your hand held the whole time, either give this game a wide berth or make sure you've a good walkthrough handy before you begin. Otherwise the jar puzzle may well drive you insane in real life.
Since playing the PS1 version will require a modded console (or an emulator at the bare minimum), you can make things easier and snag the PC version on Steam. Not only will this drastically cut down on load times, but at $4.99 it's within the price range of all but the most destitute gamers.
To get a sense of what you're in for should you choose to risk your sanity, you can check out this walkthrough from LongplayArchive:
And if that doesn't tickle your fancy, we've got one more import option for you to consider with...
6) Amerzone: The Explorer's Legacy
Belgian artist/creator Benoît Sokal might be most famous in the point-and-click adventure world for the Syberia series, but this 1999 game developed by Casterman and published by Microids was his freshman effort, and it's every bit as worthy of your attention.
The story it tells is one of mankind's harmony with nature, what we stand to lose from treating the planet like its our own personal garbage dump, and what happens when politics and pride become more important than humility and respect. The protagonist of Amerzone is literally you: a nameless, voiceless, faceless journalist who was assigned by your editor to find and interview an historian by the name of Alexandre Valembois about his experience in Amerzon, a fictional area within South America which shares some traits with the real-world Amazon rainforest.
In 1998, Valembois is an old man on his death bed. When you arrive at his home, he tells you about his original expedition to Amerzone sixty years earlier: his discoveries, his interactions with the natives, and the mistakes he and two other men who accompanied him on the trip made that have led to his regret decades later.
Giving you his old journals and a key to his personal transport (the contraption depicted on the cover), Valembois asks you to return in his stead to Amerzone and see if you can right the wrongs he inadvertently committed as a younger man, seek forgiveness from the young woman he betrayed and left behind, and safeguard a species on the edge of extinction from a power-mad dictator who has turned the country into a despotic state.
Amerzone is absolutely beautiful, even for a game released in the late 90's, packed with a gorgeous mixture of realistic and fantastic elements that somehow mesh to create a world you can almost believe would be real. If you played and enjoyed Syberia, you'll enjoy Amerzone and vice versa. There are no failure states and no deaths -- it's a story very much meant to be experienced from beginning to end with minor interactivity. Like the Dracula games, each screen is its own panoramic 'room', able to be viewed from almost any angle by the player. What you take from it and what you leave behind are entirely up to you: Sokal's given you the tools you need to make the journey, but he can't tell you what lessons to learn.
As with Necronomicon above, you'll need a European PlayStation or an emulator to play this one if you live outside the UK, but you can find it on Steam for $4.99 and on GOG.com for $9.99 if you prefer a DRM-free experience. If you aren't sure whether or not you'll care for it, you can watch LongplayArchive's playthrough of it right here:
So there you have it: half a dozen great ways to kill some time during a COVID-19 shelter-in-place order. If you love adventures and have more PS1 classics to suggest, by all means, sound off in that comments section. But no matter what, keep on playing and Play It Loud!
Zorker out.