Angrybeth liked LaserDisc Games

Well 1983 saw the release of Dragon's Lair and for me sparked an interest in Interactive Movies, that really effected my choices as I grew up. For some obscure reason we never started out with a VHS or BetaMax Deck in the house, I grew up with a Philips LaserDisc Player, so I had a particular interest when my brother pointed out that the video game cabinent used the same principle. As a Videogame, it stood out against the crowd of Pac-Man's and Defenders, and enjoyed watching others playing the game, especially as it was a money eater, but mainly it was because the games had a plot.
Overtime, an obsession to find other LaserDisc games in arcades kept me entertained in Blackpool and Redcar. Ones I really remember well were:
Firefox, that used footage from the film, Space Ace - the scifi equivelent of Dragon's Lair, Hologram Time Traveller - that used this weird parabolic bowl projection system that made the game look like a free-standing hologram, and a really fun lightgun based game called Mad Dog McCree, that used live action.

When I was doing my Interactive Arts Degree back in the early 1990's, one of my final year projects was the creation of a live action based interactive film using an Amiga 1200 and 16 shades of grey video footage, captured onto ( a stonking ) 40mb harddrive. An interactive fiction in the guise of a weird Franz Kafka meets Film noir film.

Looking back on these games now, they are limited in the range of interaction, at best branching narratives that fold back to a winning conclusion. But for the time, and before broadband and fast computers that can render in realtime , they were inspiring the next generation of interactive film-makers. They also demonstrate where Interactive Storytelling needs to improve on, with autonomous characters and Procedural Worlds and Plots that the audience can deeply invest in.

Angrybeth likes Riven

I love the aesthetic of Riven, though I liked the original Myst, when I saw this running on my Mac in 1997 I was blown away by the Cinematic quality, and spent many a while just engrossed in the detail of the locations. Not suprisingly the production designer was an ex ILM concept designer - Richard Vander Wende





Riven's World was definetly an inspiration to me, a visual look that I was attuned to my informative years growing up in the Dales of England, with its old ruined castles, rivers and impenetrable woods, as well as an Engineering Father that took us to see Steam Trains, Beam Engines and other Steampunky Victorian MachinerY.

For the last year, I've been doing bits and pieces for a non-profit sim in Second Life called - Story Island - for Media that Matters. The design of the island's architecture and landscaping has been definetly had the Myst games as a big influence.