Simply titled Phantasm in Japan, Phantasmagoria is a 1995 Sierra On-Line PC original that was ported to the Saturn in Japan in 1997. Best played using the Shuttle (or NetLink) Mouse, Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click horror adventure game that sees players guide author Adrienne in solving a series of mysteries just after her and her husband move into a countryside mansion in Massachusetts. Everything starts going wrong as Adrienne becomes increasingly entangled in the mansion’s disturbing past.
The game features filmed actors as FMV sprites, photographic still backgrounds, and copious voice-overs, resulting in the game spanning a massive eight CDs — the most of any Saturn game. The game’s reception on the PC varied wildly from bad to average to great to shocking, with the title even being banned from sale in several countries due to some of its graphic content, but it did make the 1995 best-selling PC games list. The Saturn port, being a yellow-label 18+ game, suffers from lower resolution and poorly transferred visuals, but remains as compelling as it was on PC.
While the Japanese Saturn version always featured English voiceovers, kitchen34 found himself possessed enough to inject the English script back into the game in 2022, with a significant “v1.50” update following in early 2023 for us all to enjoy.
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