Myst was the first game to show the world what CD-ROMs were capable of. In the wake of its runaway success, countless new teams emerged to capture the public’s enchantment with PC multimedia, including bigwig Hollywood players. From Spielberg to the Shaw Brothers, they correctly assessed that gaming would have a permanent stake in commercial entertainment, though their FMV-forward approach may have missed the mark. It made the mid-90s’ output of PC gaming a particularly interesting slice. One of the most curious bits of software came from a strange union between Time Warner Interactive and poet William S. Burroughs. It returns this weekend with an official Steam release, albeit under a bizarre new handle.
Originally hitting shelves in 1995, The Dark Eye is part point-and-click adventure game, part book report. Visiting your eccentric uncle Edwin, you poke and prod around a drafty manor, uncovering salacious family affairs and playing audience to stop-motion renditions of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous tales. Not puzzles per se, but navigating around the dreamlike estate is cryptic enough. Add in ashen claymation puppets and narration from Burroughs, whose voice itself is like a gust whirling through the rattling doors of places abandoned, and The Dark Eye easily secured a cult status. Like most games from Inscape (such as Drowned God or Bad Day on the Midway), it is as adored as it is difficult to find a hard copy of.
This weekend, GMedia brings about an official Steam release of the gothic gem. Running off ScummVM, GMedia promises an authentic experience. With one noticeable change: the game has been renamed as ‘Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition.
Why they’d deke around the original title is no mystery. “The Dark Eye“ is trademarked by a long-running and immensely successful German tabletop RPG of the same name. That Dark Eye has numerous licensed video games, including a couple from Daedalic Entertainment on Steam. The real intrigue is why GMedia would settle on this name in particular. Could have called it Poe’s Dark Mind, The Tell-Tale Heart: A Telltale Games Series or The Cask of A-Supermario. SEO-friendly or not, it’d be nice to say a title ten times fast without becoming the Micro Machines guy.
The Dark Eye’s resurrection is part of an altogether pleasant trend. A surge of oddball bygone PC games have been made more accessible lately through fan translations, patches and even official Steam releases. Only four years ago, Tomomi Sakuba’s notoriously menacing Garage: Bad Dream Adventure reemerged on modern hardware with quality-of-life features and multiple new translations.
You can pick up The Dar…Sorry, you can pick up Edgar Allan Poe’s Interactive Horror: 1995 Edition Colon Computer Software For Home Device This Year Today as of Sunday on Steam.
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