Name: LGR - Elvira's Horrorsoft Presents.個人的な悪夢 (LGR - Elvira's Horrorsoft Presents: Personal Nightmare)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:50:11.000Z
Duration: 9 min 28 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

[♪ Music Intro and Keyboard Typing noises ♪]

程度の副詞

Time to take a look back at the first game  from a rather forgotten developer:

Oh wait, the back of the box says  Personal Nightmare, never mind.

No, the side of the box says "A Personal Nightmare!"

But the disks says Elvira's Horror Soft:  A Personal Nightmare!

And the manual just says Personal Nightmare again!

Not to mention the fact that the prominent  feature of the box cover is not the title,

but Elvira here, which is not  in the game, save for a menu or two.

Well, Personal Nightmare is  a game from 1989, developed

by Horror Soft and distributed  by various companies, with

Box Office Incorporated being the ones  behind this confusingly packaged US release!

And Horror Soft was more or less  a temporary rebranding of Adventure Soft,

who previously distributed  Scott Adams text adventures in the UK.

But with the rise of powerhouse computers  like Commodore's Amiga in the late '80s,

text-based games were dying off fast and Adventure Soft  blazed a new graphically-focused trail as Horror Soft.

To market their games, they picked none  other than Cassandra Peterson's character

of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, to lead the charge.

"If they ever ask about me, tell them  I was more than just a great set of-"

Aaaaat least, she was the mascot here in  the USA, where she was a bit more popular

because in the UK original release, you get  a positively petrified purple person on the box instead.

Personal Nightmare begins without fanfare, displaying  this serene scene inside of a quiet little church.

Ladies and gentlemen, give  a warm welcome to the Devil.

Grrr! It's gonna be awesome! After one of the most  metal openings in gaming, you're greeted with

Just uh, little underwhelming after an intro as *radical* as  that one, but it is the IBM PC-compatible version after all.

It was not uncommon for the PC to get shafted and  receive a weak conversion from the Amiga back then,

an unfortunate thing since  a huge original selling point

containing multiple megabytes of graphics data  and 600K dedicated to sound effects alone.

Ah well, we're sticking to the PC,  since Big Blue runs through my blood.

As you begin, you'll note that this is  a first person graphical adventure played

through both point and click and text commands.

Without explanation, you find yourself  in a pub called the Dog and Duck,

nestled in the fictional English town of Tynham Cross.

In-game narrative is in short supply, but

reading the instructions lets you know  that this is your childhood town.

You've been summoned back home by  your mother, because your father, the local vicor,

seems to be listening to  a concerning amount of Slayer lately.

So, you're given a room at he Dog and Duck,

and from here, you're free to explore the town  of suspiciously increasing metalheads.

Navigation happens by clicking onscreen locations  using the compass or typing in cardinal directions.

and for some reason, it's up to you to  collect evidence and hand it over to the cops.

In typical adventure game fashion,  the world is laid bare for your perusal,

with plenty of enticing obstacles  and puzzles in your path.

Also typically adventurey gamey is the fact  that absolutely everything is out to get you,

Or at least, the blue demon that lives inside it.

I gotta say, even with 16 color EGA, I really adore this  adore this artwork, especially on classic PC hardware.

The limited color palette and chunky resolution  provide a breed of moody weirdness

that only lasted a handful of years  before 256 color VGA became the norm,

I really dig how even mundane scenes  like a hotel bathroom or a cottage hallway

take on this lo-fi creepy aesthetic  that makes me yearn to see what's next.

Unfortunately, underneath all that is a game that's aged  about as well as a potato salad sandwich in a heated sauna.

Now, I'm sure Horror Soft's custom  AGOS engine was something to be proud of in '89.

I don't wanna say all the praise  it got was unmerited back in the day.

But sometimes, it really is better  to leave a game like this in the past.

Because first off, the inventory is straight up garbage.

most of which are a steadfast requirement to progress,  so your first inclination is to grab everything you find.

But within a few minutes,  you'll realize they decided to forgo

the usual bottomless pants routine,  and gave you an unusually small inventory.

This is alleviated somewhat by placing  smaller items inside your jacket,

but you'll have to remove them from your jacket and  place them back in your main inventory to actually use them.

Hopefully you like shuffling items between your jacket,  the inventory, and the ground just to open a single door!

It also makes heavy use of item combinations, but  you have to type in a specific command in order to do this.

You can't just click and drag like  you can other things in the game.

These are often ridiculously obscure,  but more often they're simply tedious.

At one point, you'll have to mail a letter,

which means waiting for the post office to open,  examining a display, swiping an envelope, stealing a pen,

trading a book for a coin, using the coin to buy a stamp,  filling the envelope with specific items,

sealing the envelope, writing addresses on it, stamping it,  then putting it in the post and waiting 24 hours for a response.

Mmm, it does ask if you're  "ready to be terrified beyond your wildest dreams,"

but this assumes your terror comes from the Royal Mail.

The next of Personal Nightmare's personal nightmares  is the downright ball-busting gameplay.

It's a notorious fact that old-school adventures skewed  logic and increase complexity to pad out length,

Sierra On-Line adventures may get a lot of crap  for having so many unwinnable situations,

but Personal Nightmare makes those games feel  as forgiving and laid-back as Mr. Rogers on Xanax.

Much of this stems from the fact  that there's a time mechanic,