The Psychotron

[DilbertSuperfan]

Not as obscure now as it has been over the past few years, The Psychotron (Windows 3.1) is a weird game. While the story isn't the weirdest thing about it, (Russians use superweapon to mind control Americans) it's really the presentation that makes The Psychotron worth talking about. Though, the story is pretty bizarre:

 

From http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/The_Psychotron

The Psychotron is an adventure and puzzle solving video game developed by The Multimedia Store and published by Merit Software in 1994. It was released on the PC for the following operating systems; MS-DOS, Windows 95 and Windows 3.x.

 

In the game, the player has been assigned by the U.S. President and the FBI to find out a missing official science project called "The Psychotron". The Psychotron was, allegedly, developed in the USSR during the Cold War. A product of 50 years of research on manipulating the forces of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), a "Psychotronic Generator" was created, and after the fall of Soviet Union, Russia sold it to United States government. Somewhere en route to U.S.A, it vanished, and it's the player's job to find it.

 

The game consisted from lots of live video, and the game was mostly about interacting with the actors through a simple interface where you would choose from a list of questions, and depending on the situation, the character you're talking to would either co-operate with you and give you clues, just as well where they could become suspicious about you or in one instance, even kill you.

 

It's a notoriously hard game, as the clues you get might not be really that straighforward and many times could involve mathematics and physics.

 

But as I said the presentation is what makes this early 90s FMV game worth playing. It's really hard to quantify just why that is but the whole game has this uncanny way of simultaneously being cheesy to the point of distraction (like most FMV games) but between the layout of the HUD and the terrible acting kind of lend themselves to making you feeling immersed.

 

Also, the theme song/intro is pretty fucking weird in a way that must be experienced.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBGwd0wPMg0

 

If that doesn't intrigue you to play it, you're not alive.

 

Also, the game's developer was known as The Multimedia Store - which is nearly impossible to Google. Perhaps The Psychotron is their failed attempt to mind control us patriots??

 

Anyway you can emulate the game on Saturn as well but there's a download available at https://archive.org/details/The_Psychotron_-_Win3.1_Game_-_Merit_StudiosEng

[DilbertSuperfan]

Also, only available on the Saturn and Windows 3.1?? Talk about hiding your plot where no one would ever find it.