I was fascinated by games even before I could even play them.
As a kid, one of my favorite things to do was hovering around the computer as my dad worked on his many projects, anxiously awaiting for the moment in which WordPerfect and whatever spreadsheet program he was using at the time would revert back to the DOS command line and turn into the amazingly detailed title screens of classics like Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego? and Sensible Soccer, accompanied by the PC Speaker sounds that would soon become the anthems of my childhood.
Sipping chocolate milk while watching this towering adult smiling like crazy at our monochrome screen was unbelievably cool to me... as was watching his steely exterior dissolve as he punished our keyboard while trying to take his pixelated football squad to victory or to catch the next baddie to get a promotion from ACME. And I was really content just spectating the whole thing, specially when my sister would join him on the fun and they'd discuss the games at-length, often exchanging jokes as one of them would inevitably mess up and throw an entire case down the drain due to the tight schedules required to apprehend the suspects or the unresponsive controls that made every mistake on the pitch a costly one indeed. And once Apogee's Secret Agent entered the ring? It was a complete riot of badly translated words (we thought that "Exit" meant "Success", as the Spanish word for the latter is "Exito", which our dad got tired of correcting us on) and downright competitive gameplay that guaranteed hours of endless bickering and fun.
This is one of those rare games that looks both kinda terrible and awesome at the same time.
Watching all of that unfold was fun, but I wanted what my dad and sister had... badly. I couldn't just ask for it, though! My relationship with my dad was almost non-existent even at that tender age due to our clashing personalities and the fact that he was always working, often leaving the house before dawn and not returning until dinner.
With the enormous benefit of hindsight I can now see that he worked a job he absolutely hated just to make sure that we were clothed and fed, that he did endless extra hours just so we wouldn't be left wanting for anything, and that he would even sell things he wanted to keep just so we could get a better education (he got us enrolled at a school I can't even afford to send my own children to these days). I'm also painfully aware of the fact that he really did try to close the gap, sometimes even doing things that his tired and annoyed self probably didn't really want to, like grabbing my toy soldiers and helping me stage epic battles with them. I can appreciate that now, and I'm very sad that it took me until he was gone to truly get it. However, none of that was true for me in 1997. As far as I was concerned, I didn't have what it took to please the dude.
It all started to change during one of his --extremely rare-- nights off, as we were tasked with getting a couple of pizzas from my favorite store, a treat my sister and I had earned by performing well enough at our respective grades. My dad and I walked around the darkened and deserted streets of my home town, looking at the brightly-lit storefronts of the many business that stubbornly refused to close for the night, hoping to attract a few stragglers with their neon-infused signs and bold claims of bigger products and smaller prices... we were moths and they were the flames. However, none of that interested us as we came home precariously balancing three pizza boxes. What caught our eyes was a solitary newstand that remained open due to a stupid promotion that included nightly deliveries of wildly popular junk. And among the endless seas of printed garbage were three magazines, each holding a CD-Rom: the Alone In The Dark trilogy was being offered at a heavy discount to anyone with some pocket change and a heart for adventure. Without missing a beat, my dad approached the seller and asked for a copy of the first game.
Gotta hand it to the devs: giving you the option to play as a female character really was innovative at the time.
I never could have imagined the significance I would one day find in that random purchase.
Of course, we didn't install the game right away -- there was some greasy, saucy, pepperoni goodness to devour while it was still hot, as Coca-Cola was being served on gimmicky, whimsical glasses obtained on some promotion. I remember the chatter that happened as the slices thinned and the pizza boxes were discarded one by one, with my dad telling us that my cousin (and next-door neighbor) had just completed a dinosaur model after painstakingly collecting all the little bits that came on random packages of Lays... I was so unbelievably envious of that (for I REALLY liked dinosaurs, as does every other awkward kid). But when dinner was done and everyone had had their fill, dad actually went and got the whole thing installed on our PC, despite mom's feeble protests due to how late it was.
From that point onward, Alone In The Dark would become more than a game. It would become a team effort between my dad, my sister and I, as we navigated the mesmerizing environments presented to us, inching our way through the hell-infested hallways and rooms of Derceto Mansion, a place I'd come to love and fear with equal passion.
The game builds up the suspense quite masterfully, too. You get no breaks, merely small breathers to get your bearings before the next round of infernal suffering begins.
The thing I remember the most after launching the game for the first time was an immediate argument between us three, because Alone In The Dark was the first game I had ever seen that gave you the choice to play as a female character, and my sister wanted us to do just that (naturally), but we outnumbered her. I gotta say that I can now admire how progressive it was for the devs to even add such a character to a game that largely didn't need her (although her presence within the story was justified)... but man, my sister almost bailed in protest! Good thing we managed to convince her to stick around for more, because the game wouldn't have been nearly as fun without her input and damn funny commentary on top of everything.
One thing that never changed throughout the entire adventure was the fact that it was always dad who actually played the game, whilst we hovered around the screen and provided commentary (while chiming in when appropriate). It was a strange thing for sure, but we SO looked forward to those gaming nights, making sure to be ready for them and dropping everything just to take part (it was about the only time I turned my back on Pokemon!). It was an absolute riot playing that way, with us gasping whenever the music changed to something more ominous or the camera just went to an awkward angle that couldn't mean anything good. Getting ambushed by that first zombie as we moved around the attic, looking for the first of many books and items hidden throughout the game was a genuinely scary moment (and that's downright impressive coming from a game made on two-and-a-half polygons!). Dad felt SO smug when he learned that he could block the first two monster from even making it into the stage by blocking their paths while pushing scenery around that he just wouldn't shut up about how great he was. It was irksome for our know-it-all, kid selves... and awesome. Looking back, those were about some of our purest interactions as a family doing something other than co-existing as best as we could.
What's really funny is that you genuinely couldn't tell which one of us was more invested on this computerized Lovecraftian tale with an edge of humor... dad got beyond pissed when he learned that the game had pulled a fast one by breaking the mirrors we needed to solve one of the earliest puzzles and required us to reload a save after having done quick work of a monster that had always given him trouble. And my sister actually got made fun of by suggesting the downright genius idea of just crossing from one end of the hall to another, instead of circling around the many rooms that separated the space... which of course meant that we got an instant game over after the floor literally disappeared beneath our character's feet. It was the kind of thing Alone In The Dark did really damn well: easing you into a false sense of security by providing a red herring of a solution that would just backfire and blow up on your face for a cheap laugh.
It's almost ridiculous how much of an MVP the oil lamp is on this game.
It was me who got the biggest teasing, though.
For whatever reason my school decided that we not only needed to have to ballroom dance classes (!), but that they needed to be mandatory as well (!!!), lest those punk kids wouldn't take them seriously. And because I was crushing very hard on my assigned dance partner (and future Road Rash 3 companion), both of the blood-related jerks I was playing this one with just couldn't stop the madness after we got to a part where a whole room of ghosts were set up to dance... ballroom (what else?). I almost quit on the spot, because they were THAT insufferable about it. Thankfully, though, they stopped that once they realized that that was actually one of the toughest puzzles in the game, and that it required a lot of patience to solve, requiring to swap discs and operating a record player to make the spectral dancers move and stop on command but without actually touching them (if you did, they all morphed into an insta-death trap that followed you around the mansion until it got you).
There was something quite precious about the fact that we could turn this scary game on its head and just use it as a way to poke fun at each other, often finding things to do or say that would be playful enough to pass, but also carry a bit of a sting. The Smoker's Room puzzle with the killer cigarettes was just artillery shells for my sister and I to use against dad. The fact that she decided to ignore the gang of zombies sitting at the dinning room, figuring that they wouldn't touch us if we didn't bother them (using all her honestly really adorable kid logic to back up that theory) just to end up getting ganged-up on and killed was also met with a round of relentless mockery. Me? Oh, I messed up really well by attacking an invincible monster hiding on a bathtub by throwing... our last medkit at it, guaranteeing that we couldn't get it back without getting within range of its insta-kill attack.
Ugh! I can still hear the teasing I was subjected to during this incredibly tough puzzle.
We didn't tease and joke the whole way through, though (of course). And we were actually quite engrossed by the story as it was told through piecemeal offerings and books hidden all throughout the game. Sometimes we would get properly stumped by a puzzle and would have to conference about it, seeing what could be done to get it solved (the ghost sitting by the fireplace gave me quite a few nightmares because of how precise it was to dodge and how punishing it was to provoke, even by accident). At one point we decided to get one back at the game and tried to exit the mansion through its front door, the case be dammed... well, that wasn't happening, and it was quite an amusing "FU" to the player.
My last two most enduring memories with this one happened near the end of the road, and were both the result of some degree of stubbornness (which I find quite fitting). Firstly: my dad left a key item (the oil lamp that you pick up on the second room and never let go of) abandoned so far away from our current location that it took almost ten minutes of slow backtracking to get it back. The other memory? Oh, it's a good one.
Around the time we managed to claw our way tooth and nail to the very end of the game I got really sick (like, REALLY sick -- it'd be throwing up on the spot and without warning), but I didn't want to miss even a second of the action, so I'd stay near the PC, burning up and always trying to keep whatever I had left on my stomach down. Dad noticed, of course, and so did my sister, but neither said anything until I almost fell to the floor due to the feverish state of my mind, at which point dad turned to face me and threatened to uninstall the game if I didn't go back to bed, promising that he would quit playing until I could return to it (a promise he actually kept, despite my sister's brutal annoyance).
Unsurprisingly, Alone In The Dark was the first game I ever beat (but I'm not sure I can give it that honor, given that I didn't actually play it myself). And in a strange turn of events that just cemented this one in my memory, the game actually let us explore the now ghost-free mansion at our own pace, checking out every room in which the adventure took place without any of the dangers that once lurked in them. It was almost like a farewell to something far greater than the product on the screen... and as we gave our final thoughts on the many things that happened in those crude 3D places, we could finally acknowledge just how fun and needed this thing was. When our character crossed the front door for the final time, triggering the ending cinematic that put this one in the history books, we could almost feel the distance and the tension that had plagued our relationship from the very beginning vaporize in front of us. No, playing Alone In The Dark didn't magically solve everything, but it was the first step towards reaching that goal. And for that, I'm extraordinarily thankful.
Til next time!
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