Presented in Retrovision: The 7th Guest
As I have mentioned in my previous Retrospectives, in the early nineties my family and I relocated across the state. My father had started a new job as a computer technician, which at the time was a specialized field of work. Sometimes, during the weekends, I would go with him to work and play video games on the vastly superior machines that they had available.
One of these machines was equipped with a 2x CD-ROM and had a copy of a relatively new game The 7th Guest. Having seen this game in Nintendo Power, some years prior, as an advertisement for the ill-fated SNES CD attachment, I was very excited to see it in action. The largest game ever created, it stated, much too large for conventional storage. Created by Trilobyte Entertainment in 1991, it was one of the first CD-ROM video games, and it helped to jump-start the CD-ROM data format.
The 7th Guest is a computer rendered, first person, adventure title featuring full-motion video and "professional" actors. Inspired by the television show Twin Peaks, players take the role of "Ego", a faceless character trapped in Henry Stauf's dark, sinister mansion filled with puzzles and the ghosts of guests prior. As players solve puzzles, the story unfolds, exposing more of the stories and replaying memories trapped in the mansion.
The story in The 7th Guest begins with a man named Henry Stauf, a cruel and poor man. Stauf has been hit hard by the great depression, and is forced to beg, steal and eventually kill to survive. After braining a woman for her purse, Stauf is granted a vision in a dream of a doll. Fantastic and life-like, Stauf recreates the doll only to sell it to a local barkeep for a reasonable fee. The doll eventually begins his career as a professional toy-maker. "A Stauf toy is a toy for life," is his slogan, which in turn becomes a grim prophecy.
Slowly, children who has came in contact with his toys contracts a mysterious illness. None recover and all eventually perish. Stauf becomes a recluse, creating a mansion and barricading himself inside the compound. After years of seclusion, Henry Stauf sent out 6 invitations. These invitations are for a game, promising the winner their every desire should they solve the puzzles of the mansion.
This is where you awake, in the lobby of the mansion. Years have passed, and no one knows what happened that night. For the sake of remaining spoiler free, I will simply say that there is a reason why there where no survivors. The 7th Guest's story is fairly short, which is mostly due to space considerations and the limitations of CD-ROM technology. As you progress, you see how the characters slowly form alliances with one another as they work toward win the prize at the finish line, and in turn kill one another in the process.
Later in the game, players do discover that Stauf is not as altruistic as they may have hoped. Never quite growing past his original days as a blood-thirsty opportunist, the game is a device for his own gains. This is all foreshadowed by his own name, an anagram for Faust, a character from a classic German folk tale involving a man making a pact with the devil.
The entire game is scored by a fantastic soundtrack created by George "The Fat Man" Sanger. Sanger is previously known for his work in Manic Mansion, Wing Commander and Loom. Inspired by the music of Peter and the Wolf, Sanger designed the music for The 7th Guest with a musical cast. Each character is given their own theme, providing interactions between characters as fusions between their various musical scores. The music ranges from jazz to classical, and is still considered to be one of the best video game scores to date.
It is actually very hard to say anything negative about this title. The visuals were revolutionary, the soundtrack is top-notch, and if anything, The 7th Guest is only tarnished slightly by today's standards. The acting is amateurish, but it is a video game after all. If there is one negative thing I can say about The 7th Guest, is that it never really progressed as a series. The game received but one sequel, The 11th Hour, and thanks to irreconcilable differences between the staff and various poor business decisions, a third title was never finished. The game is creepy, and when considering the subject material, the game never feels "campy". The last tragedy is the game builds to an adequate, although anti-climatic ending. The 7th Guest was a pioneering game that was successful in incorporating both digitized video and ray-traced graphics, and it is one that I would recommend to anyone.
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 22 May 2008
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: george sanger, presented in retrovision, the 7th guest, trilobyte software
omg i LOVE the 7th guest.. i was so obsessed with this game when i was younger and it first came out
I still have my original copy, i just can't play it on any of my new machines
@rob i have the original game discs too and dosbox works for that... give it a try
omg, thanks for reminding me just how old i am...