Tim Curry In Horror Games

Back in the old days, people would often scoff and look down upon video games, and it certainly wasn’t the multi-billion dollar industry it was today. To date, Mr. Curry has appeared in 22 video games, so he certainly wasn’t one to scoff at gaming… and the cheques probably helped too. That man must have needed to build a lot of conservatories.

Who wants to get weird with Tim Curry in horror (or horror-ish) games, though? Everyone? Lovely. It’s not a sin!

 

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a 1993 gothic horror point and click adventure. You play as the titular Gabriel Knight, a struggling writer and owner of a New Orleans-based bookshop.

There’s a series of voodoo-related murders going on in town, and Gabriel believes they could be the inspiration for a book.

If you know your point and click then you know what’s going on here, explore, find items, speak to people, all the hallmarks of a point and click classic. And it’s not just Tim Curry here, there is a great cast on board for this game, including Mark Hamill, Leah Remini and Michael Dorn. It’s directed by video game legend Jane Jensen, who he;ped to make this into quite the cult classic series.

Throughout the adventure, Gabriel Knight will stumble upon the occult, secret societies and ancient rituals, in a story told over 10 days. The game takes place through real world shops and buildings located in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Accurate sales figures for Sins of the Fathers were never released, but it was critically well received, with Computer Gaming World giving it adventure game of the year in 1994 and stated: “was the first time I’ve actually experienced fear when viewing a computer game”. It won the 1993 CES best in show, and received a perfect score of 5/5 from Adventure Gamers, and they really know their stuff.

It’s well worth playing today as it is an absolute classic of the genre. It is important to note that the game did receive a 20th anniversary remake in 2014 but it also was totally recast. No Curry? You monsters!

 

Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster

It wouldn’t be 90s horror without some wonky FMV, and this time we didn’t get to hear Tim Curry, we got to see the man himself in the flesh, the spectacular, grainy-digitised flesh. Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster sees Tim Curry take up the role of Victor Frankenstein, and you take the role of one of his monsters – a man resurrected by Dr. Frankenstein.

The game is the perfect setup, you plan an amnesiac – zombie, I guess – so you have to explore in 90s first person point and click shenanigans. While it has little to do with the Mary Shelley classic novel, it does feature themes which are both gothic and tragic, like seeing a Nightmare Before Christmas jumper in Home Bargains in September. Of course, Tim Curry is the highlight here, chewing scenery as he goes, but he doesn’t just lean on the mad scientist stereotype, he manages to portray the ambition and obsession of a deeply flawed individual. This is never going to be an award winning game, but you can’t argue that Tim Curry smashes it here.

The game features pre-rendered scenery – which was the style at the time – and Curry’s acting was filmed upon a blue screen, with him inserted into the story at various points. Gameplay is exactly what you’d imagine, near impenetrable and a little vague on what you need to do next. That’s FMV, baby.

Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster isn’t currently available to play anywhere, which is a bit shit, but you can vote for a release on GoG,so if you are feeling particularly masochistic then go over there and vote for it. Or you can, you know, look at it through the eyes of a search engine results page. Matey. Let’s hope this one hasn’t aged like pork butt.

 

Toonstruck

Toonstruck isn’t a horror game by the absolute strictest definition. However, there’s enough weirdness, surreality and dark humour to allow us to fit this into this video and, let’s be honest, you’re here for the Curry.

Toonstruck is, yes you’ve guessed it, a point and click game and was created by Burst Studios, a company later bought by EA and closed after developing one game with them. CLASSIC ELECTRONIC ARTS.

When artist Drew Blanc suffers from artist’s block, he finds himself mysteriously pulled into his own cartoon world, based on his hit TV show the Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun show. When he arrives there, he teams up with one of his creations, Flux Wildy, and aims to stop the evil Count Nefarious, played by Tim Curry, who has ravaged his cartoon world.

Toonstruck, much like Gabriel Knight, features an amazing cast, as Curry co-stars with Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta, yes, of course, the Capital City Goofball, and Dom Deluise. It also features a ton of ‘Saturday morning cartoon’ voice artists such as Rob Paulson, Tress MacNeille and Jim Cummings.

As I’ve mentioned, Toonstruck isn’t necessarily a horror title, but there is some seriously weird motherflippin’ stuff going on in this game. It doesn’t get much more disturbing than when Drew wanders in to discover a sadist sheep called Punisher Polly, taking out her frustrations on a masochistic cow who demands to ‘tenderise her beef’. It has a weirdly dark tone running throughout the game, in juxtaposition to the colourful cartoon visuals on display.

Toonstruck, while not particularly well remembered today, actually had rather good reviews on release. With PC Zone giving it 93%, Computer Gaming World giving it five out of five, and Entertainment Weekly giving it an A- score. Good reviews didn’t turn into good sales though, with Toonstruck only shifting around 150,000 copies. This isn’t bad in terms of sales for a 90s point and click game, but considering Toonstruck cost around $8 million to develop, 150,000 copies didn’t make a dent. Some of the blame was put onto the marketing, as the game looks like a kid friendly, saturday morning cartoon game, whereas many didn’t know about the darker aspects of Toonstruck until they actually played the game.

It’s just a shame that Toonstruck is wrapped up in various rights issues that a re-release or remaster isn’t possible at this moment in time. There’s even been talks of a Toonstruck 2 featuring unused content from the original, but there’s been little movement on this project since 2010.

 

Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

A quick note before continuing, yes, there’s no Gabriel Knight 2 here. For those who don’t know, following the release of Sins of the Father, FMV games became big business and were seen as, quote unquote, The Future of Video Games.

So Tim Curry, not actually being blonde or as hunky as Gabriel Knight, was recast for the FMV sequel Gabriel Knight 2. But FMV has gone and now the future is polygons so he’s back for the third entry, this time in ‘3D’.

Many games around this time were moving to 3D polygons, so lucky for us it wasn’t called Gabriel Knight 3D.

Gabriel Knight 3 takes place over 3 days and focuses on vampire lore, historical myth and Templar conspiracies (popular in the late 90s!). Tim Curry once again plays Gabriel Knight, who is now in rural France investigating the kidnapping of a royal baby who is said to possess holy blood.

Gabriel Knight 3 is an interesting game in the point and click genre, many other genres were finding that 3D games were selling more than 2D games, and many franchises attempted to update their games from 2D sprites to 3D polygons, often to mixed results.

While fans often praise Gabriel Knight 3, the 3D point and click interface was clunky, and the genre as a whole never really progressed into the 3D realm, in fact today many modern point and click games have returned to 2D graphics, or at very least 3D graphics on a largely 2D plane. Gabriel Knight 3 was a bold effort but one that missed the mark for the most part.

Also we cannot forget the moustache puzzle. A puzzle in which you have to disguise yourself as Detective Mosely. Which involves you needing to craft a moustache by a long winded method. Long story short you need to acquire some tape, scare a cat so it runs past the tape and leaves its fur on the tape. So far, so nutszoid. Take into account that Mosely doesn’t even have a sodding moustache, which means you need to add one to his image on his ID card. This puzzle is so infamous it has its own Wikipedia page.

Gabriel Knight 3 might have a great performance from Tim Curry here, but that doesn’t make GK3 a better game, and while it wasn’t particularly badly received, a lot of the positivity would be directed towards the game’s story and writing.

“It’s a joy to see Gabriel, Grace and Mosely together again… the banter feels natural, funny, and emotionally grounded.” – Hardcore Gaming 101

Adventuregamers.com also praised Gabriel Knight 3’s sense of mystery, mythology and religious intrigue.

While no sales figures were released, it should be obvious that they were not good. Gabriel Knight 3 would actually turn out to be the last ever Sierra adventure game, and we never saw Gabriel Knight again.

 

Sacrifice

I personally have a lot of love for Shiny Entertainment. From their work on Earthworm Jim to MDK, they were the epitome of 90s wacky and experimental game design. 2000’s Sacrifice may well have been a back up project for Shiny, to prop up their ambitious lead project Messiah due to be released the same year.

It was a unique third-person real-time strategy game, players take control of a wizard, who can command their armies and cast spells in order to take out enemy units. There are various types of spells, offensive, healing or summoning of creatures, all spells cost mana, and more complex spells cost more mana. It was truly a unique game and did also feature up to four player multiplayer.

In Sacrifice, you play Eldred, a reckless wizard who summoned Marduk, an evil demon who destroys the world. Naughty! But enough chatting about the game, where’s our Tim?! Well, Tim is one of two stars of the game, and plays the god Stratos.

Tim Curry was also joined by Brad Garrett, who has a long career of acting and voice-over roles himself, but is mostly known as playing Robert Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. Tim Curry, naturally brings a sense of gravitas, and his sarcastic inflection suits the elitist demeanour of Stratos. He’s calm and calculating, unlike a god that might scream or yell.

Sadly, both Messiah and Sacrifice would both bomb in 2000, with the latter only selling around 10, 000 copies, and sales data was not released for Sacrifice. This 1-2 failure may be the reason why Shiny Entertainment would not work on an original game ever again, instead focusing on movie IPs going forward. I’m glad to see Jimmy stopped putting Path of Neo in every video.

For today’s final game, you may want to get the nappies ready.

 

Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights

James Sunderland, Ethan Winters, Alan Wake — you guys do not even know the meaning of horror.

In the 90s, everyone was in love with stuff from the 60s. Kinda how like everyone loves the 2000s these days. Several 1960s properties got a revival, or became popular once again. Scooby Doo was one of these properties, and while it had been popular since its 1969 debut, the 90s saw it rise to new heights, eventually leading to a live-action movie in the early 2000s. The franchise would hold no bounds and from 1998 onwards, we would be barraged with new cartoons, movies and even video games.

This barrage would include 2002’s Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights, which a lot of you watching probably have a soft spot for. It’s a kinda 3D(ish) platformer with Metroidvania elements, and would see the team come up against familiar foes from the classic TV series. The team find themselves at Mystic Manor, and have to look into the disappearance of Professor Alexander Graham.

Tim Curry portrays The Mastermind, the mysterious lead villain of our game.

As expected, he delivers a sleek, sinister character with a theatrical and campy edge that fits the spooky-fun tone of Scooby-Doo very well. Tim Curry is also flanked by a whole host of cartoon royalty, also featuring the likes of Scott Innes, Frank Welker and Grey DeLisle.

The game itself is, well, a licenced platformer from the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube era, so let us be honest with you, it’s not a game of the year winner but it’s also a cult classic so maybe there are a few Doo-ers out there clamouring for Night of 200 Nights. It sold well enough for its time, meaning that copies are fairly common, so it’s not overly expensive for those looking to get their Curry-spook-a-thon going. Spook-a-thong. Song.

READ NEXT: Streets Won’t Forget PS2 Games