No wonder I'm such a great detective - with my intuition

Not so wrong

'Prologue' plays the prologue and the first professor scene
'Ghost Play' only the prologue and random scenes but only if you do nothing so I didn't notice it.

I didn't notice any difference. Actually, I thought it would probably be something like an 'auto-play' mode in which you get random scenes played without any interaction, but when I actually tried it, I noticed how wrong I was

A question: what is the difference between 'Prologue' and 'Ghost Play'
'Ghost Play' is a little bit shorter but is this the only difference?
Two entries on the start screen and only this small difference?

I like that scene because of it's twist.

I like also ghost stories but I can't take the story of the game serious because of too much humor for a scary game.

The butler certainly has style, and some jokes are actually rather well-done. Take the scene with the woman wanting to talk about the salvation of your soul for example. First, the build-up of tension, the knock on the door - everybody expecting some kind of horror outside..... and it is, only in an ironic twist. The accompanying graphical shots of the scene are great as well in this scene.

Oh well, I'm just a sucker for haunted house stories, so I still consider the game above-average, but the gameplay certainly doesn't quite cut it.

If you want your opinion about the game to be preserved / visible to everybody, feel free to use the comment function on the site, or send in a long review

I agree with your review. I have a similar opinion. I was a little bit
disappointed. I like CotCC more because it was more serious. MMSD has too many gags so it isn't scary at all.
MMSD is also too simple - guess two things and win.
But I like the comic style and the butler was funny.
3/6 from me.

Murder Makes Strange Deadfellows is now online - including a solution

Also I think there was a bit of sarcasm involved as well

As I read his post, I guess it was mike's intention to list very new games as examples...

Civilization III is no more a classic than Civ II. Civ I is.

Flight Simulator 2004 is far from being forgotten. It's still extremely new.

I don't know about Star Trek Away Team much, but I think that game is very new also.

Another AOL boom?

Anyway, I've finished the game already. Before I put it on the site, I'll play it a little more to see as much as possible before writing a review.

My guess is that the "mainstream" of gaming in the future -- the place where money is made and developers choose to congregate -- will be in online MMORGs and -- in 20 years or so -- virtual reality.

But few forms of entertainment ever become completely forgotten. Think of what Mel Gibson did this past year for passion plays, as an example. So there will be gamers who continue to play "classic Windows games", partly because they love the games for their own sake, partly because this is seen as an enjoyable light weight, low maintenance amusement, which doesn't require the high commitment of time and passion and perhaps money needed for "serious gaming."

The great mystery to me: we still have most of the planet to bring into the computer age. At the moment computer gaming is a phenomenon chiefly observed in North America, Europe, and Japan. What happens when 8 billion computer-literate people are plugged into the Internet?

--ming

Heh - that reminds me of the discussions we had here about the question whether new games will actually become 'classics' one day or if they'll be dropped by their former following as soon as the 'next generation' of games comes out. What do you think?

Ah, but Windows 98 is the coming OBSOLETE OPERATING SYSTEM! In a few short years, perhaps only weeks, Microsoft will officially stop all support for Win98 and then -- effectively -- it will be ours! All ours!!!

Think of the games we Olde Thyme Gamerz will then be free to play with a clear conscience. Think of the zillions of webpages devoted to forgotten classic games such as CIVILIZATION III and STAR TREK AWAY TEAM and FLIGHT SIMULATOR 2004. Think of all those busy hackers coding away to perfect an improved FREE-WINDOWS O/S!

Oh, blissful will it be to live in such a day...

-- ming

I've had a look at the .sub file in a hex editor, and it's indeed just zeroes apart from a few at the very start. That's also the reason why it could be compressed down to virtually nothing.

As for Windows 98 'SE', I don't have it, and it's quite frankly not worth the hassle for me. I absolutely believe you it's better in many ways, but what's the point of an upgrade for a system I'm not using anyway and which I also will not use after the upgrade?

I agree with the Windows 98SE comment.

1. As best I understand this, on audio and mixed-mode CD's,the "sub-channels" are those 288-byte leading chunks of those 2384-byte records, which are generally discarded in "ISO-mode" disk images. They generally are used to hold start and stop byte values for song tracks, titles and such like.

Very very infrequently, they might be used to hold a litle bit of graphical data or some arbitrary data which might be used for copy-protection purposes -- but I doubt if that's been attempted by anyone for years, if ever, since older CD drives and older CD burning software had problems dealing with just these data chunks (most cheap CDROM buring software for windows machines, such as Easy CD Writer and NTI CD-Maker, deal only with "iso"-style images, though the hardware is more capable). In all other cases, the subchannel data is just zeroes.

So. If the game looks all right and sounds all right once you've started it up, it almost certainly is all right.

2. From personal experience, Windows 98SE is far more reliable than the original.

-- ming

I didn't know that it's mixed mode-cd then it doesn't work as one Iso.
I thought it's like cocc: files that contain picture and audio together like movie files.

Edited by Zork at 19:32 on November, 02nd 2004

Yes, I do still have a Windows partition here, but last time I tried to boot it, it resulted in half an hour of work, because it just didn't like my (then new) flatscreen display. Haven't touched it since then. In any case, most newer Windows software doesn't seem to run on it anyway, as it's the very first version of Windows 98.

The 'one file' advantage doesn't fit in this case, as the CD contains a number of audio tracks which can't be added into ISO format as far as I know. Additional .wav or .cdr files are needed then.

And don't worry too much - the game is very much like its predecessor

Edited by Mr Creosote at 22:46 on October, 26th 2004