Interactive movies… you might say that if you have played one of them, you have played them all. From the humble beginnings with pixelated miniature slide shows up to the fullscreen full motion video titles, all of them have one thing in common: A shallow plot combined with bad acting, interspersed by obscure and out of nowhere puzzles. The game we are going to discuss today, Black Dahlia, tried its best to leave this reputation behind by turning things up to eleven, with really high production values and an even somewhat creative story.
I remember my first time of playing Civilization well. Sitting in front of the A500 hooked up to an already aging CRT TV sporting ten physical buttons to switch channels. Next to me, my best friend. The slow loading times and the virtually unskippable intro didn't bother us in the slightest. Not being aware of version differences, the Amiga port annoyances typical for Microprose at the time, such as unreliable mouse controls, didn't even occur to us, either.
This is an action game which is commonly seen as the great-grandfather of all ego shooters. It was the year 1992 when this virus, disguised as Shareware, was travelling across busy schoolyards and noisy scene parties, spreading from drive to drive. The shooting orgy by American star programmer John Carmack had an irresistable appeal to the teenagers who hadn't yet been cauterised by mass-produced imitations of this ego perspective, and the extra episodes which were available for sale made John Carmack a millionaire overnight.
