The Collection Chamber: BRAVEHEART: INTERACTIVE CD-ROM

Enter a World Where Hollywood, History, and Legend Meet!

The Middle Ages.
Land is power. Land is everything. It is a time of political upheaval, corruption in the church, and a crumbling feudal system. It is also a time bright with legend, a time of chivalry, valor, and a flourishing culture. Explore the forces that shaped the fight for Scottish independence as depicted in the epic motion picture, BRAVEHEART, starring and directed by Mel Gibson and brought to life in this historically accurate recounting of what it was like to live and die in the Middle Ages. Journey to a medieval past, explore the making of a landmark feature film, and relive one of history's most heroic eras.

An Insider's Look.
How do you film 1700 Irish Army reservists doing battle? Find out in behind-the-scenes footage from the film including interviews, out-takes, bloopers, photographs, set and period costume design.

Visit the Midisoft Forum!
Explore the movie and medieval times in this dedicated forum on America Online.

Features?

Movie
Capture the excitement of an epic production in original storyboards, interviews with the principal actors, and original film clips taken from the movie
Warfare
Engage in animated troop movements and famous battles including the Battles of Barnockburn and Stirlock Bridge
Watch reenactments of medieval weapons being used in battle, as seen in the movie
Archives
Uncover intriguing details about the lives of famous kings, queens, and leaders
See artwork from museums around the world
Society
Learn about medieval lifestyle and culture
Explore the most famous medieval castles and stunning illuminated manuscripts
Games
Test your medieval wits with challenging memory and trivia games

~ from the back of the box

Way back in 1996 Braveheart was the big winner at the 68th Academy Awards. It was no surprise; the movie was not just a box-office powerhouse, but a universally beloved piece of cinema. It's only real competition in the minds of voters was Apollo 13, the second biggest film of the year after Batman Forever (though my choice would've been the unfairly snubbed Seven - I'm still in Awards mode as I write this). Braveheart's importance is noted by the very fact that at the time of its theatrical release in 1995, an interactive CD-ROM graced store shelves.

It's hard to believe now, but these CD-ROM titles were some of the only ways to get behind-the-scenes footage on a movie's production. Laser Discs were around, and some would carry DVD-style behind-the-scenes featurettes, but this was the mid-90s. VHS was still the norm. I still remember the "wow" feeling of seeing a massively pixelated stamp-sized video image steaming from my computer's CD drive. I was a novelty, and the contents on this cross-promotional tie-in played up to it.

There are only two games in the package; Trivia (left) and Pairs (right).
An exclusive clip is your reward for success.

Most of its contents has nothing to do with the movie, though. Three of the five sections are about the history of William Wallace and Scotland in the Middle Ages. Archives provides hiical snippets about important people, manuscripts and events. Short profiles of King Edward I, Robert the Bruce, and more accompany scans of historical documents, and a dry list of events throughout the 13th and 14th century. Some of the pages have a voiced theatrical summary by Scottish actor Paul Whitworth in some areas though the dry American drone of Ginny Morey is less entertaining.

Exploring the Society section will detail lifestyle and culture of the era such as health, education and architecture. The Warfare section gives info on famous battles, how they were fought and who fought them. Hearing the spoken stories of each conflict is as entertaining as any audio book, and I found myself whiling away some time listening to them. The text gives more detail, as does the different sections selected on the three-rowed timeline at the bottom of the screen. None of this is an exhaustive source of information, but it is a great introduction to a subject you can research more definitively elsewhere.

But we're not here for the history, we're here for the movie - and the last two chapters have you covered. Unsurprisingly titled 'Movie', this sections contains a lot of interview clips from all major players. The timeline has Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production as its headers and blurbs about the producers, actors, editors - and a good chunk of the cast and crew - are spread out between them. Some subjects that speak of sets, locations and scenes are spread across all three and talk about how they were conceived, made and utilised in the final piece. While certainly interesting, some of the interviews do seem to be plonked in with little thought; their interview questions cut off jarringly mid-sentence in some of them. But then you see the "Edit Suite" icon and my first though is that perhaps they let you do it better. Instead, this feature is a gloried clip directory that allows you to play up to six of them in sequence. It's only worth it to quickly look up a specific video clip you forgot how to find in the encyclopedia section.

If present, click the old-timey microphone to listen to the cozy audio book version of the info (left).
Line up clips in the Editor Suite to play multiple tiny video clips in row (right).

The last section is the games, and these are particularly woeful. The Trivia section is what you'd expect, though the questions go a bit beyond general knowledge to ask you about relatively obscure facts found elsewhere on the disc. There is also a pairs matching game where you are to find the matching faces of the characters that comprise the film. You get a reward when you succeed - a random blooper clip - but you can't access it anytime you want in the Editor. To view it again, you will have to solve the puzzle any number of times hoping it will show up.

Overall, Braveheart: Interactive CD-ROM (or The Heroes, Battles, and History That Made The Movie! to give it its overly long and grammatically inconsistent original title) is about what you'd expect from such a product at its time. The information is entertainingly presented, though doesn't do much if you plan to write a research paper on the subject. The video files provide a peek into to the moviemaking process and also a good chunk of the movie itself while it was still playing in theatres, but you can now find all of this on YouTube or streaming services at a much higher resolution. I still get a burst of nostalgia over these types of releases making it a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 441 Mb. Install Size: 718 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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