An Interactive Thriller...... A cold day, late in October and you're driving along an unfamiliar country road. After a while the constant road noise and repetitive throb of the engine drift away. Your mind wanders as the dashboard display drifts out of focus. You're thinking about the weekend, about stopping off later to get something to eat. You don't really notice the bank of mist that envelopes the car as you speed up a hill. Suddenly, you lose consciousness as a car looms up ahead of you out of the mist. It's sideways on, completely blocking the road as you stab desperately for the brakes...So begins a terrifying ordeal brought astonishingly to life be the power of Compact Disc technology. Using digitised sound, speech, and photographic animation sequences, you become the courageous stranger willing to risk his life to stop the horrific rampage of a maniac on the loose!
~ from the back of the box
Psycho Killer is one of those notoriously bad early CD-ROMs that aimed to ride that early multimedia boom. First launched in 1992 for the Amiga CDTV before being ported to DOS in 1993, it didn't so much ride that boom but awkwardly straddled it before begin recorded falling off in such an embarrassing way it went viral online. Perfect for current meme culture, but how is it as a game?
Developed by the youthful team of Delta 4 Interactive and filmed in the overgrown suburbs of London, Psycho Killer tries to position itself as an interactive horror or thriller movie. You've just pulled up to the scene of an attempted kidnapping where a potential killer (psychotic state yet to be determined) chases off a young screaming girl through the moors of a local public park. With little to no concept of self-preservation, you jog off into the wilderness in an attempt to save her where you encounter a series of unhinged quick-time events that cements that what you're dealing with is, in fact, a psycho killer.
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Both versions have a tutorial that assumes you're playing the Amiga CDTV (left, DOS).
Click on hotspots in timed events, like the killer's head to kick him (right, Amiga CDTV).
From today's standpoint, you can admire the ambition. Back then, CD-ROMs were shiny new territory, and with all its faults this game can be considered the first FMV interactive movie to come to market. But like many pieces of early attempts using the new storage medium, Psycho Killer misses the mark in that most important of places - gameplay. It's barely even an FMV game with sparse animation providing any of the motion video the anachronym is synonymous with. Most of the time you'll be staring at grainy video stills clicking at things in a couple of quick time events before losing and doing it all again. Find the right path, and you'll finish it within half an hour. Aim to see all deaths and branching encounters, and you could almost see the minute hand do a full circle.
Psycho Killer relies heavily on digitised stills or very limited animation, perhaps due to the technology not being able to handle smooth video scenes quite just yet. The photos - apparently taken around the suburbs of London - gives it a gritty, low-budget, slightly amateurish feel. It's as if you've just uncovered that old VHS of your terrible student films made when you were a teenage - cringe factor fully intact. The setting is moody and atmospheric in theory, but in practice the only impression I get is a bunch of friends with a camcorder mucking about in a field.
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If you fail the very first timed event, you will die in spectacular fashion (left, DOS).
You will encounter this game over screen, and the droll narrator, many times (right, DOS).
When Psycho Killer first appeared, reviews were typically harsh. For example, Amiga Format gave it a 13% in two separate issues - both in its Amiga CDTV mega hype issue, and its re-release sometime later. The reviewer accused it of "poor gameplay" and compared it to "an interactive home video". Others questioned why anyone would want to play as "a spotty herbert from the suburbs … who drives a Vauxhall Chevette". I do not disagree. Any praise it would garner (Amiga Joker gave it faint praise at "the best CD game ever") saw it more for its technical achievements than anything - a novelty that had never been seen before. In truth, it's more of a curiosity than a must-play.
From a modern perspective, Psycho Killer has a peculiar mix of nostalgia and bemusement that's strangely charming. Don't get me wrong, it is bad in much the same way as my old student short films were bad, but you can appreciate the effort, the ambition and novelty of what they were trying to do. All behind an ever-present wince.
To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox to bring the PC version to modern systems and FS-UAE with WHDload to emulate the Amiga CDTV version. Manuals included. MP3 Soundtrack also available as a separate download. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.
File Size: 180 Mb. Install Size: 422 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ
Download
AMIGA CDTV
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PC DOS
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Psycho Killer is © Delta 4 Interactive & Prism Leisure
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me
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