Let's Play A Whole Bunch of FMV Games!

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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FMV Games are an interesting, niche genre of game, where you are essentially "playing a movie." Primarily utilizing pre-rendered footage, the gameplay mainly consists of you interacting with and/or triggering various full-motion video files, instead of the more traditional approach of having direct control over assets being rendered in a game engine.

FMV Games can be broken up into a few different categories; you have games that rely on fast responses to hit the right buttons at the right time, narrative-based games where your choices can take the story in different directions, games that use more conventional gameplay methods to string together video scenes, and games that might do all or none of those things and don't neatly fit into a category at all.

Given their nature, a lot of these games can be pretty short and lack replay value, so it didn't make sense for me to make a thread for each individual game. Instead, this is a thread for doing as many games as I can before I lose interest (Hopefully, at least a couple dozen). Some will be one-off videos where the game is either beaten, or at least considered "thoroughly experienced." Some will have a few parts, either because the games are longer or have more stuff worth showing in extra videos. And there may even be some games that are quite long and will take multiple videos to finish. This is going to be a little bit or everything, but they're all going to heavily feature glorious full-motion video.

The majority of these games will be done blind, and I will have a group of victims friends joining me to offer their own musings.

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P0LARMic aka Michael - Twitch

Michael has joined me in past adventures. You might know him best from our co-op playthrough of the We Were Here series, where we did a perfect job because we are very smart and we never got stuck ever. He also plays a lot of D&D with Calli and Matt.

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Callifornia_Dream aka Calli - Twitch

Calli is a turtle that became a real girl. She enjoys playing video games and making things out of yarn, and sassing me with her sass mouth. To be fair, though, she sasses all of us, and I do usually deserve it.

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Mateo360 aka Matt - Twitch

Matt shares my affinity for FMV games, and has already played a bunch of the ones we'll be covering. He can offer some info, insight, and guidance along the way, but is usually just delighted in not only my unleashing of these games upon an unsuspecting Calli and Michael, but on myself as well.


Note: I am open to suggestions for games to play! I've been looking at a lot of them, but going in blind like I am, it can be hard to pick one over the other, so go ahead and recommend something. Trying my best to do a variety of old and new, familiar and obscure, good and bad.

Another Note: Always be considerate when it comes to spoilers. Avoid saying something if it hasn't been in a video.

Video List

Image - A look at the history of interactive film and FMV games.



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Last edited by James Plays Games on Fri Apr 26, 2024 8:21 pm, edited 17 times in total.

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What Is It? - The notorious Sega CD "classic," remastered after 25 years! You are a member of SCAT (seriously), and have hacked into the surveillance cameras and trap system of a strange house where people have been known to disappear. Now a new group arrives at the house, and you must observe and protect them while also using the house's traps to prevent it from being overrun by Augers - vampiric ghouls that skulk about and drain blood from their victims with barbaric devices.

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What Is It? - Nick Box, aka Nik Box, is a filmmaker specializing in short exploitation movies. Looking to branch out into game development, he has experimented by using footage from his films, and building loose game mechanics around them. In Wrath of the Violent Vicar, Father Luke is tormented by Reverend Drago and his goons, so Jesus encourages him to kill them (and others). Along the way, we make a few choices, like if we want footage to be pointlessly looped, or if we want Jesus to be really loud or not.

Also features a brief look at another one of his games, The Boy in the Dark.

We WILL be doing at least one more Nick Box game in the future.

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What Is It? - Come on, you KNEW this was coming. A concept created by Rick Dyer, and a film animated by Don Bluth come together to create an interactive film that took the world by storm. Press the right buttons at the right time to get Dirk the Daring through the dreaded castle, so he can rescue Princess Daphne from the dragon. Its legacy includes numerous ports and sequels and plenty of games that copied its formula (We'll see one such example next time). Dragon's Lair is an acquired taste today, but you cannot ignore its impact on gaming.

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What Is It? - A joint venture being Taito and Toei, Time Gal is one of a few "Dragon's Lair Clones" that came out in the wake of that game's success. The story isn't very clearly laid out in the game itself, but it involves a criminal named Luda who steals a time machine to do evil things. Reika, a member of some sort of Time Police or something, then basically searches through various time periods to find and defeat Luda. Hijinks ensue. It generally uses the same formula as Dragon's Lair, but has actual on-screen prompts for the player, so the game is more about reaction speed than trial-and-error guessing games. However, there are occasional "Time Stop" segments where you have a few seconds to choose from 3 options, with only one being correct.

This game only ever left Japan in the form of a Sega CD port, with completely redrawn animations that better suited the console's technology, but it's seen a few releases in Japan over the years, with an upcoming Switch release as part of a Taito LD Game Collection, which will apparently also include a brand-new sequel.

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What Is It? - I Fall In Love Too Easily, aka Love Too Easily, is a small Kickstarter project that sought to combine FMV games with K-drama rom-coms, and a dash of Flash minigames thrown in for good measure. It was released in August of 2023, meaning it is one of the newest FMV games to be shown off for this thread.

Yeonwoo and her classmates have a night of a bit too much drinking. She wakes up the next day at home with a hangover and a vague memory that someone kissed her, but can't recall who. Throughout the day, she tries to put the pieces of last night together and figure out who it was, and where they go from there. Will she find and confront the right person? Will they explore their feelings and become a couple? Will James survive the ridicule of his friends as he attempts very basic puzzles?

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What Is It? - Take all the fun of playing poker by yourself, and add in 3 celebrities that were available for an afternoon. There's no rhyme or reason for these three people to share a room, and any chemistry that could have been found was fully removed by isolating each performance into short, repetitive videos. Jonathan Frakes seems to be the most invested and offers a presence of someone who actually plays poker. Morgan Fairchild seems mostly clueless and is playing the role of someone who plays poker. And Joe Piscopo hams it up with terrible impressions and jokes in a desperate bid for attention. It's quite the experience.

Fun Fact: They actually were all in a room together, as evidenced by the bonus "out-takes" video that comes with the game. It's leaps and bounds better than the game itself, but that's not saying much.

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What Is It? - Dreamworks teamed up with Steven Spielberg to present a simulation game where you get to "direct" "your" "very" "own" "movie." To its credit, it seems to do a very neat job of breaking down all the aspects of filming a studio project, including featuring people that actually work in Hollywood to assist you. You get to flesh out a treatment into a full script, manage budget and schedule, set up master shots, and even edit and add Foley.

But all that attention to detail doesn't necessarily make for a fun game. It's interesting to a degree, but the real treasure here is the end result; a cheesy movie that stars Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Aniston. So after messing around for a bit, we jump on over to Director's Choices, which takes all the movie scenes from the game and organizes them into a stand-alone FMV game. Feel free to play it for yourself!

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What Is It? - American Hero was originally in development for the Atari Jaguar's CD add-on, but Atari ended up collapsing before the game could be completed and released. Prototypes of the unfinished game would end up floating around for years, but then in 2021, Ziggurat Interactive picked up the game and packaged it as a cross between a preservation effort and a remaster.

Retired agent Jack Devon spends his days drinking carrot juice and looking at boobies, until the military tracks him down and brings him in for One Last Job. Krueger, his old nemesis, is back, and Laura, Jack's old girlfriend, has been kidnapped. Pulled back into action, Jack must investigate Laura's disappearance and put a stop to whatever evil scheme Krueger is planning. Or... not. After all, what happens depends on the choices you make, and the choices here are fucking wild. Thankfully, the video here barely scratches the surface of the places this game can take you (hint: Jack fucks. A lot.), so you can go pick up your own copy and explore everything American Hero has to offer!

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