A playthrough of Vic Tokai's 1994 Sega CD FMV horror-themed graphic adventure, Mansion of Hidden Souls. This video presents the game in its original aspect ratio. On the Sega CD, it ran in a 16:9 pillarboxed frame: I merely cropped the black borders. Mansion of Hidden Souls is a pretty thoroughly creepy and unnerving game. It begins with a brother and sister playing in a field at night where they see a butterfly. The sister, apparently equating butterflies with shiny things, follows it despite warnings from their grandmother that butterflies=ghosts=bad stuff, and it eventually leads her to an old decrepit mansion. She disappears, and her poor brother, whom you take the role of, now has to go an rescue her. Is it just me or does System Sacom have some weird fetish with butterflies? Between this and Lunacy... man, I have to question. And that entry way - I swear it's ripped almost exactly from The 7th Guest! I guess that would also explain its close resemblance to the main foyer in the original Resident Evil mansion. Anyways, Mansion of Hidden Souls is a pure pre-rendered FMV adventure game. There are no action sequences, quicktime events, or branching paths - you solve puzzles in a pretty linear order to figure out the mysteries of the mansion and to save your sister. While the plot sounds fairly lame, the setup of the entire game is pretty effective at setting its tone and mood. The grainy FMV graphics do an excellent job of maintaining a sense of dread and mystery - they obscuring things in darkness (woohoo - someone figured out how to successfully leverage the Sega CD's pathetic color limitations in their favor!) leaving you to squint at what might or might not be standing in front of you. The audio is nicely done - there are lots of ambient effects, and the lack of music in many scenes helps to emphasize its role in scenes where it does appear. The controls are also super-simple - the arrow keys direct your eye-line and your movement without any sort of interface super-imposed over the screen, and items can be used from a simple menu when they are needed. The voice acting is a bit cheesy, but like Lunacy and The Mansion of Hidden Souls, it only adds to the weird WTF feeling that tends to pervade the entire experience. I should also add that while it is a "horror" game, it doesn't align with the Western notion of horror as much as it does the Japanese one. The creepiness is all established in the mood and in what the game doesn't tell you - it plays with your mind rather than relying on jump scares and buckets of fake blood. And it does it all quite well, especially considering that it was something of a pioneer for console CD games. The critics certainly seemed to approve of it back in 1993 when it first came out. If you like FMV and dark mysteries (think D, The 7th Guest, Lunacy), this granddaddy of the genre will satisfy. Just remember that you're playing on a Sega CD - graphics that were stunning in 1993 tend to come across as quaint (if you want to be nice) or a complete train wreck (if you want to be less nice) from a modern perspective. If you're a fan of overly compressed 90s CG, I suppose this might still impress :) It did have a direct sequel on the Sega Saturn named "The Mansion of Hidden Souls." The extreme closeness of the names of the two titles led a lot of people to think that the Saturn game was merely an updated remake of this one, but I assure you it is not. You can check it out for yourself here:
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