Game:

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)

Duration: 7:56

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22

«HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLION MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.»

«Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream» is classical point-and-click adventure game by The Dreamers Guild (Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb) that was published by Acclaim Entertainment in 1995. The game is based on Harlan Ellison's famous short story with the same name and if you ask me, the game adaptation is absolutely fantastic. Well, no surprise, since it was Harlan Ellison himself who worked on this game. He's also given his voice to the main villain of the game -- supercomputer AM. In my opinion, «Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream» is one of the best «novel based» games ever created. Though in the nineties, when people still used to read books, there were many good «novel based» games. «Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream» has a deep atmosphere and it's directed very nicely, so, it REALLY feels like the original story. If you like the original short story, you'll love this game. If you didn't read the story, go and read it. Now!

«At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally it called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am ... cogito ergo sum ... I think, therefore I am.»

The original story tells us about five different characters: Gorrister, Ellen, Benny, Nimdok, and Ted (main character), who were captured and tortured in many ways by the evil supercomputer who calls itself AM. It's a dark, strange and deep story with many Bible references written in Ellison's unique style with some interesting twists. In the game, you'll play as all five characters of the original story. Each character has a separate chapter and you can play those chapters in any order you want, but you need to finish them all to get to the final chapter. The game is completely nonlinear though. First of all -- there are auras. Check out the portraits of the characters. In the beginning of each chapter, the aura is black. When you perform the right actions during the game, the aura will start turning green. The best result you can get is to turn the aura to pure white. Aura means health for characters and you'll need a good aura in the final chapter. Well, not necessarily; if you know what to do, it's possible to get the best ending (there are various endings in the game) even with bad aura. But if you play the game for a first time, good aura is important. But there's another thing -- so-called Psych Profile. It's a pretty interesting thing that can give you clues about what to do next, BUT in return it'll take some aura. I've decided to make some sort of good run, with white aura for all characters (looks like it's impossible to get the white aura for Ellen, at least I don't know how; check the description for her chapter for more info). So, obviously, I won't use the Psych Profile. Check it for yourself if you like -- there's a lot of interesting info with some ITA2 codes (same that AM used in the original story). The second thing you should care about is that there are multiple routes in the chapters themselves. Chapters can be played and finished in multiple ways and some of them are pretty evil, but I've decided to take the kindest routes. So, no murders, etc. The final thing you should know is the ending. It's possible to finish the game with different characters, BUT the only person who knows the password is Nimdok (two others can guess it though with some aura loss). So, I'll choose him in the end of the game. But I'll show you other characters too. Also, note that characters' stories were alternated since the original novels. Check my descriptions for each chapter to learn about the differences.

Interesting fact: Before you ask -- the dots on my logo screen mean «Letande presents». It's an International Telegraph Alphabet No 2 (ITA2) code, the same thing that AM used to speak with his victims in the original novels. Just thought it would be fun to speak like AM a little and I hope that it'll help keep the original atmosphere. ITA2 code in the end of the video means «To be continued».

Technical note: The game works slow in my videos. That's because I'm using the fixed amount of cycles in the DOSBox. If the game works fast, the sound starts glitching, and since there's a very nice dub in this game with Harlan Ellison himself, I don't think it's a good idea to record the game this way. Everything else -- blame my recording software and YouTube.

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