Every movie and TV series got a computer game license in the early 1990s, and these were rarely good. Horror Soft's Elvira: Mistress of the Dark was a rare exception.

It doesn't have all that much to do with 1988 horror-comedy film of the same name, but that's really not a problem. Like the film, Elvira has inherited property and has found a recipe book of spells that she can tap into.

This time, however, it's a castle in England, and instead of being up against conservative US America and a scheming warlock, Elvira is facing off against mediaeval witch-queen Emelda and the unquiet dead that she's brought along with her, conveniently allowing this modern-set game to have the look and feel of a fantasy RPG.

To tackle this, the Mistress of the Dark has... placed a small ad in the local paper and hired the first person to come along and answer it. That's you. You don't get a name, and you don't get to be Elvira, but you do get to interact with her.

This is one of my favourite games that I've never finished. I adore the lush atmosphere, the lovingly rendered B-movie gore, the adventure-game/flick-screen dungeon crawling RPG hybrid gameplay and interface, fantastic soundtrack, and the presence of bisexual icon Elvira.

It is proper hard, though – combat is in real time, enemies respawn, you only get limited magical reagents, and dozens of gory deaths await you.

While all this is going on, you have a series of adventure puzzles to work out, many of them by gathering information from books and conversation. It's not always immediately clear where to use specific items, however, and some are single-use and can be used in the wrong place.

Horror Soft would later rebrand as Adventure Soft and continue making seminal British adventure games, notably the Simon the Sorcerer series.

I'm strongly tempted to throw this on the Steam Deck and officially declare that Halloween 2022 will not be over until I've finished it. Wish me luck with the touch controls.

Buy it for 4.99€ on GOG – https://www.gog.com/fr/game/elvira_mistress_of_the_dark

Or with its sequel for 8.49€ – https://www.gog.com/en/game/elviras_horror_bundle

Either way, play it on more recent hardware using ScummVM: https://www.scummvm.org/ (Your preferred DosBox is also fine. Works fine in FreeDOS on vintage kit, too.)

Screenshots

I have entirely misplaced my extensive collection of proper screenshots, so here it is running on 3DS.

#ScummVM #3DS #DOS #DOSBox #DOSgames #AdventureGames #HorrorGames #DungeonCrawler #Elvira #RetroGaming

One of Ubisoft's (née Ubi-Soft) first games, Zombi, was an unlicensed adaptation of George A. Romero's 1978 film, Dawn of the Dead, going so far as to share the film's Italian title.

Originally released in 1986 on the Amstrad CPC, Zombi is a first-person, flick screen action-adventure game, and is absolutely a proto-survival horror game. Combat against zombies and a hostile gang is real-time.

Arriving on the roof of a shopping mall in a helicopter that's now out of fuel, you control Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick and Patrick (named after the dev team).

Every member of the party can and must be controlled individually to allow you to survive long enough to collect fuel and get back to the copter.

Collectible objects are marked blue in the CGA DOS version of 1988, which wisely uses a monochrome palette with coloured highlights. Controls in this version are keyboard-based, and involve using the arrow keys to navigate around an icon bar and on-screen hotspots. This can get a little tense during real-time action sequences.

Download the EN/FR DOS version from Abandonware France – just unpack and run the COM file with DOSBox-X (or your own preferred DOSBox fork).

I actually recommend playing one of the other versions – my personal favourite is the Amiga edition, which gives you the luxury of point and click mouse controls, colour graphics, improved sound and very on-point music.

You can find it at MyAbandonware – this download is EN only. Unpack until you find an ADF file and play using FS-UAE.

The franchise was unexpectedly (kind of, ish) raised from the dead in the form of 2012's ZombiU for WiiU, later ported to Windows, PS4, and Xbox One under the title of Zombi.

Lemon Amiga Walkthu – English: https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=1851

Dokokade Walkthru – French: https://jeux.dokokade.net/2017/01/18/soluce-retrocompatible-zombi-amstrad-et-amiga/

Screenshots

#RetroGaming #DOS #Amiga #Horror #Zombie #Zombi #SurvivalHorror #retro #Review