I love the way you tell a story with this video, Matty. It’s super engaging. I’d never heard of this game before but I love the dreamlike aesthetic. The bright colours and weird creatures are really unsettling (in a good way).
Really glad you enjoyed it! This game gave me the willies back in the 90s, and it still had an affect on me now I'm a big brave boy. Really enjoyed revisiting this game without nostalgia. Will definitely do this again :)
I also had the privilege of playing this back in the 90s. Given the very stylistically abstract character models, I always interpreted the werewolf more as some type of ape creature from the looks of the face and general posture.
Oh yeah they definitely have monkey demon vibes. I call it a werewolf but I'm not sure if that was even the intent TBH. The final demon looks like a werewolf walrus to me, too. Perhaps I just see werewolves everywhere! 🐺
It was a true christmas miracle this year that i finally found this game. I was trying to remember what the name of this game was for years. All i remembered was a fight with a minotaur and the spiral stairs to Ecstatica, how she ascends and the player character run all the way back. I was about 7-9 years old with barely any english. I dont think i ever managed to finish this game. I think i killed the minotaur once and that's it. Finding this game from the early stage of my life is such a nostalgic and pleasant feeling.
That's awesome, mate! You don't hear a lot of people talking about these old ones. It's always fun to connect with folks over these forgotten randoms :)
I always remember that Bad Influence promoted this game considerably back in the day, But I didn't have a powerful enough PC to run it until years later. But you might be hard pressed to get it re-released on GOG, the rights are owned by Sony now, and if them sitting on something as massive as Lemmings is anything to go by, Estactica has no chance sadly :(
Never heard of this! I had no idea there was such an impressive survival horror game much like AitD and RE that released between the two! Love the vibes in this video, Matty. The sound effect of switching photograph slides is a nice touch!
There's a few more, too. With any luck, you'll see me talking about them as well! Glad the sound effect landed. Something I'm playing with (which I stole from Hotcyder), to help illustrate when I'm changing the subject or moving into a new topic. Or for fun haha
3:30 I would add the caveat that Amiga's started shipping with 68020's and 68030's clocked @ 14MHz and faster in 1988 onward. Granted those were higher end but even the low end got 14MHz by 1992 and ultimately loads of PC games were often made for niche high end specs too. Hopefully we will see the Amiga version appear someday. Alone in The Dark is obviously the closest comparison which ran on 68k Mac's and consoles.
Glad to hear it! This channel name is paying dividends. Really glad you enjoyed this one. It's quite a personal, anecdotal video and it really unpacked into something bigger than I expected.
I remember this coming out, as a fan of Alone in the Dark I thought this looked cool, but I'd moved on from PC to consoles like the 3DO (my 486 wasn't cutting it!) so never actually played it! I never knew there was a sequel though... that's something I need to check out. Looking back at the 90s, it really was an incredible decade for gaming. Each game had such a unique look, with every developer using their own proprietary engines - not like now where 99% use Unreal Engine and games all look the same. Great video!
This feels like the kind of game that would have found a good place on those consoles, too. It has a 3DO vibe, I feel. My mum bought me this in one of those budget re-release boxes and it took until 2023 for me to complete it 😆
@@MattyStoked Yeah it reminds me a bit of Highlander on the Jaguar - except while Ecstatica is weird, it's impressive. Highlander is weird and downright terrible :D
Almost a little glimpse of what could have been. The market went for realism instead of style, and this kind of stuff fell away. I'd love to see what this tech could have looked like with 30 years of further development!
Very nice video. I just played through this game - what a unique, unsettling experience. Was cool to see some concept art and hear some of the context of the times. A re-release on GOG or similar would certainly be welcome, this game deserves to be remembered and played by more people.
Best video I’ve seen on the game I just finished playing for the first time and was sad to see there’s so little videos on the topic Anyway, I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the game
Thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoyed! There really isn't a lot out there, but I'm happy that this is finding a little audience of _weird old DOS game_ enjoyers.
I think you mean Nemesis from RE3. He was the original stalker enemy in the RE games that could follow you through doors. Mrx had to abide by the same rules as all the other monsters and couldn't follow through doors unless it was a scripted event.
Through the roof. The cruder graphics of this era increase it for me, too. A lot more engagement with my imagination means this stuff stays with me for longer, too!
I hope you like them! I love digging back through the crates of my childhood and seeing how they resonate with me as ad adult. You can expect this train to keep a-rollin'!
I remember watching a British TV show about videos game in 1997 that reviewed Alone in the Dark, Ecstatica, Little Big Adventure, Wipe Out, Screamer, Virtua Cop, etc it was called Cybernet. It convinced me to ask my father to buy me a computer.
Oh boy, AitD and LBA are two of my all time top PC games! I'll check this out for sure. 1997 feels quite late to be reviewing a lot of these, was it sort of a DOS games roundup kind of thing?
@@MattyStoked hmmm the episodes I watched in 1997 were probably aired in 1995 in the UK. Cable channels here would buy like 2 or 3 seasons of random tv shows from the UK, Canada or the USA... I used to watch a British tv show called 'The Trap Door' back in 1995 when in fact it was aired in 1986 in the UK.
Yeah the werewolf has like 5000 HP, which makes him functionally indesctructable for most of the game. You can kill him pretty quickly with the magic rod in the endgame, though!
Excellent Ecstatica review, you nailed it, Ecstatica was a big part of my childhood I never gave up playing even after the many deaths but it was all trial and error until finally I beat the game back in 2000 I think it was, I was 9 or 10 at the time depending on the month. I still have dreams about this game, like it I'd telling me there is a lot more to explore but I know I've searched and done everything. Ecstatica was so influential on me that I made my own LittleBigPlanet level based on it, I based it in the village I lived in too, I uploaded footage of it onto my channel if you want to have a look. I do hope we get an Ecstatica 3 or a reboot but it doesn't look likely, is Andrew Spence even alive?!
I could have leaned into that more! The passive gender options have no bearing on gameplay. But by including them, it does essentially tell a story about gay witches giving it to the establishment 🤘
@@MattyStoked Like the fairytale thing of waking up the girl and riding off into the sunset on the same horse mixed with her being canonically a pagan witch(which is at baseline queercoded to some degree) makes that version of the story just heavily read as lesbian witches lived happily ever after.
You could choose the Gender of your character you play in most cases it's probably the Male character so the ending fits that character better!!! I guess the game designers wanted to give you a choice!!!!
I'd love to see it on Zoom, ideally. Psygnosis were bought by Sony in the late 1990s, so it's possible that Sony own the rights to this (and all those old Psygnosis games). I guess it'd take someone working for SCEE to find the files and get them set up. Finger crossed!
I had this game on my PC back in the day and 6 year old me didn't know what the fuck I was doing XD I do know the whole atmosphere spooked me out quite a bit. I will go back one day and finish it now that I am an adult :)
I used to work with a fella who had worked at Infogrames in the 90s. His pronunciation rubbed off on me! I always try to pronounce names correctly, it bugs me when others Anglicise them too much :)
@@dosnostalgic You mean he prounces it "eenfograymes"? If so I'm not surprised: they often do that when speaking in english. I spoke to the founder of french studio Titus, to ask what the pronunciation was, and he said that (quote) "it's "tee-tus" in french and "tie-tus" in english". They often do this, I assume because americans don't like foreign-sounding words, so it's path of least resistance.
@@MattyStoked tried that, dunno if it didn't work or it was just ass to aim but regardless Funnily enough finding this video reminded me I had a digital copy of the game and I tried it, beat the game and then watched this in the same night lmao Only thing I'd mention is that I was kind of surprised when you talked about magazines sexualizing the female protagonist you didn't take the chance to bring up the men in the game are usually more sexualized, for instance the nude statues and the fanners in the harem
I like to think of this game as an alllegory of not only the oppression and destruction Christianity brought to Europe, but also more poignantly the colonisation of countries outside Europe by Europeans which led to the oppression and destruction of people of colour the world over, and about the continuing damage to these people and their societies caused by European colonisation and exposure to Western domination, which can only be overcome by the resurrection and revival of these pre-colonial societies and the rejection of all things colonial. I also think there is maybe a reminder in here about how Europeans need to realise that they have harmed much of the rest of the world, and this harm is ongoing.
@@MattyStoked Oh my God, I was trolling!😂😂🤦♂They were daft points!😂 The sort of stuff any old activist can trundle out!🤣🤣🤣 I can't believe you liked them!😂 If you were just being nice to your audience, then good on you, but if you actually agreed with them... oy vey!🤣
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![ECSTATICA: this DOS game is weird and I love it [Review]](/img/1.gif)
Damn, everyone is caked up to the MAX in this game 🍑🍑
I love the way you tell a story with this video, Matty. It’s super engaging. I’d never heard of this game before but I love the dreamlike aesthetic. The bright colours and weird creatures are really unsettling (in a good way).
Really glad you enjoyed it! This game gave me the willies back in the 90s, and it still had an affect on me now I'm a big brave boy. Really enjoyed revisiting this game without nostalgia. Will definitely do this again :)
I also had the privilege of playing this back in the 90s. Given the very stylistically abstract character models, I always interpreted the werewolf more as some type of ape creature from the looks of the face and general posture.
Oh yeah they definitely have monkey demon vibes. I call it a werewolf but I'm not sure if that was even the intent TBH. The final demon looks like a werewolf walrus to me, too. Perhaps I just see werewolves everywhere! 🐺
It was a true christmas miracle this year that i finally found this game. I was trying to remember what the name of this game was for years. All i remembered was a fight with a minotaur and the spiral stairs to Ecstatica, how she ascends and the player character run all the way back. I was about 7-9 years old with barely any english. I dont think i ever managed to finish this game. I think i killed the minotaur once and that's it.
Finding this game from the early stage of my life is such a nostalgic and pleasant feeling.
Have you found / played the game? Or did you just find my video?
Played this back in the day as a kid. This is one of the most greatest experiences I had in gaming.
That's awesome, mate! You don't hear a lot of people talking about these old ones. It's always fun to connect with folks over these forgotten randoms :)
@@MattyStoked Same here. I was older than a kid, but the game was so semi-traumatic yet intriguing it's always been a very memorable experience.
I always remember that Bad Influence promoted this game considerably back in the day, But I didn't have a powerful enough PC to run it until years later.
But you might be hard pressed to get it re-released on GOG, the rights are owned by Sony now, and if them sitting on something as massive as Lemmings is anything to go by, Estactica has no chance sadly :(
I remember this on Bad Influence too! I should have put a clip in the video.
This game is sooooooo unforgiving . 90's gaming FTW
Hell yeah
Never heard of this! I had no idea there was such an impressive survival horror game much like AitD and RE that released between the two! Love the vibes in this video, Matty. The sound effect of switching photograph slides is a nice touch!
There's a few more, too. With any luck, you'll see me talking about them as well! Glad the sound effect landed. Something I'm playing with (which I stole from Hotcyder), to help illustrate when I'm changing the subject or moving into a new topic. Or for fun haha
Your Ecstatica review is probably the best. Subscribed!
Thank you so much, mate. I'm glad you liked. I'm glad to see you sub, as I'm on the road to 20k subs!
The animation really brings the simple style to life. It blows my mind how early in the 90s this was developed
Really cracking stuff. And amazing what one guy managed to do by himself!
Excellent video. The animation holds up shockingly well.
Thank you very much! I really love the style here, I wonder what this could look like with 20 years of development on top.
3:30 I would add the caveat that Amiga's started shipping with 68020's and 68030's clocked @ 14MHz and faster in 1988 onward. Granted those were higher end but even the low end got 14MHz by 1992 and ultimately loads of PC games were often made for niche high end specs too. Hopefully we will see the Amiga version appear someday. Alone in The Dark is obviously the closest comparison which ran on 68k Mac's and consoles.
This is the good stuff-a Stoked video on a topic I have no familiarity with but am, well, stoked to learn about.
Glad to hear it! This channel name is paying dividends. Really glad you enjoyed this one. It's quite a personal, anecdotal video and it really unpacked into something bigger than I expected.
I remember this coming out, as a fan of Alone in the Dark I thought this looked cool, but I'd moved on from PC to consoles like the 3DO (my 486 wasn't cutting it!) so never actually played it!
I never knew there was a sequel though... that's something I need to check out.
Looking back at the 90s, it really was an incredible decade for gaming. Each game had such a unique look, with every developer using their own proprietary engines - not like now where 99% use Unreal Engine and games all look the same.
Great video!
This feels like the kind of game that would have found a good place on those consoles, too. It has a 3DO vibe, I feel. My mum bought me this in one of those budget re-release boxes and it took until 2023 for me to complete it 😆
@@MattyStoked Yeah it reminds me a bit of Highlander on the Jaguar - except while Ecstatica is weird, it's impressive. Highlander is weird and downright terrible :D
@@PikaStu666 Highlander on the Jaguar added to the playlist!
I was 9 or 10 years when i first played this game. It absolutely terrified me but i kept coming back for more. It’s a gem in the rough for sure.
This, Mask Of Eternity, Dark Earth, Resident Evil, and Clockwork were such a good time back in the day. I could go on and on.
Oh man, Dark Earth is absolutely stellar. Mask of Eternity is another one! King's Quest was so brutal!
A fascinating piece of video game history :)
Almost a little glimpse of what could have been. The market went for realism instead of style, and this kind of stuff fell away. I'd love to see what this tech could have looked like with 30 years of further development!
Very nice video. I just played through this game - what a unique, unsettling experience. Was cool to see some concept art and hear some of the context of the times. A re-release on GOG or similar would certainly be welcome, this game deserves to be remembered and played by more people.
Glad you enjoyed it. And I couldn't agree more - more people should play this game!
Never knew the game exiated. throroughly enjoyed the review of these elipsoid characters :)!
Glad to hear it Michael. Thanks for commenting :)
Best video I’ve seen on the game
I just finished playing for the first time and was sad to see there’s so little videos on the topic
Anyway, I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the game
Thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoyed! There really isn't a lot out there, but I'm happy that this is finding a little audience of _weird old DOS game_ enjoyers.
Thanks for bringing this bizarre and interesting piece of video game history to my attention.
Thank you for being here and enjoying it. I'm glad you liked the video
I think you mean Nemesis from RE3. He was the original stalker enemy in the RE games that could follow you through doors. Mrx had to abide by the same rules as all the other monsters and couldn't follow through doors unless it was a scripted event.
I'm sure I mean Mr X, but thanks for the comment mate. Hope you enjoyed the video :)
Completely missed this game first time around... Thankfully! The anxiety you speak about is hugely recognisable, even now, in these early games.
Through the roof. The cruder graphics of this era increase it for me, too. A lot more engagement with my imagination means this stuff stays with me for longer, too!
FREAKIN GOD
I'VE BEEN TRYING TO REMEMBER THIS GAME FOR AGES
AT LEAST 8 YEARS!!!!
GODAMM!!!!!!!
And here you are! You found it. Well done and thanks for telling me. That's awesome :D
Once again, your teaching us Survival Horror enjoyers a history lesson!
I hope you like them! I love digging back through the crates of my childhood and seeing how they resonate with me as ad adult. You can expect this train to keep a-rollin'!
Excellent video 🔥
Thanks 🔥 Glad you liked it!
Yeah, this thing really got under my skin, too. At one point in my life I was t sure if I dreamed it 😅
I remember watching a British TV show about videos game in 1997 that reviewed Alone in the Dark, Ecstatica, Little Big Adventure, Wipe Out, Screamer, Virtua Cop, etc it was called Cybernet. It convinced me to ask my father to buy me a computer.
Oh boy, AitD and LBA are two of my all time top PC games! I'll check this out for sure. 1997 feels quite late to be reviewing a lot of these, was it sort of a DOS games roundup kind of thing?
@@MattyStoked hmmm the episodes I watched in 1997 were probably aired in 1995 in the UK. Cable channels here would buy like 2 or 3 seasons of random tv shows from the UK, Canada or the USA... I used to watch a British tv show called 'The Trap Door' back in 1995 when in fact it was aired in 1986 in the UK.
@@victorfergn I remember Trap Door! I had it on VHS and I had an annual one year!
The werewolf is also beatable like the minotaur, just takes a while. There is also a 2nd game, which has constant and
very annonying respawns.
Yeah the werewolf has like 5000 HP, which makes him functionally indesctructable for most of the game. You can kill him pretty quickly with the magic rod in the endgame, though!
@@MattyStoked no, I always killed him pretty early in the game. It just takes a while. Just hit and dodge and put on a podcast in the background.
@@poppers7317 if you like! 😄
Excellent Ecstatica review, you nailed it, Ecstatica was a big part of my childhood I never gave up playing even after the many deaths but it was all trial and error until finally I beat the game back in 2000 I think it was, I was 9 or 10 at the time depending on the month.
I still have dreams about this game, like it I'd telling me there is a lot more to explore but I know I've searched and done everything.
Ecstatica was so influential on me that I made my own LittleBigPlanet level based on it, I based it in the village I lived in too, I uploaded footage of it onto my channel if you want to have a look.
I do hope we get an Ecstatica 3 or a reboot but it doesn't look likely, is Andrew Spence even alive?!
this game scared the hell out of me. I only really got scared because of the realism and i was like 8 lol
Yeah same. It creeped the bejeesus outta me
The werewolf can be killed.
You just need to hit him for several minutes.
Yes indeed. You can blast him in two seconds in the endgame, too!
I bet you didn't know Slaine was pronounced like that 😮
I'm not sure he is 🙂!!!!!
Thats cool that the lesbians get to ride off into the sunset together after defying the church.
I could have leaned into that more! The passive gender options have no bearing on gameplay. But by including them, it does essentially tell a story about gay witches giving it to the establishment 🤘
@@MattyStoked Like the fairytale thing of waking up the girl and riding off into the sunset on the same horse mixed with her being canonically a pagan witch(which is at baseline queercoded to some degree) makes that version of the story just heavily read as lesbian witches lived happily ever after.
@@Aranock 100% this and I love it
You could choose the Gender of your character you play in most cases it's probably the Male character so the ending fits that character better!!! I guess the game designers wanted to give you a choice!!!!
@@MattyStoked
(Lesbian Abuse Rates Intensify)
Please someone put this on steam.
I'd love to see it on Zoom, ideally. Psygnosis were bought by Sony in the late 1990s, so it's possible that Sony own the rights to this (and all those old Psygnosis games). I guess it'd take someone working for SCEE to find the files and get them set up. Finger crossed!
I had this game on my PC back in the day and 6 year old me didn't know what the fuck I was doing XD I do know the whole atmosphere spooked me out quite a bit. I will go back one day and finish it now that I am an adult :)
EXACTLY my vibe. I had no idea what was going on and it scared the shit out of me :D
@MattyStoked Good to hear man! Thank you for covering this game!
Why am I seeing 1400 views yet 18 THOUSAND likes on this video? 🤣
I wish!
1:30 gawd DAYUM!
21:32 Best ever effort at pronouncing "Infogrames" correctly in any English language youtube video 🏆
I used to work with a fella who had worked at Infogrames in the 90s. His pronunciation rubbed off on me! I always try to pronounce names correctly, it bugs me when others Anglicise them too much :)
@@MattyStoked "eenfograymes!" 😟
@@Ghost_Of_SAS I hit like. But I did not like this lmao
@@Ghost_Of_SAS But that's exactly what Frederik Raynal calls it in his Alone in the Dark GDC postmortem. 🤷♂
@@dosnostalgic You mean he prounces it "eenfograymes"? If so I'm not surprised: they often do that when speaking in english.
I spoke to the founder of french studio Titus, to ask what the pronunciation was, and he said that (quote) "it's "tee-tus" in french and "tie-tus" in english". They often do this, I assume because americans don't like foreign-sounding words, so it's path of least resistance.
oney newgrowds sent me here
Really?! Which video :D
@@MattyStoked the one vid with this game's title
@@moistwonders8104 Ooooh I thought you meant they'd added a link to my video. That woulda been cool.
bit of a misconception but the werewolf CAN be killed
just, you know
gotta hit him for 10 minutes to do it
You can also kill him really easily in the end game. Two or three hits with the magical flame wand will put him down!
@@MattyStoked tried that, dunno if it didn't work or it was just ass to aim but regardless
Funnily enough finding this video reminded me I had a digital copy of the game and I tried it, beat the game and then watched this in the same night lmao
Only thing I'd mention is that I was kind of surprised when you talked about magazines sexualizing the female protagonist you didn't take the chance to bring up the men in the game are usually more sexualized, for instance the nude statues and the fanners in the harem
Then they say Darksouls is hard. Try beating this game and the squeal without internet access.
NGL at one point the thumbnail for this was "The Dark Souls of DOS games"
I like to think of this game as an alllegory of not only the oppression and destruction Christianity brought to Europe, but also more poignantly the colonisation of countries outside Europe by Europeans which led to the oppression and destruction of people of colour the world over, and about the continuing damage to these people and their societies caused by European colonisation and exposure to Western domination, which can only be overcome by the resurrection and revival of these pre-colonial societies and the rejection of all things colonial.
I also think there is maybe a reminder in here about how Europeans need to realise that they have harmed much of the rest of the world, and this harm is ongoing.
Such great points. Really well made. Thanks for this!
@@MattyStoked Oh my God, I was trolling!😂😂🤦♂They were daft points!😂 The sort of stuff any old activist can trundle out!🤣🤣🤣 I can't believe you liked them!😂 If you were just being nice to your audience, then good on you, but if you actually agreed with them... oy vey!🤣