The 7th Guest (PC) - A History and Review | Cannot be Tamed
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- Опубликовано: 30 окт 2019
- The 7th Guest was developed by Trilobyte and released for PC on April 1st 1993. It’s an adventure game that focuses almost entirely on puzzles and uses live action video clips to tell the story as you progress. The game has an interesting development history and is notable for its place in pushing PC video game technology forward.
#7thGuest #PC #RetroReview
References used in this video:
The Rise and Fall of Trilobye (Gamespot - archived) web.archive.org/web/200709301...
Interview with Rob Landeros (Gameological) gameological.com/2013/05/inter...
An Oral History of The 7th Guest (Game Informer) www.gameinformer.com/b/featur...
CES footage is from • 1993 Summer CES
Game footage is from the 25th anniversary edition of The 7th Guest. All music is from the MIDI soundtrack.
Intro artwork, logo and banner by: @theMagdalenRose
"Cantina Blues" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b... 
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He was a drifter. Moving from town to town... place to place... Until, one night.
I remember being a kid and those hands that come out of the painting and the ghost Woman Upstairs would float away from you scared the shit out of me
indeed. While the hands in the painting didn't bother me, the ghost was terrifying. Especially when she changed direction... I was expecting one thing, then she did something different...
I don’t remember but I think that The ghost was a victim of Henry Stauf? I honestly can’t remember if She was ever explained.@@sparetomato
I really miss these old school adventure games. It's crazy this came out before Myst. I don't remember when we got it, but we never paid close to $100! Absolutely loved the theme and style of it.
7th guest is THE game that launched the CD-rom! I remember playing it thinking I was "not supposed to". Great memories!
I miss that times.
7 th guest, 11th hour, Phantasmagoria, Zork nemesis, Ripper, Normality, that was a really great games
The music by the Fat Man is absolutely magnificent. I ordered the album he made of 7th Guest and 11th Hour music on CD many years ago. It's a shame Trilobyte imploded, 11th Hour was one of the first games I remember that turned into mockery for taking so long. The development cycle of 11th makes Duke Nukem Forever seem short.
It is interesting just how fast things developed after this game released. CD games such as Mad Dog, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Carmen Sandiego, Doom, and a hundred others exploded into the markets, and many were vast improvements graphically over 7th Guest.
This was truly a rather wild time to be a child. Our first game was Mad Dog followed by Oregon Trail, and then a few other games, our parents were not particularly approving of most games and systems, so we did not generally play video games, and 7th guest would have been beyond anything acceptable due to its mature themes and horror.
This was a fun look at the history of gaming. Thank you.
That can word puzzle was ridiculous and I just remember the word Gypsy being in it and for some reason that never left me. I remember a few of the scenes scared me a little when I was a kid like the cellar maze and the ghost lady appearing randomly down there when I wasn't expecting it. Still I absolutely loved this game and loved watching others play it.
I could definitely see how the cellar could be scary as a kid. As an adult it’s scary in an “oh no, not an adventure game maze” way
I hated the cellar maze. The soup can puzzle was ridiculous, as was the microscope puzzle, and the cake puzzle.
I was on vacation in centerparcs, a vacation place in the netherlands. Those cottages were equipped with cd-i. It has a demo disc of games you could rent. The 7th guest was one of them. Didn't rent it (kid no money) but was absolutely fascinated by it. Bought it a few years later when the household had a pentium with a cdrom drive.
Another game, like Myst, that I heard about but never played. Interesting history lesson.
I was 9 years old when this came out.
It would be four long years before my parents upgraded our computer to one with a CD-ROM.
Never did play this game 😔
Never knew it was that expensive. A friend of mine had it and I remember it was a very special experience. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the game and it's one of those that will be lodged in my pc gaming memory for life.
Great video, thank you.
The thing that stuck with me about this game is the song that plays in the intro over the developer logos. It starts off sad and mournful, like the story that's about to be told is a heartwrenching tragedy. Then it quickly becomes manic and slowly builds, becoming slightly macabre. And then it pauses...
AND THE MANSION APPEARS! With a single musical inflection, the soundtrack says simply "Yes. This is a strange tale. And you have come here to be scared."
I was one scared little boy when that red 7 appeared. And every time I hear that theme play over it, it's like the first time.
18?! That's just ridiculous. I had no idea Nintendo bought the rights for the Super NES CD system! The live action cutscenes are pretty impressive for back in the day. I like that you also discussed this game's effect on the CD Roms at the time. Really solid video, Pam! :)
Thanks! I laughed when I came across the info about Nintendo buying the rights, so I needed to include it in here.
Yes it is very hard to understand the plot for The 7th Guest and it’s first Sequel The 11th Hour a few years ago a fan based sequel called The 13th Doll was released Robert Hirschboeck returned to play as Henry Stauf and The Character of Tad returns.@@Cannotbetamed1
I remember my Father had to upgrade our PC so we could play this. Still one of my favorites to this day. Great vid.
An aptly spooky game for a spooky day! I'm glad to know a little more about this one, especially how it affected other markets at the time and how other games after it were adapted. Nice work!
Thanks!
I think that Phantasmagoria Prey it’s only a nightmare 1995 is a much better Haunted House Video Game and the same thing with Nancy Drew Message in a Haunted Mansion 2000.@@Cannotbetamed1
It's crazy that a game that I originally bought on cd can now be played on my cellphone
Great content! This brought back some memories. And you have an really soothing voice. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Went looking for the original soundtrack just so I could have the "Skeletons in my Closet" song from the end.
I saw an advertisement of this game in a magazine here in Brazil, at that time I could only dream of games like that because they were expensive and I only had my SNES and NES.
I was surprised to learn this game cost $100 usd when it came out. That seems like a fortune.
In Mexico, I saw an actual copy back then in a computer store, along with Myst. But I didn't have a CD-ROM drive in my PC.
Yeah... I recall basically the same thing.
But then at a local mall there was stand where the guys sold a lot of OEM CD-Roms, like when you buy a computer or a multimedia bundle, but they didn't have the box. Just the CDs and Manuals.
That opened a whole new door
The fan-made sequel "The 13th Doll," in which you revisit the Stauf mansion, was also released today on Steam and GOG. I played it a bit. It retains the puzzle style, FMV style, and the campy tone of the original game. And it adds the ability of walking freely in the mansion in first-person view. It even has Stauf played by the same actor. And of course, it has improved graphics, up to 2160p resolution.
I always love how informative your reviews are, touching not just on the game itself, but also its impact on the industry. It's definitely much appreciated.
Unfortunately, my family didn't have an actual PC until I was about 15 (1999), so I wasn't able to have the pleasure of experiencing many of the now classic PC titles. I was a console child... even though I did want to play the PC games too.
I do have this game in my Steam Library, as someone gifted it to me awhile ago. I'll definitely be checking it out now. Thanks!
That’s great, I hope you enjoy it
Oh, one of my favorites. I was excited to see this review come up. Still have my 11th Hour CDs somewhere....
Very informative and engaging video. Really enjoyed the commentary about the puzzles
Thank you
When this came out back in the day I had a major problem solving the gypsy riddle. Cool review, thanks for taking me down memory lane :)
This game was AMAZING back then. We wanted it so bad but didn't have a CD ROM yet. I bought it later for very cheap
Im glad i found your channel,the games you talk about give me ideas on what to play :)
Welcome!
I absolutely loved this game. The piano puzzle I ended up solving by using a highlighter on my computer screen with numbers. But this game gave me my love for puzzle games.
I remember playing this game on my first dos pc - my Gateway 2000 486dx2-66! The game was revolutionary back then! It was one of my first “must haves” when I started building my gaming collection. Thanks for bringing back some good memories!
I grew up with a PC and played T7G just after release, the main issue many PC players had was lack of available ram and type of processor (if you owned a CD drive). I learned the hard way, during the DOS era that there were 2 types of RAM, XMS and EMS.
Got a new 486 at home in high school just before this came out, and I bought the Creative Labs "multimedia kit" (2x CD-ROM drive plus Sound Blaster Pro card,) basically just for this game with my own money. I lost the original game box over the years, and the VHS tape of behind-the-scenes, but still have my original CDs. (Disc 1 is too scratched to be readable, but Disc 2 still plays the CD audio soundtrack part just fine!)
A year or so later, the creators came to a local science museum and gave a talk. A friend and I went - about 40-50 people there. They talked about the process of making the game (technical details, compression algorithms, etc,) and at the end asked how many people had played the game. I'd say about 2/3 raised their hand. "How many have finished it?" Only my friend and I. One of the creators came and found us after the Q&A and told us a secret code to type in to unlock something in the game which I forget now.
One of the highlights from the talk - they discussed how they tried really hard to get rid of the "halos" around the characters that appeared due to the combination of rather cheap blue-screen capture and the attempt at overlaying video on prerendered backgrounds. Then someone had the epiphany "Wait! They're ghosts! Having a ghostly halo around them is fine!"
That sounds like an awesome experience! I read some interviews where they talked about the halos.
I've downloaded the PSVR2 version and clicked on this for a review.... I didn't know it was so old...
Great video 👍
This is the good stuff. I see all those beautiful big boxes in the background, I'd love to see more PC reviews.
Impressive presentation. love the back story. Subscribed:)
Welcome to the channel!
Fun fact: the first cdrom game, The Manhole, was made by the two developers and brothers who went on to create Myst and Riven. Myst was being developed while T7G was finalizing production and T7G was released first. While I liked myst I was a T7G fanatic and always will be. Its what got me into modern pc's (486 atthe time) and back into programming which I started as a kid in the super early 80's on the Atari 400 using Atari BASIC. I went on to become a professional software developer :) To this day it has the best game sound track of all time, imho.
And now it’s gonna be VR! OmG I can’t wait!!!
Great video Pam. T7G was responsible for me building my own PCs for gaming, and in part taking computer science in college. So many good memories and I was blown away by the graphics back then. Also an updated infection puzzle is available for iPads and iPhones as a stand alone app and it was my favorite too, so I think it’s worth the asking price.
That sounds cool, I might pick that up for iPhone
What a great game to bring up this time of year! I remember my friend down the street acquired it close to when it came out, and I was quite impressed. The pre-rendered FMV transitions from one room to another really stood out vs PC gaming up to that point in time. Unfortunately, I think it already required a double speed CD-ROM, and I had shelled out all my cash on a single speed in early 93. Thanks for making this video. I still need to *actually* play it past the cake and chessboard puzzles...
Played this on a Philips CDi in the mid 1990's, loved it.
Me to think it was Summer 1994.
Bring back memories. Was too young to understand most of the puzzles when I played this. Good times.
This game scared the hell outta me, loved it so much
Looks atmospheric and like the storyline. Be worthwhile looking into. Great video
Thanks!
7th Guest VR just dropped a trailer, your welcome, legendary. 7th Guest is in VR now.and it looks amazing. Meta Quest
Hope you have a great Halloween, Pam!
Thanks!I hope you do as well
As someone who played this amazing game for it's time. I love your take on it and does it justice of being what it was for it's time. Thank you for sharing this perspective.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I absolutely loved Myst and would have bought this had I known about this back then. Games of this genre were hard to come by way back then as consoles reigned supreme. They were my favorite. Me and my brothers beat Myst in less than one day. Great video, Pam!
Thanks!
That microscope puzzle was both the joy and bane of my childhood.
truly awesome review PAM
as always Marvelous!!
Thanks!
Thank you for reviewing this. This game was rather elusive to me as I've never heard anyone talking about it despite showing up on "Best adventure game" lists.
Looks interesting, I'll check it out sometime.
Amazing video! My older cousins showed me this game when I was very young and it scared the shit out of me.
Thanks!
I just had a random memory of this game. I loved it.
found this video because I just bought 7th guest on psvr 2 and I wanted to see what the original was like before I play the remake or reimagining or whatever. This was so informative and well done! Iove finding new channels that I like. Instant sub.
Welcome to the channel!
@Cannotbetamed1 thank you. I've watched a few more of your vids & your work has me inspired!!
I know the video is several years old, but I was really hoping to hear more about the microscope Othello game. Its not just that the sucker was hard, it would be impossible to play on today's computer processors.
People were either trying to slowdown their PC or use online tools to help them as the years passed. From looking into it a little, it seems like in rereleases (1.05), they've tweaked the puzzle to make it doable. Beats me though. I have the original in its box upstairs afraid to get it out after the beatings I took as a teenager.
First time watching your content. It was quite enjoyable.
Thanks!
Awesome video Pam!
Thanks
This was my favorite game as a kid!
I don't suppose you've covered "The 11th Hour" yet?
Good job with this video :)
Nope, I've never played The 11th Hour
Great job with the video The 11th Hour is well take what you didn't like about the 7th Guest add finding random objects and add more AI games aka the Microscope puzzle which are even worse now because unlike in the 7th Guest you can't skip the AI games.and voila you have the 11th Hour. I remember eagerly anticipating it for 3 years and after playing it was like what a letdown
@@Cannotbetamed1 While i strongly advise you to "not" play the 11th hour... a part of me could imagine and also would like to see you do a review / rant about the 11th hour :)
I watched a friend play 7th guest but played 11th hour myself. That one stuck with me!
My aunt had this game when I was five or six. It creeped the shit out of me and I was fascinated by it. The character Stauf's name is clearly a reference to Faust, but the weirdest thing is that I vividly remember the character being named Faust. I don't think I even knew the reference at that age. I actually Googled "90s PC horror puzzle Faust" to find this game again because I couldn't remember its name.
I remember the insane puzzles of this game. Nice review 😊
Thanks!
My mother and i used to play this ! Loved this game. Creeped me out though. Thanks for reviewing. Enjoyed the breakdown
Glad you liked it!
And here it is. Thanks!!
No problem
Amazing job on an amazing video
Thanks
I stood in Copenhagen in the superstore jawdropped. I had to have both a PC and the game - and to this day it has been the best puzzle I have played. Loved it!
Thanks for the video. Appreciate it
No problem
woah ... I totally forgot about this game, this channel is so awesome, this girl is rockstar
This was a great Halloween video! Also I like how your makep matches your shirt AND chair. Now that's attention to detail! Happy Halloween Pam!
Happy Halloween!
@@Cannotbetamed1 Thanks Pam!
Very appropriate Pam, Happy Halloween. It's raining just like every year growing up. It never stopped us from trick or treating though
It's raining here too, I wonder how many kids will be out.
@@Cannotbetamed1 You know a lot of places now don't even do it anymore, they have these "trunk or treat" gatherings in parking lots. It's really lame, takes the magic out of it. Speaking from just outside Detroit.
Omgosh How did I forget about this one?! 😁 need to find this again! Thx for the reminder!! This was awesome for sure, and yes, better than phantasmagoria! Lol
Love this review! :) Also love seeing your copy of The Lands Of Lore by Westwood Studios (I have that one, too) ;)
Thanks! Lands of Lore is such a good game.
I played this game as a kid when it came out... what's that, 30 years ago?
I was convinced that tin can puzzle was impossible. I eventually got it - hours later. I'll still NEVER forget that solution, 30 years on. This game did NOT play with kid gloves.
Great video!
Thanks!
Always wanted this back then.
I remember playing this game. We even made a bunch of cheat sheets for this game.
I think I borrowed this game from a friend when I was in college. I can't remember much, but I remember that can puzzle and the cake puzzle. The can puzzle took me a couple days to solve, and when I saw the answer, I said you're kidding me. But I had to hear that line over and over say "I don't think you CAN do this". And each time I said "ugh"😏
They also included the soundtrack if you put one of the discs in a CD player, I think disc2. I thought that was amazing at the time.
This looks so familiar! But I can’t place it in my childhood in 1993 🤔 I feel like I’d moved strictly to the NES/SNES by then.
I probably played a PC demo of it because I do recall playing demos of Starcraft, Myst, and Star Wars Rebel Assault.
I like your reviews of these early games. Always informative!
Thanks
This was so good! Great video on a great game!
Thanks Linda
COME BACK! Ok Henry Stauf You don’t need to scream into Everyone’s ears.@@Cannotbetamed1
4:51 "Rebel Assault" was my first CD-ROM game.
Only played "7th Guest" at my friends place. Liked the atmosphere (2:51 creeped me out back then BTW) but couldn`t figure out most of the frustrating puzzles. My parents bought my brother and me our first PC for Christmas 1993. A 486-DX2 with 66 MhZ 16 MB RAM and a single speed 😄 CD-ROM that cost more than 30.000 Austrian Schiling which equals ca. 4.000 $ in todays money. Which is insane 😨
OMG this is so strange. I was just looking at an old stack of PC games that I had back in the day. Games like Unreal tournament, SEGA Smash pack, Star Wars X-wing and of course the 7th guest. I loved this game back in the day.
7th Guest was pure magic. I wish they still would make games that have the same love, atmosphere and style as this one. Yeah, T7G has it's flaws.. you mentioned them already in the vid, but even wandering around in this mansion and discovering all those little spooky mysteries alone was so damn satisfying to ignore these.
Fun Fact: The first concept of this game was written on a napkin, and the only word written on the napkin became the title of their game: "Guest" ;)
Oh wow, this game brings back a lot of memories. The AutoCAD style 3D has a lot of charm looking back at it, but man those puzzles aren't fun glad you pointed that out in your review. Great video.
Thank you
Had this on the Philips CD-I, great game 🎮👍
I had borrowed this game from my cousin but I think I only ever played a few minutes of it. I did play Phantasmagoria 1 and 2. Loved those games.
I played this at some point in my youth. I was prolly about 12. Amazing memories with all the CD-i games. Little Devil, Zombie Dinos..
That damned can puzzle gave me fits in 1993.
Great video! Though whether it’s scary or not is definitely subjective. As a child, it literally traumatised me to the point I wouldn’t walk down a hallway without a light on incase the FMV ghost lady was there. In hindsight as an adult, it looks tame and campy, but at the time when CD technology gaming was so fresh it was immersive.
Even to this day
Every now and then me ir day dad would say
"She was on her way home from quior practise.....but she never got there"
Was a game changer this game.
Box was like a book
11th hour was a floow up I believe
Oh wow.. haven't seen this mentioned in quite a while! It was covered in the multi-format Computing publication ACE Magazine in about 1992 before it's release.
Always found it's concept and tech compelling back then but I was an Amiga user.
I'll have to find the magazine *I do still have it* and make a video about it 👍
I found one article about the game in Computer Gaming World from before its release and the story they talked about was completely different than what was actually in the game.
@@Cannotbetamed1
Interesting 🤔 I'll have to take a look and let you know what it says in ACE and see if their report on it was different?
@@Cannotbetamed1 Feeling Lonely?
I enjoyed it when it was released, a spooky game with full motion video! Then Realms of the Haunting came along, which I still love to this day. These games were pretty ambitious for their time.
- I really recommend the official novelization of The 7th Guest. I got it cheap on Amazon and it goes into more backstory on Stauf and the other guests.
- If you put the PC disc into an audio CD player, you get to listen to the game's soundtrack.
- It stinks that we never got to see a 3rd game. The 1st version was going to be called The Collector and it was supposed to be set in a museum (you can see the teaser footage on RUclips).
Then a few years ago, the game's creators set up a Kickstarter to fund a new sequel and they got the actor who played Stauf to come back for the campaign. They didn't reach their funding so the plans got scrapped again.
A 3rd game did come out. I was by fans, but had the blessing of the original creators, I believe.
Thanks to your enlighted presentation, i don't think i ll play this game (not my kind of puzzle it seems). But, thanks to another of your videos, i bought under a killing moon and i am planning to dive into it in a near future.
Keep those tests up clever damoiselle :)
Hope you enjoy Under a Killing Moon
A port of 7th Guest was planned for the unreleased SNES CD (the one based on the partnership with Philips).
I loved playing this game when I was a kid. I'd love to see it as a VR game.
My father bought this game for me when it was released. It retailed for 79.99 and came with a making-of video on VHS. I loved this game, but it didn't age very well.
yay! i was obsessed with this game in the 3rd grade!
I used to stare at pictures of 7th Guest in gaming magazines all the time when it came out. Sadly, I never did play it.
The ads always looked so good.
@@Cannotbetamed1 Apparently Stauff made A Deal with The Devil so that is what is with all of The Bizarre Visions in The Game
I like how you enunciated the word "visages" (rhymed with massages) ... way cooler than the way I would have said it (rhymes with villages), Such a great video on the history of CD-Rom drive adoption.
Thanks!
@@Cannotbetamed1 Of Course in The Original version The Game took forever for The Protagonist to move in The Original Game He moves like A Snail
@@Cannotbetamed1 Phantasmagoria also has A Sequel Phantasmagoria 2 A Puzzle of Flesh but it Sucks The Plot makes very Little sense
@@Cannotbetamed1 The Music is Very Catchy in this Game
I didn't know this game, I think it looks interesting! Thanks for the review. Ps. Your eyes look super beautiful in this video too :)
Thank you
I do remember having this game and beating the game. I do not remember it being $100 so I most have bought it around maybe 95 or 96 when it would not have been as expensive.
Great vid! I believe we got this one on sale back in the day... I certainly can't imagine that we paid 100$ for this. Our PC couldn't run it very well either. Maybe I'll play the mobile or Steam version of it now. Liked and subscribed.
Just so you know. The mobile version skips the microscope puzzle, and that’s a real shame. When you do win, you get rewarded with a great jazz song called “Skeletons in my closet”. It can also be found on RUclips.
@@mareky1234 Thank you for the tips!