Retro PC: Personal Nightmare

After several years of not playing it, I decided to play Personal Nightmare again. I remembered the last time I had played this game was a long while back when I was in elementary school. I thought it was cool because it’s a horror game and I love horror. Yes, as plain as that statement may be, I try to play anything that is in the horror genre such as Alone in the Dark and Dangerous Dave. I had these on my Packard Bell and ran them well. Man, I love retro.

Released in 1989 by Horror Soft, Personal Nightmare deals with secrets and the inability to escape the feeling that there is something going on. There is something that has gone terribly wrong and you have to set out in order to find out what that is. You venture through and attempt to find out what everyone else knows, even though they are reluctant to let you in on the secret. And what is this about vampires and a spooky manor down the street? I decided to find out exactly what this house was about but I wasn’t able to thoroughly inspect it because my character was too terrified? I guess. I went to the other side of the street and was shooed out by the gardener. He practically used the pitchfork and shooed me away. I don’t know about that gardener; he may be a little too violent or has anger issues. They need to do some background checks before they hire. Maybe the force of darkness is too heavy there? The force is strong with that house.

The gameplay now can seem pretty repetitive and dull but you have to compare it to the games of that were available then. It gave you choice and the idea of running around town to find out what exactly was going on. I felt a little lost in the controls at first but my mouse was enabled and the directional pad in the left upper corner of the screen allowed for easy movement. You had to interact by using text and commands so I had to research a bit before playing in order to find out exactly how to use it.

The graphics were awesome and reminded me of the other games I played then. The game allowed you to exercise choice, even though you would die if it got late. The screen would fade to black and a pasty face would appear. It wouldn’t necessarily scare me but it was a lot better than just seeing ‘Game Over’ in bold letters. I figured that I was eventually going to be eaten by the vampire instead of turning vampy. I’m just glad there weren’t any glimmering or sparkling ones around.

I loved this game then and now, even though Elvira is on the load up screen. It was easy to get and I downloaded it from GOG.com. I used DOSBox and was able to run it on my XP computer pretty well. I’m glad I can add this to the retro games I currently have in my collection. I kind of wished it had zombies but oh well, I can’t have zombies on my computer all the time.

Tags: adventure Crystal R. fpp Horror