Early resurrection edition screenshot
About a year and a half ago, we ran news on an interesting and unique project that aimed to resurrect an unreleased title from the mid-1980s. Originally titled The Spectre Files, this was a project that Midway game designer Brian F. Colin was working on back when the company was looking to jump into the laserdisc train. Unfortunately, as Brian discusses in the video below, Midway decided to use a decidedly silly variation of the laserdisc, CEDs. Between that and the rapid collapse in laserdisc style games, The Spectre Files was canned and it seemed that it would never see the light of day.
With the resurrection on the horizon, we’ve been waiting for news on this and on Halloween 2017, it came as Galloping Ghost unveiled the launch of The Spectre Files: Deathstalker at their arcade. The video below features Mr. Colin discussing the development along with the resurrection project, then we get to see it in action. One part about this game that I didn’t realize until watching this was how much content they created for it. Not just film sequences but items that your character can grab to affect the game later on. Doc Mack mentions this in the video but also has told me how he’s been playing this game a lot and still finds new sequences or items that he missed from previous plays. That is great for replay value, making it non-linear when you wouldn’t expect such a thing from a Choose Your Own Adventure/Interactive Fiction arcade title. More details on the release are found below but if you want to see it in action first check here:
If you’re into intentionally cheesy 80s horror, adventure, detective NOIR, humor, FMV games or all of the above, then this looks to have something for you.
The Spectre Files Release
Doc Mack did state that the game is available now through Galloping Ghost Productions. A price has not been finalized yet but interested parties can contact him at ghostlordATgallopingghost.com (just change the AT to a proper email @ symbol). It is important to note that they are planning on a very limited run release for it right now – around 10 units is the number he shared. That would also be for the kind of dedicated cabinet shown in the video above; Galloping Ghost will also be designing a deluxe cabinet for the game with some additional ideas to make it stand out. While coin-op, it should be easy to run as free play in case you are interested in adding this to your home collection.
What are your thoughts about Deathstalker? We would especially like to hear them if you have had a chance to play it already. Share below!
Adventure games only work at home or as a mobile app. A mobile app would be a difficult port, because a lot of video content has to be loaded from a dedicated server.