Escape From Monster Manor (Panasonic 3DO)

 

Escape From Monster Manor (Panasonic 3DO) :

When I got my Xbox Series S a couple of Christmasses ago, I had no idea that it would open the floodgates to thousands of games that I had been waiting to play for ages...but a few months after buying it I happened upon a video that told me about the Xbox's Dev Mode, and the emulation possiblities that it offered.  One purchase of a portable HDD and much transferring of game files later, and I was finally able to emulate lots of machines that were beforehand unavailable to me....including the Panasonic 3DO!

I had experienced the wonders of the 3DO many years before when visiting a friend of a friend, and for years I wanted to play Need for Speed, Road Rash and whathever the hell that Golf game was that I had played on it....but then I discovered a few horror title gems that had also been hidden away on it.  Including this one!

Escape from Monster Manor is a first-person shooter / adventure, that sees you enter the aforementioned mansion trying to find pieces of an ancient talisman that the owner of the manor had brought back to its halls in order to try and harness the great power within.  

Unfortunately, he kicked the bucket and his descendants scarpered after discovering that lots of evil nasties had filled the manor, looking to find the pieces of the talisman and use it for their own nefarious deeds!

And so now it's up to us to try and piece the talisman back together before the bad guys can get to it.  Armed with some sort of weird electro-doohicky zapper gun, we enter the manor and try to navigate its many corridors and corners, making sure to stay topped up with ammo, health, keys and some random coins and gems that can add to your points or give you extra lives.

Playing the game nowadays, it definitely lacks a bit of sparkle. The manor itself is a bit sparse, with no roof or floor textures and only random pieces of furniture sprinkled around every now and then to give a very poor impression of it being a house. The ghosts and ghouls all have a decidely 2D sprite feel to them, but somehow this does add to their spookyness!  But the game has definitely taken inspiration from Wolfenstein 3D, which I guess is no bad thing.

Despite it looking a bit bare, the sound of the game really helps with the atmosphere.  Unearthly voices, groans and screams fill the air, and spooky tunes play throughout.  Random ghosts will pop up in front of your face every now and then too, which also adds to the feel of things.  

And so in the end, traipsing through the manor is actually a lot of fun, and that early nineties experience you can only get from early CD titles seems to work in it's favour for adding that extra spark of spooky goodness.  Go play it and discover it for yourselves!

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