That Time Hollywood and Gaming Fell Into a Terrible Hole Together

Interactive movies are(n’t) the future!

My original launch day-purchased disc copy of The Last Bounty Hunter, the game I was most hyped for in 1994 for some reason. Photo taken by the author.

Pressing a button at the right time so you can keep watching a movie might not seem like the height of video gaming, but back in the nineties two powerful industries sure tried to convince everyone that it was. They spent a ton of money doing it and it was a complete mess, though it did help create video game ESRB content ratings — and those “quick time event” love-it-or-hate-it interactive cutscenes that show up in so many modern games.

No amount of marketing could have turned this limited style of gaming into a true mainstream powerhouse, and revisiting them now is like stepping into a nightmare filled with awkward outdated stereotypes and bad gameplay. In spite of that, this weird gaming format still got two different chances at life in the big AAA publishing system, and there’s some hope for the future of the interactive movie genre thanks to a burgeoning indie scene.

The False Start

In the early 1980’s, game designer/inventor Rick Dyer, former Disney animator Don Bluth, and the emerging technological wonder that was the Laserdisc came together to create the arcade game Dragon’s Lair — and in the process invented a whole new genre of gaming. Dubbed the “FMV” or full-motion video…