The Spoony Experiment

FMV Hell – Johnny Mnemonic

by Scarlett on November 30, 2007 · View Comments


Take a tour of the FMV games I grew up playing and learn how they scarred my existence! There’s more to come, and we’re leading up to a full-length review of one of the oddest FMV games ever made! Now we tackle the most dreaded of the FMV titles: the interactive movies. We begin with Foxhunt and continue on to one of the rarest and most difficult games to run: Johnny Mnemonic.

He’s a data courier in a future that hasn’t invented e-mail or thumb drives, and if you touch the computers your head explodes. Jeez, even in the future nothing works. Will Johnny ever find the rest of his computer so he can start tracking down that damn download code? And will it do him any good since every computer he touches melts his brain?

Only Chef can provide those answers, so we head to the Lo-Tek headquarters to hack our own brains and to get our hands on some chocolate salty balls!

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  • cynic667
    love the lil music-clip from the Burton-Segment... Fountain OST, when I have heard it right. Clint Mansell/Chronos Quartet FTW!
    Somehow seeing all this FMV I should be happy that i hadn't a PC until this fad was over ;P
  • Harry417
    I was in Hollywood Video the other day and I swear to God that I saw "Mad Dog McCree" on the Wii.
  • Kyle Reese thanks you for the wonderful gun!
  • Zeitona
    To Maniac:
    DosBox is pretty much the answer to all this old (and often shitty) games ^^. Unless it's not meant for DOS, those games that aren't old enough to be old, nor recent enough to be new... those can be a bitch to run
  • Zargon
    Whatever happened at 11:26 and forth, that scene is hilarious.
  • Soundman
    Does Spider say Skronk at 22:10? :\
  • Busterdrag
    I know I'm stupid, but was that comment about Ripper honest, means do you really like the game or was that just a joke?
  • HSM
    I lol'ed at the Mask of the Red Death reference at the very end.
  • dm_stealth
    UAKM tried to keep most of the relevant transitions/rooms on each disc, but yeah you're right. If you were unlucky enough to travel to a location that's stored on another disc, uh oh change time! The most memorable was the phonograph in Tex's office... if you accidentally examine that you have to change over to the first disc, then back to whatever disc you were on. The fact that it was a great game compensates though. Access did better with the sequel (Pandora Directive).
  • rofl at the se7en reference with the head in the box
  • Niouxsie
    "I'm trying to tell you how much I admire you". I love Burton.
  • Christopher Ryan
    Was spoony planning to review Minority Report next, or was that just for the Se7en joke?
  • AdamDuffield
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH This was hilarious if only for the fact that Im studying Se7en for my Film Studies Course :L:L
  • HapexIndustries
    Wha-a-a-at? No mention of Quantum Gate? That was the first real FMV game I sat down and played, and if I remember right it would play out differently depending on what decisions you made. I'm pretty sure that for a while there it was included with a lot of CD-ROM's (probably when the 2x's were coming out, cause I'm sure it cost 50 bucks when it was brand new); I remember at least 3 friends having it, too. Quantum Gate actually stuck with me my entire life, the memory and the empty jewel case ironically, as the endgame sequence TOTALLY BLEW MY FUCKING MIND.

    UTTER SPOILERS

    I don't remember the specifics, but you're on some alien planet fighting what appear to be giant insects or some shit. You can even go outside into the deadly environment with a special suit and a helmet that "renders" all the insects into crude polygons (or sprites, more likely) so you can blast them. Well, at the very end of the game (maybe 2 hrs of playtime?) your suit has been compromised and initiates an "auto-euthanasia" protocol and you take off your helmet and see the aliens for the first time and they are fucking angels. I'm not putting that in all caps cause eyes would be directed straight to it but oh my god fucking beautiful winged humans. I was like 12 and it blew me away. Maybe a lot of it is nostalgia, but it made a permanent impression.
  • CConfire
    Oh... I remember Foxhunt. It was beyond awful. I never got past the hospital stage, the game was just too annoying to finish.
  • Zack Dolan
    so wait a minute...does this game actually have any legal or marketing ties to the film? if so, why didn't they just use the footage they arlready shot instead of all this hackneyed poop? and if it wasn't and came out before or after...WHY MAKE IT AT ALL????!!! WHO THE HELL WOULD WANT IT?!?

    and i agree. live actors were the worst thing to ever happen to video games. they were all community theatre rejects that couldn't get jobs as extras on baywatch nights. remember the live actors in FMV's for the first resident evil? oh god i piss my pants every time I or one of my friends brings up the old chestnut "barry?...WHERE'S barry!!!???" or "blood..I hope this isn't...CHRIS'S...BLOOD!!!" hahahah. it's like they all went to shatner school

    man, seriously though, this game looks more annurism inducing than sewer shark. though am i the only one who finds it funny that in the movie, the rebel leader dude is played by Ice T...which means having chef play him in the game makes it so he's the only character played by a BIGGER ACTOR than the hollywood movie?!

    spoony is one fuuuuuuunny mother...hush yo' mouth! ...just talkin' bout spoony baby
  • Rmaggedyn
    That guy from Foxhunt was on MadTV. He played Keanu Reeves a few times.
  • Badly-Drawn Manchild
    Actually, I've just remembered that "Space Pirates" game appeared once in an episode of GamesMaster here in the UK. The person who played it though didn't do very well. :P
  • BrUS
    Lol, bet the only reason there are so many Chinese people in this game, is because of the big sum they had to pay out to "Chef". Yeah... I'm like totally are prejudical racist... sorry....

    Still... Peace, love and rainbows and shit, though :)
  • OniYouji
    Wow...this was quite the obscure, almost surreal review. It was very informative. Though Indigo Prophecy had popularized it, or at least brought it into the mainstream, Black Dahlia, Ripper and Under A Killing Moon all sound really interesting. Now, if only I could run those...I'm already shelling out too much money on visual novels, now I have to get into interactive movies.

    By the way, who else is hyped for Heavy Rain?
  • Mariofan3425
    What is the ending where you don't die
  • Maniac
    How the heck do you get the secret ending in this game? I've been playing it as intensely as I can and still can't figure it out. Help!
  • malkavian
    is it just me or were there a dozen Discworld book under the minority report game?
  • rigby
    i think the street preacher guy is jonny knoxville. i really do. i am almost certain that that is him. please look.
  • Chione
    I flipped out at the Final Sacrifice reference.

    ROWSDOWER!!! :D
  • Emran
    does he do the minority report review?

    What is the origins of the "lord of Tekken" joke?
  • Maniac
    Spoony spoony spoony...

    You got me intregued. So intrueged I actually shelled out 5 bucks on amazon (with 3 shipping) to buy a brand new sealed copy of this game, just to say I actually played it. However, while I've been calling everyone I know to see if they kept their old legacy machines, or still had any of the legacy machines I gave them (I had a really good p1 133mhz 16 mb system in 97 that now I wish I kept).

    So my question is, if I have to run an emulation layer on a dedicated test pc (and the only test pc I have which I wouldn't mind destroying the os by accident since there's nothing important in it is a Win 7 64 amd athlon2 64bit x4 8gb 1066 system. How the heck do I get it running?
  • SCSLJeStEr9000
    its BLAST HARDCHEESE!!!! lol I fuckin love MST3K
  • Neeeeeeeeeerd
    What are 3.5 MB floppies? I know about 3.5 inch 1.44 MB floppies, as well as 5.25 inch 1.2MB ones.
  • Sigma
    Thanks for the reminder on one of my favorite Playstation games of all my early teens Noah. I've been combing your reviews for some time now to dig through the fog of my mind to unearth the name Fox Hunt for some time now. I just found it on Amazon for $20 too.

    Say what you will about the game but I'll pay $20 for a somewhat entertaining slice of my childhood brought to my door, only to have those fuzzy memories rendered to bloody gibbets by the cold unfeeling reality that awaits me. I'll probably enjoy it anyhow.

    Thanks.
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