For my latest trip into the most horrific section of the Internet Archive, I played The Dark Half (1992, Capstone Software).
The Dark Half was released as a tie-in with the movie version of Stephen King’s novel of the same name. I have read that some people consider The Dark Half to be one of the worst games of all time. If I can ever figure out how to get out of the cemetery, I will tell you if they are right.
You play writer Thad Beaumont, who used to write under the pen name of George Stark. As a publicity stunt, Thad and his wife hold a mock funeral for George Stark in the local cemetery. When the game starts, Thad has just discovered that someone has dug up George’s grave.
The game uses a standard point-and-click interface, the type that was once very popular but which seems clunky by today’s standards. By clicking on right side of the screen, you can walk over the groundskeeper and have a conversation with him.
The groundskeeper does not have much to say about “them Yankees” but he will unlock the shed for you. Going into the shed, you can get tools that I think will help you later in the game. The problem is that they do not help you get out of the cemetery which is where I’m running into trouble.
As soon as you leave the shed, this happens:
At first, I thought that was George Stark killing Thad but, according to a walk-through that I found, that is actually George killing the reporter who was sent to cover his “burial.”
This scene is followed by this:
That is a blank screen. Creepy music plays in the background while you get to stare at the blank screen and it just keeps on playing. I have literally counted the minutes that I have spent staring at the screen and listening to the music before getting annoyed and ending the game. The longest that I’ve gone is 8 minutes. There is no text nor pictures, just the most droning and repetitive music imaginable. Is this a glitch that only effects the Archive version of the game or did The Dark Half really come with an 8 minute-plus musical interlude? I’m hoping that someone reading this post can tell me. I would like to play the game but there’s only so much time that I can devote to staring at a blank screen.
Following the death of her husband, Susan Gordon (Karen Black) relocates to Los Angeles with her teenage daughter, Megan (Rainbow Harvest). An angry goth girl who always wears black and bears a superficial resemblance to Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, Megan struggles to fit in at her new school and quickly attracts the unwanted attention of the school’s main mean girl, Charlene Kane (Charlie Spradling). Fortunately, Megan has an old and haunted mirror in her room that can not only bring her rotting father back to life but which Megan can also use to kill all of her tormentors.
Jeff Mills (Tim Daly) is an attorney who might be unlucky in love but who still owns a copy of every movie that Frank Capra has ever directed. (There is even a scene where two of his friends are seen looking at his movie collection and saying, “He’s got every movie Capra ever made!”) Miranda (Kelly Preston) is the beautiful and mysterious woman who Jeff saves from an abusive boyfriend. Within minutes of meeting her, Jeff invites Miranda to say with him in his apartment. For Jeff, it is love at first sight but his friends (Rick Rossovich and Diana Bellamy) worry that Jeff is getting in over his head with a woman about whom he knows nothing. Weird things start to happen in Jeff’s apartment and a woman (Audra Lindley) shows up in his office, taunting him about how she dug up his mother’s bones and used them in a black magic ceremony. Eventually, Miranda confesses that she is on the run from a Satanic coven that was planning on sacrificing her but is she telling the whole truth?
In 1964, the state of Wyoming executed Charles Forsythe (Viggo Mortensen) for killing another inmate at Creedmore State Prison. Forsythe was innocent of the crime but the only other two people who knew, a prisoner named Cresus (Lincoln Kilpatrick) and a guard named Eaton Sharpe (Lane Smith), kept silent. Twenty-three years later, Cresus is still an inmate and Sharpe has been named the new warden of Creedmore. When a group of prisoner open up the old execution chamber, Forsythe’s electrified spirit escapes into the prison and starts to kill the prisoners and the guards, one-by-one. A convict named Burke (also played by Mortensen) understands what is going on but can he get anyone to believe him?
For the crime of having murdered over a 100 people, “Meat Cleaver Max” Jenke (Brion James) is sentenced to death and sent to the electric chair. Even though everyone thinks that Max was electrocuted, his electricity-fueled spirit is still alive and pissed off. If this sounds familiar, that is because it is the exact same premise that was used in 
A year and a half ago, serial killer Ivan Mosser (Lyle Alzado) was sent to the electric chair for murdering 23 people. On the night that he was electrocuted, the worst prison riot in American history broke out. The prison was closed and abandoned. A year and a half later, a film crew has entered the prison to make a women in prison film. Robert Edwards (Anthony Perkins) is the sleazy director. David Harris (Clayton Rohner) is the screenwriter who fights to maintain the integrity of his script and who is an expert on the prison’s history. Susan Malone (Deborah Foreman) is a stuntwoman and David’s girlfriend. And Ivan is the murderer who is still half-alive and full of electricity.
Through the Shattered Lens 