A little disclaimer in the manual for Brain Dead 13 set the pace for the rest of the game. You are given unlimited lives and will probably need all of them to survive your time here. This is a Full Motion Video Game (FMV) in the style of Dragon’s Lair. FMV games are essentially interactive movies. You control Lance who is a young computer expert who is making a house call to a dilapidated castle. At night. Nothing can go wrong with this scenario, right?

Brain dead simple

Well, this is a game after all. The genius doctor, Dr. Deurosis who has a brain but no body, is planning on taking over the world. The whole idea behind Brain Dead 13 is to give players a lot more interaction with the ongoing cartoon. This was a problem that affected nearly every other FMV game that has been made – lack of interaction. This game pulls another idea from Dragon’s Lair in having some scenes mirrored. This makes it so there are different solutions to challenges you face. That room may have required a press to the left before but now one to the right the next visit.

Brain Dead 13 actually feels interactive

There is also the whole shorter scenes between inputs from the player. This makes it seem more interactive to the player. Especially since most scenes play out in less than 20 to 30 seconds of animation. Most are 5 to 10 seconds before you are required to make another selection. Do not dawdle as you have a limited time frame given per choice. Gamers of today may recognize the interactive points as “Quick Time Events”. You are severely limited on time to complete a button press or sequence.

Ported everywhere

Brain Dead 13 hit plenty of platforms. The PC, Saturn and Atari Jaguar CD versions all were fit onto a single CD-ROM. This compression results in a severe drop in video quality.  The CD-I, 3DO and PlayStation versions all fit onto two CD-ROM’s which gave greater detail to the animation. I played the 3DO version at release and other versions later. Brain Dead 13 has also been released on iTunes and features the best video quality of all available versions so far. There is no known Android port in the works, unfortunately.

Brain Dead 13 is available on eBay and iTunes if you want the iOS version.

This article is archived in the Hive Gaming section of the Hive.blog Blockchain. Check it out for more great content.

Carl Williams

It is time gaming journalism takes its rightful place as proper sources and not fanboys giving free advertising. If you wish to support writers like Carl please use the links below. https://www.paypal.me/WCW https://www.patreon.com/CarlWilliams