I'll keep my thoughts on this sparse, as I am currently nursing my wound. You'll see why soon.
Most of us have that one gaming demon. You know, that one game that we've all wanted to beat for years, but never really found the time to do so. Me? Well...
I've played the original I Spy Spooky Mansion many, many times as a kid in libraries; my elementary school brain couldn't get enough of thrilling and forced rhyming laundry lists of random scattered objects carefully snuck into cluttered backgrounds. But I never did beat the game, because you know, I was a kid and there's only so much time you can plausibly spend at the library gaming instead of reading and checking out books. So, last year, I decided to try and right that wrong, and attempted to run it on Windows 10, only to run into some classic incompatibility jank on Halloween. I more or less threw in the towel that year, and settled for the next best thing that I remembered this year; the Wii remake of I Spy Spooky Mansion that I streamed when my friends demanded some shuddering content.
For the most part, this is pretty by the books hidden object I Spy, just with a first person 3D environment and a Wii Mote. You walk around the interior after being locked in with no explanation, and solve hidden object puzzles by clicking on objects listed in riddles to piece back clues and figure a way out of this purgatory of jilted rhyming schemes and constant loading zones whenever you click on doors to travel between areas. There's also the occasional motion controls minigame that you'll have to deal with in order to fulfill a requirement for an item listed in the riddle; they'll give you the set-up for the motions required in case it's not obvious or you forget halfway, but it's your usual motions of stirring, grinding, shaking, etc. It's unfortunately loaded with recycled content, as you'll have to solve a hidden object puzzle three times in each environment, and there's no hint system if you brain fart and can't pick out that last missing object, but you'll generally scrape by with enough patience. The cartoony "spooky" sound effects, playful smatterings of assorted memorabilia to find, and mysterious yet charming skellington host "Skelly" keep the whole affair pleasant enough, even if at some point you are quite literally just going through the same motions.
With that being said, fuck the spinning plates. I can't believe some maniacal overlord at Scholastic would inflict such grueling torture upon innocent children trying to click on the seven seastars. The third iteration of that minigame requires you to get three spinning plates on the same screen in the "green zone" of spinning at the same time, and you can only spin one plate at a time. The spin meter of each plate also decreases once you're not actively spinning that plate, so every second counts; it's pretty much a given that you need to pause the game just to frame one select the next plate to spin, and even then you'll need to go back to old plates to respin after they fall into the red. This was all done while my right arm became a windmill and was constantly whirling and twirling the Wii mote strapless struggling to maintain momentum and quickly entering carpal tunnel syndrome territory for arms and elbows, if that even exists. Maintaining composure for the whole exercise was like forcing an injured performer (in this case, my right arm) to get up over and over while the whip kept cracking down over circus music playing in the background. I swear I'm not kidding when I say it took me more time and considerably more pain to beat the triple spinning plates than it took to beat Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby this year. The triple spinning plates changes a gamer forever.
Anyways, my wrist is on its last legs trying to muster up the remaining energy to type this out, so all I'll say is this... I haven't given up trying to complete the original PC game, and I'll find a way to make that run someday. But that'll be for next year. You win this time, I Spy Spooky Motion Controls Mansion. I'll lick my wounds in the meantime, and be back and hungrier than ever.
Happy Halloween everyone. Hopefully you guys didn't spend it in as much agony as I did.
Most of us have that one gaming demon. You know, that one game that we've all wanted to beat for years, but never really found the time to do so. Me? Well...
I've played the original I Spy Spooky Mansion many, many times as a kid in libraries; my elementary school brain couldn't get enough of thrilling and forced rhyming laundry lists of random scattered objects carefully snuck into cluttered backgrounds. But I never did beat the game, because you know, I was a kid and there's only so much time you can plausibly spend at the library gaming instead of reading and checking out books. So, last year, I decided to try and right that wrong, and attempted to run it on Windows 10, only to run into some classic incompatibility jank on Halloween. I more or less threw in the towel that year, and settled for the next best thing that I remembered this year; the Wii remake of I Spy Spooky Mansion that I streamed when my friends demanded some shuddering content.
For the most part, this is pretty by the books hidden object I Spy, just with a first person 3D environment and a Wii Mote. You walk around the interior after being locked in with no explanation, and solve hidden object puzzles by clicking on objects listed in riddles to piece back clues and figure a way out of this purgatory of jilted rhyming schemes and constant loading zones whenever you click on doors to travel between areas. There's also the occasional motion controls minigame that you'll have to deal with in order to fulfill a requirement for an item listed in the riddle; they'll give you the set-up for the motions required in case it's not obvious or you forget halfway, but it's your usual motions of stirring, grinding, shaking, etc. It's unfortunately loaded with recycled content, as you'll have to solve a hidden object puzzle three times in each environment, and there's no hint system if you brain fart and can't pick out that last missing object, but you'll generally scrape by with enough patience. The cartoony "spooky" sound effects, playful smatterings of assorted memorabilia to find, and mysterious yet charming skellington host "Skelly" keep the whole affair pleasant enough, even if at some point you are quite literally just going through the same motions.
With that being said, fuck the spinning plates. I can't believe some maniacal overlord at Scholastic would inflict such grueling torture upon innocent children trying to click on the seven seastars. The third iteration of that minigame requires you to get three spinning plates on the same screen in the "green zone" of spinning at the same time, and you can only spin one plate at a time. The spin meter of each plate also decreases once you're not actively spinning that plate, so every second counts; it's pretty much a given that you need to pause the game just to frame one select the next plate to spin, and even then you'll need to go back to old plates to respin after they fall into the red. This was all done while my right arm became a windmill and was constantly whirling and twirling the Wii mote strapless struggling to maintain momentum and quickly entering carpal tunnel syndrome territory for arms and elbows, if that even exists. Maintaining composure for the whole exercise was like forcing an injured performer (in this case, my right arm) to get up over and over while the whip kept cracking down over circus music playing in the background. I swear I'm not kidding when I say it took me more time and considerably more pain to beat the triple spinning plates than it took to beat Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby this year. The triple spinning plates changes a gamer forever.
Anyways, my wrist is on its last legs trying to muster up the remaining energy to type this out, so all I'll say is this... I haven't given up trying to complete the original PC game, and I'll find a way to make that run someday. But that'll be for next year. You win this time, I Spy Spooky Motion Controls Mansion. I'll lick my wounds in the meantime, and be back and hungrier than ever.
Happy Halloween everyone. Hopefully you guys didn't spend it in as much agony as I did.
5 Comments
😂
I actually forced my wrist into hard labor as well this Halloween, but slightly gentler as I was just writing kanji into a lookup dictionary for several hours.
I actually forced my wrist into hard labor as well this Halloween, but slightly gentler as I was just writing kanji into a lookup dictionary for several hours.
@Nightblade: I sympathize with your pain from back then, maybe I shouldn't have tried to finish the game all within a day...
@cdmcgwire: As unfun as that might sound, I still think it would have been far more productive than spending an hour spinning plates with emulated motion controls. Glad your Halloween went well though!
@cdmcgwire: As unfun as that might sound, I still think it would have been far more productive than spending an hour spinning plates with emulated motion controls. Glad your Halloween went well though!
The original PC versions of ISpy were goated. If you can get Treasure Hunt working, it had this uncanny, vacant atmosphere that left a huge impression on 6-year-old Raccoons
Yeah, I remember the original I Spy Spooky Mansion on PC being the absolute bomb and this review of the Wii remake is in no way meant to throw shade towards the original. Treasure Hunt was fantastic too, I beat it many years ago and felt so damn proud of myself.
Nightblade
1 year ago