Description
In 1834, in the small New England fishing village of Illsmouth, the
distinguished British scientist Lord Boleskine lost his mind. After studying
ancient manuscripts of evil repute, he had travelled to this place to
observe the passing of Halley's comet. What he observed that night, however,
turned him into a raving lunatic. Now, 76 years later, Halley's comet is
coming back, and young astronomer John T. Parker has travelled to Illsmouth
to try to uncover the truth in Boleskine's wild claims, and see the comet
for himself.
Shadow Of The Comet is a unique horror adventure, inspired by
the terrifying writings of
H. P. Lovecraft.
Alternate Titles
- "Shadow of the Comet" -- International title
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Trivia
Shadow Of The Comet is licensed by Chaosium, making it an 'official'
H.P. Lovecraft product.
The development team stated that the game is based on two of Lovecraft's
short stories; 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' and 'The Dunwitch Horror'.
However, there aren't really any similarities between the events in the game
and the events in either of the stories. Also, 'Illsmouth', the town in the
game, is nothing like Lovecraft's town, Innsmouth. (Despite these points
though, I personally think SOTC is a great adaptation of Lovecraft's work.)
Before the release of the game, Infogrames released a demo, which included
a playable section and a rolling demo. The rolling demo featured a lot of
scenes and animations from the game. Strangely, though, almost none of the
material in the rolling demo actually made it to the final game. The demo's
music and title screen were also not included in the final product. For fans
of the game, the demo makes for very interesting viewing.
While in development, many of the game's characters and places had different
names. For instance, Parker was called Carter, Jugg was called Rugs and
Illsmouth was called Isthmuth.
Quite a lot of the characters in the game look very similar to certain
famous movie stars. Some are easier to recognise than others, though...
Lovecraft himself is also cast as one of the characters. He 'plays the part'
of Underhouse.
The CD-ROM version of Shadow Of The Comet (released in 1994) has the
following extra features:
- Full speech
- Mouse control system (although the less said about this, the better ;)
- New intro sequence
- Bonus program: "Visit To The Lovecraft Museum": This program lets you walk around a small museum and examine various artefacts on display, from Lovecraft's stories. It uses the same control system and presentation as the actual game.
Infogrames also claimed that the CD-ROM version added more characters,
puzzles and locations to the game. This is not true. There
are two extra
people walking round the village (a woman and a child), but you only see
them briefly, you can't talk to them, you never find out anything about
them, and they don't appear after the second day of the game. There are no
new puzzles or locations.
Referenced in:
Alone In The Dark
There were a couple of books you could pick up and read in AITD that
described some of the plot of SOTC.
Sequel:
Prisoner Of Ice
This entry to the MobyGames database was contributed by
Sam Jeffreys 
(3331) on May 23, 1999.
