Animation Magic - Chill Manor (1996)

 

Developer: Animation Magic
Console: MS-DOS
Game Release Date: 1996-10-16

Continuing the 'random' posts, here is one from a game a beat several months ago. This is for the obscure MS-DOS game, Chill Manor. 

Chill Manor is mostly known for being the sequel to I.M. Meen, set sometime after with an all-new cast. I hadn't even heard of it till I was playing MeenTC. While I.M. Meen is a legend in the YouTube Poop community this game is completely unknown.  

It's a shame too as I think it's not that bad for an entertainment game. 

Originally I was going to wait and hope that the guy behind MeenTC would eventually port Chill Manor too. Unfortunately, in the forum post for MeenTC he wrote that it likely won't happen due to issues ripping assets from the game. 

While waiting, I found three things that helped me rationalize actually playing the game. I found that the game was shorter than MeenTC (35 levels in Meen, 20 in Chill) a way to better control DOS games (AntiMicro + Controller + King's Field-style controls) and an easier way to autolaunch DOS games. 
Plus, I am good at history so I knew this wasn't going to be too hard. And, I hate I.M. Meen so much that I would want to need to do the sequel just so I could BTFO him again (Meen is one of the best written villains ever, btw). 

Chill Manor also briefly makes a cameo in MeenTC with the bonus level being the first level from Chill Manor (and it ended up being one of the best levels in the game). It also had the best weapon in the game (the staff). 

With all that convincing done I finally set up Chill Manor and gave it a shot. 

Chill Manor is an educational FPS for the MS-DOS, developed by Animation Magic, published by Simon & Schuster Interactive. It is a direct sequel to I.M. Meen, focusing on Meen's wife, Ophelia Chill. Having fleed from Meen's library after the assault, she has  stolen the Book of Time and has begun to rewrite history in her image. It's not up to 4 children from across time to stop her. In Ophelia's Labyrinth are 20 floors, each with scattered pages from history. 

The player is to obtain each page, correct all the errors and then escape each level. The agent is equiped with the staff of time and can find plenty of other weapons that Ophelia hid around her labyrinth. Each page of time has notes on secrets in the map but with all secret buttons and walls appearing on the map it's pretty useless. 

I had the difficulty on hard but never really had an issue. By the end I had maxed out grenades, stocks of all weapons and plenty of healing. If you go for all secrets you are pretty much set and indestructable. A large amount of items I never even got to use because I just had so much of other stuff. 

Nay, the only difficulty I had was with DOSBox-X and regular DOSBox having issues running the game. At first it ran too fast, fixed that with CPU cycles. Then the game would occasionally crash when loading a level or just randomly crash and the screen would glitch out. It wouldn't even be a DOS-issue. The entire EXE broke. I had to force close it with the Task Manager. What I ended up doing was to load my save, then switch CPU cycles and save often.

That wasn't even the worst technical issue I had. At Level 7, The Hall of the Oasis, I got soft locked. For reasons I never found out (maybe it was some anti-piracy thing, maybe it was emulation fuckery because the game would crash randomly) when I spawned in the level I spawned in an area that was impossible to leave. It spawned me in the wrong area so I was trapped. It spawned me like halfway through the level so you'd get stuck and not be able to open any doors.

After trying many different methods from cheat engine to hex editors and changing emulators I gave up. I was soft locked. Because of my genius I also didn't have any backup saves from the level before so I was just SOL. I completely dropped the game for a month or so after before coming back and starting all the way from level 1 again, this time using all the save slots. 

When I got to Level 7 again it had again spawned me in the middle. However I found a glitch earlier in the game that I was able to utilize. I don't know exactly what caused it but if I left the game paused for, say 3 minutes and then moved a direction I would teleport several metres in whatever direction. This allowed me to bypass doors and pause buffer through walls. By doing this I was able to get free. 

If by some chance this was an anti-piracy measure then they could have at least said it somewhere. I think it's just possible I had some emulation issue, probably running the game with some setting wrong. 
Then I continued on and eventually beat the game, unloading all the stored grenades I had on Ophelia, killing her in 20 seconds. 

The game ends on a cliffhanger. Unfortunately, the 'unofficial' third game in the series Math Invaders, may have nothing to do with Meen. I don't know for sure though, it's even more obscure than Chill Manor.

I intend to play the 'third' game, Math Invaders at some point soon. As of lately I haven't been playing much. I usually stop gaming around summer, instead spending more time outdoors.

 
As for the game's soundtrack...I didn't listen to it. I played nearly all of I.M. Meen just using it as a conduit to listen to rap albums. Not to say it didn't have a good soundtrack but I was more interested in other music. I went into Chill Manor with the same opinion. Plus, I had to re-do the entire game once, I wasn't interested in hearing the soundtrack. I've listened to bits and pieces here but ehn. If ManorTC ever comes out I'll actually listen to the soundtrack. 

That aside, here were the best albums and the ones I associate most with Chill Manor now. 

Hus Kingpin - Bjorkingpin [Side A and B]

Hus Kingpin is a rapper I have been aware with since 2015 but was never interested. I didn't really care until 2021 when he dropped 2 albums made entirely out of Bjork samples. This intruiged me and I just had to listen to them. These two albums are by far some of the most unique hip hop I have heard this year. It's got these relaxed, hauntological and icy beats that compliments Hus' vivid poetic descriptions and bars. The only issue I had was that there were some really bad songs on both tapes but I was able to amass a 32-minute mix of the best ones. I still listen to it often, months later. I haven't yet but next trip I go on I will be bumping his Portishead remix album.

The Alchemist & Boldy James - Super Tecmo Bo

I've known about both these artists for a while but never really checked them out. I've heard Boldy on his Detroit River Rock song and knew I would eventually have to give him a chance. First 48 Freestyle was incredible as well (a camp-defining song for me). So, when playing this game I flipped a coin and picked this Alc and Boldy album. And it's really good. Between Alc's ethereal drumless beats and more hype (but still minimal) sounds and Boldy's deep and almost-spoken word type flows they compliment each other perfectly. At only 25 minutes it doesn't overstay it's welcome either. 

A-God the Old Soul & Whiskeyman - The Honest Pour

A-God's last record, Water for Shadows was an honourable mention for MeenTC. While the EP was okay, it had some really good songs. A-God has since followed it up with another EP, produced by Whiskeyman that blows Water for Shadows out of the water. Whiskeyman provides these jazzy and more energetic beats while A-God does his thing over them. Lots of self-analyzing bars, religious ones and general constant subject-changers A-God does well. 

There were other records I listened to while playing but those 3 were the most defining ones. Honourable mentions go to Pro Dillinger's 2021 EP, Soul Foul and OT the Real & DJ Green Lantern's Broken Glass album.