Earlier this year, actor Paul Morgan Stetler of Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh fame revealed that a fan had acquired VHS tapes containing all of the movie scenes (with dialogue) from the game, and was in the process of digitizing them. Stetler has now posted some of the digitized footage to his YouTube channel, Conversations With Curtis.
The resulting VHS transfer is of much better quality than the compressed interlaced FMVs that are currently in A Puzzle of Flesh, which in reality, shouldn’t be a surprise. You can actually see texture in clothing, and the framerate is obviously improved. It still feels like a cheesy B-movie, but that’s all part of the charm.
The original idea of digitizing this footage (other than for preservation purposes) was in hopes that somewhere down the line, we’d see a remaster of A Puzzle of Flesh. That in itself might be the tricky part. Fan demand is one thing, rights issues are another. Developer and publisher Sierra Entertainment no longer exists, having been folded into Activision. Of course, you could always fall back on the fans, with those with the programming know-how theoretically creating a mod that inserts the remastered footage into the game.
But until then, we’ll have to see what the rest of the footage looks like. And in the meantime, seeing as it’s that time of year, why not treat yourself and revisit A Puzzle of Flesh on GOG or Steam?
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