Once upon a time there was a man who heard strange voices...
Psycho Killer is a video game on the Commodore Amiga CDTV and MS DOS, released in 1992, developed by Delta 4 Interactive and published by On-Line Entertaiment, the same people who brought us The Town with No Name.
The game's plot is simple. A woman goes into a car and drives, but suddenly runs into the titular killer. The protagonist also goes driving, but her car blocks the road and he has to stop. After that, we see the woman being kidnapped by the psycho, and our hero goes into the woods to save her.
The game plays like a Point-and-Click Adventure Game, you have to use the directional pad to move the pointer, pick a direction (left, up or right) and see as FMVs happen. Sometimes it's necessary to click something in time, for example to stop the car or defend yourself from the eponymous killer.
A sequel was planned, and apparently it would be "all in your mind", but it was never released.
Not to be confused with the Talking Heads song.
This game provides examples of:
- Antagonist Title: The title obviously refers to the killer, who's the Big Bad.
- Ax-Crazy: The PSYCHO killer.
- Big Bad: The titular psycho, Morgan James, is the one who kidnaps the girl, leading to the hero saving her and defeating him in the end.
- Carry a Big Stick: After losing the machete to the flames, you walk around the forest for a bit and then arm yourself with a sufficiently large branch, which you use in the final battle against the killer.
- Damsel in Distress: At the start of the game, you see a girl being kidnapped by the killer.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Most of the game takes place in a forest.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: If you crash into the parked car at the beginning of the game, it inexplicably explodes and you die.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The killer's voice is very deep, almost on an impossible level. The creators might have used an audio filter.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The narrator uses "sugar" as a stand-in for exclaiming "shit" out of fear on multiple occasions.
- Have a Nice Death: "Now my name is carved is stone... the ground is my eternal home."
- Machete Mayhem: The killer ambushes you with one as you're trying to cross a bridge, but you kick him in the face and force him to drop it. You later use the machete to attack the killer when he has a Molotov Cocktail, although it slips from your hand and gets engulfed in the flames in the ensuing struggle.
- The Many Deaths of You: Downplayed. There's quite a few different death FMVs, but almost all of them are caused by the killer.
- Molotov Cocktail: One of the weapons the killer attempts to use against you. As the developers are British, the player character identifies it as a "petrol bomb".
- Never Found the Body: After the killer supposedly drowns, it's said they never found his body. Even though the news article in the end outright states that the killer is dead.
- No Name Given: We don't know the names of the hero or the girl outside of the end credits. The killer may be named Morgan, due to a weird sequence where a man says "Morgan... Are you too weak to kill?".
- Multiple Endings: There's a not-as-well-known alternative endings:
- You can simply start your car again and drive away at the start.
- If you check the train time table at the station and go to the left platform and wait for a train to arrive. You can board the train to escape the killer, but the ending states that he proceeded to kill the girl and four others. You can also not board the train and the player will narrate that he doesn't want to abandon the girl. This is rendered moot because doing this (or going onto the left platform without checking the time table first) will lock the game into a loss state as either path you take afterwards leads to the killer getting you.
- Photoshop Filter of Evil: When the killer appears on the screen, the game's colors turn to shades of red.
- Serial Killer: The killer himself. Though it's kind of an Informed Attribute. He isn't shown killing anyone, but the ending newspaper says he's an escaped killer, so he likely caused some deaths before the game's events.
- In an alternative ending, a newspaper headline states that the killer went on to claim five victims.
- Schmuck Bait: Near the end of the game, there's a rather tempting phone, that seems like a chance for more plot or calling for help... too bad that if you go for it, the killer gets you, saying "Hang up... forever!".
- Tom the Dark Lord: In the scene with the Psycho Killer's monologue to himself, he off-handedly mentions his name is Morgan.
- Zero-Effort Boss: After losing his weapon in the final encounter, the killer no longer seems able to do anything to you (and indeed, no matter how long you sit on the screen where he's unarmed, all he does is flail around like an idiot), so the only thing left to do is whack him in the face with a tree branch, knocking him into the water.
