Sanitarium (video game)

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Sanitarium
Image:Sanitarium Coverart.png
Developer(s) DreamForge Intertainment
Publisher(s) ASC Games (1998)
XS Games, LLC (2002)
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date USA April 30, 1998
2002 (re-release)
Genre(s) Adventure game
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: T
BBFC: 15
Media Compact disc (3)

Sanitarium is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1998 by ASC Games. A psychological thriller often praised for its atmosphere and originality, Sanitarium tells the story of a man, Dr. Max Laughton, stricken with amnesia, trying frantically to unveil the details of his institutionalization in a terrifying asylum. The search for his own identity - and the truth - takes place within the grounds of the sanitarium and in the main character's delusions and flashbacks, as he confronts the ghosts of his past. The dark mood and graphics of the game are matched by an equally ominous musical background.

The game uses a third person perspective and a non-tiled 2D navigation system. Each world from each of the 9 chapters (over which the game spans) carries a distinct atmosphere that presents either the real or imaginary world of the main protagonist. In many cases, it is unclear to the player which of these worlds the game is currently in play. This indistinction underlines much of the psychological horror portrayed in the game.

Contents

[edit] Chapters

The Tower Cells
Max, after the car crash, awakens in a massive, dark, panopticon-styled tower in what appears to be an insane asylum.
The Innocent Abandoned
Max arrives in what appears to be a small, run-down town apparently populated only by severely deformed children - with a gigantic, hideous and infectious creature, only called "Mother", behind the scenes.
The Courtyard and Chapel
Max, after having dealt with the Mother infection, somehow ends up back in the asylum. Here, he meets more other patients and the head of the MERCy Drug Corp, Dr. Jacob Morgan.
The Circus of Fools
Max, now in the body of his deceased sister, Sarah, is sent to a bizarre island containing nothing but a carnival and its despaired employees, struck hard by the squid creature.
The Cave
Max, still in the body of Sarah, delves into a cave beneath the island to confront and eliminate the Squid creature responsible for all the deaths of the people in the circus.
The Mansion
Yet again in Sarah's body for the last time, Max arrives at a spectral, shifting house inhabited by ghosts of the past, which was, in fact, Max's original home.
The Laboratory
Back in his regular body, Max explores the laboratory of the enigmatic Dr. Morgan - all the while unraveling a shocking and horrifying truth behind the DNAV virus, the HOPE drug project, and the world's current situation.
The Hive
Now in the body of an enormous, four-armed, and goat-legged cyclops named Grimwall, Max finds himself in a grotesque colony of gigantic, sentient, cyber-enhanced insect-like creatures, with Gromna and the Queen pulling the strings in the background of a far more sinister plot.
The Morgue and Cemetery
Back again in his normal form, Max wakes up inside an abandoned morgue in a long-forgotten cemetery.
The Lost Village
Transforming into an ancient Aztec god-warrior named Olmec, Max must save an Aztec village from an erupting volcano and the wrath of the god Quetzalcoatl.
The Maze
Still in his god-warrior form, Max ventures deep into the ancient cave system deep below the Aztec village in search for Quetzalcoatl's death mask to once and for all defeat the tyrannical Aztec deity.
The Gauntlet
Now fully aware of what's been happening, Max struggles through a nightmarish amalgamation of his past adventures, making use of his alternate selves he had back then.
Morgan's Last Game
Max, having passed the Gauntlet, now must fight one last battle against the evil trapping him in this world in order to escape into the real world - that is, if he can get past his mirror image first.

[edit] Max's amnesia explained

The flashback details Max's past. The first event was in his childhood, when his sister Sarah died due to an incurable illness, caused by the DNAV Virus, when he was bringing out a carnival toy for his sister before she became ill. Years after that, his father wanted Max to pursue a career in medicine in the hope that he would be able to one day find a way to avert the tragedy of his sister's death. When he was at medical school he befriended Dr. Morgan, the creator of the HOPE Treatment, a means of prolonging the time it takes for the DNAV Virus to claim a patient's life. Eventually, Max was able to work with Morgan and find a way to create his own cure. This, however, would render Morgan's treatment obsolete. Morgan, afraid that Max will take away his prestige, tries to deter him but fails, and so in a last resort attempts to murder Max. The cure was successfully created after he learned about how the Aztecs survived a plague without modern medicine. But when he left the lab, the car brakes failed from sabotage and Max was left in a coma.

However, Max survives and becomes aware of Morgan's intentions. After regaining his memory, he was able to turn the tables on Morgan and prevent the poison from killing him, leading to Morgan sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder. Max releases the cure, ending the DNAV virus for good, and spends a happy life with his family and their newborn child.

[edit] Easter Eggs

[edit] Mad Programmer Outburst

Inside the main program file, sntrm.exe, on the XS (pre-patched) version of the game there exists a humorous outburst as a possible error code, on what would be line 774 if the file were interpreted as text, when searched by the utility grep:

c:\sntrm_k.txt ERROR: Invalid NPC ID --> All resources == 0 Stupid Dumbshit Goddamn Motherfucker! Unable to find encounter keyword %d '%s' in encounter %d No portrait for this encounter. Goodbye. (NOTE: This outburst seems to be a reference to the popular song 'Bad Habit' by The Offspring.)

[edit] Developer's Graves

In Chapter 7, The Morgue and Cemetery, some headstones contain the names of people associated with the development of the game. Clicking on the stones will trigger narration of a name and a funny epithet. More developer headstones appear in Chapter 9, The Gauntlet. Developer headstones can be distinguished from headstones relevant to gameplay because the last name on a developer's headstone will be abbreviated to a single letter.

[edit] Red herrings

Three literal examples of red herrings exist in the title. The second chapter features a hut with a large paint impression of a red herring on the roof, the character states his disappointment of the fact it contains no useful items or objects. The third chapter features a man with a large red fish in the asylum courtyard, who will begin dancing when a certain record is put on, but otherwise offers no real help or aid to gameplay. The other instance of a red herring exists in lost village chapter and is found in the water temple after you enter, Olmec verbally mentions how it must be useful due to its 'crimson color'.

[edit] Dialogues Remix

Inside the file RES.001 (entry #40) there is remix music which is only played during the credits after the game is completed. It won't be played if the credits are viewed from the main menu. This remix is composed of various NPC dialogues. The file can be downloaded here: RES.001_40.zip [5.12MB]

[edit] External links