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Post by Discoalucard on Jul 12, 2015 20:30:13 GMT -5
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Post by llj on Jul 13, 2015 12:05:27 GMT -5
Don't know if Doralice specifically qualifies as being black, but it is unusual and admirable to have a darker-skinned female protagonist in a 90s game, something which seems extremely rare even today.
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Post by hammerofham on Jul 13, 2015 13:44:07 GMT -5
Ha! Those low pixel nude pics are taken directly from the November 1989 Playboy. They're of the centerfold, Renee Tenison. Was that ever stated or indicated anywhere in the game?
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Post by Discoalucard on Jul 13, 2015 14:15:55 GMT -5
American edition? They probably swiped them, I don't recall it given any specific mention or branding.
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Post by starscream on Jul 13, 2015 14:34:08 GMT -5
Fascination is a multi-platform title, it's also on Amiga and Atari ST. Don't know if Doralice specifically qualifies as being black, but it is unusual and admirable to have a darker-skinned female protagonist in a 90s game, something which seems extremely rare even today. I suppose black protagonist itself was already not exactly common. This is an aspect that earlier 80's work from Muriel Tramis already had, e.g. in "Freedom" the protagonist is a black slave. |
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Post by toei on Jul 15, 2015 14:09:10 GMT -5
Don't know if Doralice specifically qualifies as being black, but it is unusual and admirable to have a darker-skinned female protagonist in a 90s game, something which seems extremely rare even today. Doralice looks like she might be a Créole woman from the carribeans. This would make sense, as Muriel Tramis, who wrote and designed the game, is herself a black woman from Martinique. I did a bit of searching out of curiosity and there's actually a good deal of information about her in french on the web, full articles, old tv interviews on youtube, etc. I found out I was actually familiar with some of her work; she is one of the creators of the Adi series of educational software and games, which was very well-known and popular in France and here in Montreal (Canada) when I was a kid. It's also worth noting that her first two games, Méwilo & Freedom, were co-written by Patrick Chamoiseau, a reknowned french writer, also originally from Martinique. He went on to win the Goncourt, the highest litterary award in France, for his masterpiece Texaco. |
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Post by Discoalucard on Jul 15, 2015 20:46:43 GMT -5
That's really cool! Is any of this information available in English?
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Post by toei on Jul 15, 2015 22:22:53 GMT -5
Patrick Chamoiseau, who co-wrote her first two games, has an English wikipedia page, raving NY Times book reviews, etc. Everything I can find about Muriel Tramis is in french, though. The Goblin games seem to have been well-received in france and she was pretty involved in marketing them. Based on the interview I`ve watched and her (very detailed) french wikipedia page, she had a rather interesting career. She originally studied in engineering in Paris and worked in that domain for five years, something having to do with the "optimization of drone maintenance procedures" (I'm translating from french so some of those terms might be off). She didn`t like it and went back to school to study marketing and communications and was hired by Coktel Vision to do a market study. As a fan of adventure games, this inspired her to start making her own games, which led to full-time employment at Coktel. It seemed to have been a pretty small operation; she even designed manuals, while the company's CEO, Roland Oskian, was also involved in developing the Adi series and actually created the character (look up Adibou on youtube or dailymotion if you`re interested; this was an iconic character to children growing up in the 90s in the french-speaking world). Coktel Vision went through a complicated series of buyouts and whatnot and eventually folded in 2005 (that much is on its english wikipedia page); she left in 2003, at which point it was owned by Vivendi Universal, and founded a small company named Avantilles back in Martinique. From what I gather they create digital mock-ups, educational animated videos, maybe 3d recreations of antillean cities for the tourism industry; I'm not too clear on that part.
There's also talk of a new adventure game named Fragile-Fatale being in pre-production, though I don't know if that project's still active or not.
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