Chalk this one as another “don’t play anything else until I get to the end” game. The year was 1993, and the game was Sierra’s Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.
Written by Jane Jensen, whose games I’ve never missed after this one, GK is a mature adventure game, set in New Orleans. The main character, Gabriel, is a horror novelist who begins to investigate a recent succession of apparently Voodoo-related murders, in order to get inspiration for the plot of his new book. Little does he know that he will get much more personally involved with them than he ever thought possible… or desired.
What made the game so good? To begin with, atmosphere. The city felt more “alive” and mysterious than in almost every other game – especially when you start to unravel some of the game’s mysteries, everything suddenly begins to be seen differently – even the most commonplace things.
The writing, itself, was very, very good. While Jensen would get even better in later games (and books), she was already great at this time. The characters were wonderfully designed, with personalities, flaws, personal histories, and great voice acting – including Tim Curry, Mark Hamill (a.k.a. Luke Skywalker) and Michael Dorn (Worf from Star Trek). The puzzles were original – at the time, many graphic adventure games still had simple pixel hunts, “fedex” quests, or “use this object on that object then use the combined object on that object”. Here… nah, I won’t spoil you. 
It was also educational – in a good way. Most of what I know about New Orleans and Voodoo, I learned from that game – including a bit of the history of both.
An amazing soundtrack, too. Tribal drums, piano, lots of jazz, even some classical music, not to mention “classic” movie music. The soundtrack is still great to listen to, today – doesn’t sound “dated” at all.
You can probably get the CD version (yes, there was a multi-floppy version, too. Remember floppy disks?) quite cheaply, these days, and there exist some unofficial patches to make GK work in Windows 2000 / XP. It’s a brilliant game, along with its two sequels – which will be also appear in this blog soon.
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I still have such fond memories of this game, playing it along side my friend both of us trying to solve the burial mound puzzle ( 12 and 3 turn the key, I heard the madman say.) The amazing voice acting, the killer soundtrack, I mean hell, 13 years later and I still find myself humming the main theme to myself on occasion. My mind still wanders as to some of the backstory only alluded to…. ( The three quests, why both father and grandfather died when their child was eight)
I still hope and pray that some day, Jane Jensen will return to the series, and take me back to Rittersburg, and on another amazing adventure of occult history.