Interactive film

An interactive movie is a video game genre featuring full motion video of either pre-filmed animated or live-action footage.

This genre came about with the invention of laserdiscs. The first was the coin-op aracade game Dragon's Lair which was a pre-filmed full-motion cartoon, where the player controlled some of the moves of the main character. For example, when in danger, the player was to decide which move or action, or combination to choose. If he chose the wrong move, he would see a 'lose a life' scene, until he found the correct one which would allow him to see the (predetermined) rest of the story. The only activity the user had was to choose or guess the move the designers intended him to make. Despite the lack of interactivity, DL was very popular and addictive.

When CD-ROMs were embedded in home computers, games with live action and full motion videos with actors were considered breakthrough, and some interactive movies were made. Some notable ones (which unlike DL are considered adventure games) are Voyeur, Star Trek: Klingon, Star Trek: Borg and Psycho Detective. Interactive movies were pre-filmed with real actors like movies, and followed a main storyline. Some few alternative scenes were filmed to be triggered after wrong (or alternative allowable) actions of the player (like 'Game Over' scenes).

Unfortunately due to the limitation of memory and disk space, as well as the much time and high cost required for the production, not many variations and alternative scenes for possible predicted player moves were filmed, so the game didn't allow much freedom and variety of gameplay. IM's thus were not replayable after once finished.

Because of all these, and after the evolution of the more flexible 3D graphics, IMs were soon forgotten.