"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" is remembered as one of the most successful anthology series on American television. In its honor, in 1993, Toyota developed "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", the video game. Yes! The car manufacturer and Hitchcock together in a game that, believe it or not, has nothing mysterious about it.
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was the most successful anthology series on American television. It aired between 1955 and 1962, with a total of seven seasons and two hundred sixty-eight half-hour episodes. Every episode began the same way, with Hitchcock making jokes and presenting stories of drama, suspense, and mystery, starring various celebrities of the time such as Steve McQueen, Tom Ewell, Vera Miles, and Barbara Bel Geddes, among many others. The success of the series allowed it to expand to fifty minutes per episode in 1962, and it was retitled "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour", with a total of three seasons and ninety-three episodes. The series finally concluded in 1965.
The striking thing is that twenty-eight years later, in 1993, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", the video game of the master of mystery, came out, which would "attempt" to honor the series. And I put "attempt" in quotes because you might expect a graphic adventure of suspense and mystery, which would be most fitting for this case, but reality turned out to be something else, a very lamentable one.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the video game
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" is a game for the 3DO console where Alfred repeats his role as host but in a very strange way: speaking Japanese! Once the presentation is over, the game begins, which is nothing more than an unoriginal version of the classic Memory game, with a 3x4 grid, with several cards where you have to try to find matching figures before time runs out.
When you succeed, a clip of Hitchcock speaking (in Japanese, of course) is revealed. Simple, and nothing more than that; a poor memory game. If you think that's the strangest part, there's still the best to come: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was developed by Toyota and distributed by Panasonic in Japan during 1993. It's strange to try to find a connection between the master of mystery and a car manufacturer since the game has the least amount of mystery and cars.
Perhaps there is a hidden message in Alfred's words that only the Japanese can understand, but who knows. There are rumors of a North American version, but so far there is no information to confirm it. Even so, let's be honest, who would want to play this game?
