Story:
You’re a director, who is under contract of US Gold and is trying to make a blockbuster movie featuring famous Charlie Chaplin.
First you need to read through the script and sign the contract (you move through the booklet with arrows). Then you need to direct scenes (it doesn’t matter in which order the scenes are shot). While shooting you get to control Charlie. Arrows (preferably numeric keys) move him around and ‘5’ fires.
There are always two things chasing you and you need to avoid, kick, punch them (and make people laugh). After taping of a scene comes the editing. You don’t really do much there. You simply play the scene back and forth and determine the speed.
After all scenes were shot and edited you get to watch it all at the theatre. If the public likes it, it’s a hit and you go on. Otherwise you’re the flop of the movie industry.
General observations:
The game is quite fun and features quite a unique idea. The Graphics are black and white (which fits the mood perfectly) and the only music heard is while the movie is actually in the theatre (soothing). There are some sounds otherwise as well, but they’re not worth mentioning.
All in all the game is nice and should provide some entertainment. I just wish you could edit more, but then again, the game was made in 1988, so they were probably already using the full capacity of the machine.
Firstly of all I have to tell you that this game will not work under WinXP. You’ll need DOSBox and you’ll need to change the machine type to TANDY. It’s possible to play with the CGA setting, but the graphics will be quite bad.
And secondly you must start the overlay.exe file to run the game. Don’t know why, but the Chaplin.exe file will get you a bad disk message.