New Digital Pictures Documentary Chronicles FMV Light Gun History

A YouTube channel by the name of PandaMonium, who’s currently in the process of making video reviews of every game released for the Sega Saturn in the US, has just released a massive 8-hour documentary video documenting the history of Digital Pictures, the company behind many of the classic 1990s FMV games, including Corpse Killer, Night Trap, and Ground Zero Texas.

This new video comes as a follow-up of sorts to the 80-minute video he released a few years ago that was strictly focused on Corpse Killer (which is excellent in itself,) but the new documentary features several interesting pieces of new information that weren’t in the Corpse Killer video. For instance, the Sega Saturn version of the game was notorious for not having light gun functionality, despite all the other versions of the game having this functionality, but the documentary reveals legal documents that seem to prove that a second version of the game for the Saturn that supported light guns was already completed and ready to release at the time they went out of business.

This begs the question of if we will ever see a the release of the light gun version of the Saturn port, and since the documentary also reveals that Limited Run Games has acquired all of the company’s old computer data and documents (including unreleased games,) it means this version may be sitting on a hard drive owned by Limited Run/Screaming Villains right now.

Only time will tell if we’ll ever get to play this version, but since they have released some of Digital Pictures’ unreleased ports after the new HD remasters were completed, this may be a reality someday, and I’ve been in conversation with the teams who have access to that data to see if this version can be found and released. Stay tuned for more updates on this as the files are searched.

Aside from all the interesting info about Corpse Killer, the documentary also details another light gun-style game that was also set to be released right as the company went under in 1996, called Maximum Surge. While the Saturn version wasn’t planned to have light gun functionality, the gameplay feels like an advanced version of Corpse Killer’s gameplay, and a remastered version is set to release sometime in 2026 on all the modern platforms, so a PC version might be playable with light guns when this happens.

You can watch the full documentary below, and hopefully we’ll be able to play the Saturn light gun version of Corpse Killer as well as Maximum Surge sometime in the near future.