No, it’s not really, but it should be.
My wife and I were sick this weekend, so we shuffled down to our local library and checked out some DVDs. One of the DVDs was The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, which we were surprised to discover is actually a videogame that plays on a normal DVD player and has slightly more interactivity than the latest Final Fantasy games (you can pause at any time, and you can skip forward AND backwards!). In the game, you play the titular piano tuner, and you have been hired by some sort of evil count or duke or psychiatrist or something to wander around his Myst-style island and “tune” all seven of his automatons before the next lunar eclipse. From the plot, it seems like the “normal” ending is that you tune all seven of the automatons and then go on your merry way and he uses them to take over the world or whatever, but the “best” ending is that you talk to the other people in his mansion and learn his secrets, and then you specifically “mis-tune” all of the automatons to do the very opposite of what he wants and foil his evil schemes and save the beautiful opera singer that he has enslaved. Unfortunately, since this is the Quay Brothers’ first foray into videogames, they spent too much time on the plot and the amazing graphics, and really didn’t put much work into the gameplay, so it’s only possible to get the “worst” ending, in which you don’t tune all of the automatons in time and you get stuck inside one of them. I was able to talk to the other people quite a bit, and intentionally mis-tune one of the automatons, but honestly that all pretty much happened without me touching the controls at all.
I really wish the Brothers Quay had asked me for a hand on this one, because it has a lot of potential and with only a little bit of gameplay tweaking this would have Game of the Year written all over it. More than anything it makes me want to remake it into the incredible game it was meant to be, but my version wouldn’t be nearly so pretty because I just don’t have the artistic skills of the Brothers Quay. Stephen, Timothy, if you happen to be reading this, drop me a line and maybe we could help each other out.