More on the Phantasmagoria chase scene after watching a playthrough on youtube... I finally pieced together how it works.
Spoiler:
a. There's a way to get the item mentioned in point 4 above, before starting the chase. If you happen to ALSO get a hold of the book, there isn't a chase at all. You jump straight to the end where you get captured, so you can use the item to get free again.
b. If you happen to grab the item before or during the chase but miss the book, the chase commences, but you will always end up dead. When restarting, you're in the room where the book is, and the only thing you can do is to grab the book or die on the spot; if you get a hold of it, the sequence continues as in A.
c. The only way to experience the entire ending as it was intended, is to NOT get the item from point 4 before the chase, but make sure you CAN get the book (somehow... frantically clicking). Then the chase commences, you find the item, get captured, free yourself, kill the antagonist, and then play the final scene.
Now I can put this (controversial) classic to rest for good
Also, I seem to have lost my mojo for city builders. I've been doing Caesar 3, but it just seems I'm too good at it. I know the exact sequence of events needed to obtain a never ending stream of money (exports, taxes), and what is required to build up housing and industry.
Building a city to meet the campaign requirements is not a challenge for me; it just takes a lot of time.
I've bought some Caesar 3 successors at Gog.com (Zeus, Pharaoh, expansions), and other city builders releaed in the last 20 years, but I think I'm not going to even download them again.
I'm thinking of wiping them off my drive and even ask gog.com to remove them from my library, along with all the other games I've bought at 50-90% sales of which I thought 'might be interesting someday,' such as a Dungeons and Dragons RTS.
I think I'm only going to leave the games I'm 100% sure to play, either because I want to play them (Infinity Engine games, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age...), or because I think they're interesting; dark stuff in the vein (ha!) of Phantasmagoria, such as Scratches (2007) and Sanitarium (1998). And some outliers I've enjoyed in the past, such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Yes, I think that this is what I'll be doing; after cleaning out my paper books, music, software, physical stuff as much as possible, I'm going to also clean the game backlog to contain only the ones I'm definitely going to play.
I don't mind that I've paid €1 to €5 for the games I'm going to have removed, because I love gog.com's drm-free serivce: "You buy it, you own it. Do with it whatever you want, but please don't upload the games to be pirated. Thanks." They patch games up to the latest version. Also, they patch the games in such a way that they run on modern computers (if old games), already integrating community fixes, and even build DOSBOX around DOS games if needed. It takes hours and hours of internet scouring, patch searching, and fixing/config hacking out of your hands.
I love that. After I removed the games, they'll have maybe €25 extra or so. I don't mind that. I want them to stay in business. If a game doesn't appear on GOG.com, I don't buy it. I don't have any steam games except for the four I got to choose for free.