The Black Dahlia opens tomorrow

I remember the puzzles in Black Dahlia being pretty tough. I never really liked spending lots of time on puzzles, just wanted to get on with the plot, so I think I just got a guide. They had to snailmail it to me since I didn't have the internet then!

Can't remember much about the ending... other than it was pretty creepy. But I do hear people saying they were dissapointed by it in reviews. Still the journey getting there is great

While I was pretty shocked at how quick the ending came up in the game, I suppose in a way it sort of made sense to me. The only frustration I found was that there apparently wasn't enough evidence for Pearson to prove to the detective that Winslow existed. Seems like the evidence on the movie clip right before the ending would have brought up some further investigation.

As for the movie, I saw it last night and it enjoyed it quite a bit. Quite a few similar aspects to the game; I'll probably get it when it comes out on DVD. Nothing like a movie like that to boost my investigative thirst.

Start with the Invitation from the notebook and place the three symbols side by side anywhere on the top level. It doesnt matter where as long as you have the correct sequence in the end. After that you're not going to be able to know where all the pieces go until you put the symbols in that you do know where they go first. You're kind of using process of elimination.

I'm gonna start playing Black Dahlia tonight. It will probably be a month before I get to the gem (if I get that far).

You can start assembling it at the beginning of the game it's called the Bag of Runes in your inventory.

Yep. I forgot about that. But it will be a while before I get through the tombs.

Here's something else I can't remember: Can you get through the tombs in a different order? If so, does that write the runes in the notebook in a different order, yielding a differently ordered gem?

I started playing last (from about midnight 'till 2am.) I got past the stained glass and I'm just about to call Louie. I love the scene when we first meet Helen. The actress' performance is wonderful the way she plays the nerdy, but love-sick graduate student.

You can go through the tombs in a different order there by making the notes in your notebook a different order but that has nothing to do with the rune sequence, just like you can get Ask Abouts in Tex Murphy a different order but they still do the same thing.

Sadly, I haven't played Black Dahlia although it's one I had wanted to grab years ago. I'm going to have to hunt that down.

I like what I've seen in the movie trailers so I expect I'll be sneaking off to the theaters one of these nights.

Something I had forgotten about until I started playing Black Dahlia again - The Black Dahlia murder in Hollywood wasn't until 1947 and it consisted of only one (albeit, sensational) murder. The Black Dahlia game begins in 1941 and in Cleveland. It turns out that there was another series of grizzly, unsolved murders called the Torso Murders.

The game ties the Black Dahlia to the Torso Murders and, hence, spans 6 years. Since the Black Dahlia and the Torso Murders remain unsolved, and had certain similarities, they actually were some theories that tied the two crimes together, as in the game.

The movie, however, is confined to the Black Dahlia.

Bjyman, do you mean to say that, even though the notes may be in a different order in the notebook, the ordering of the runes as they appear iin the notebook will still be the same, no matter what order I visit the tombs?

Exactly.

I picked up Bd off ebay last year, very hard puzzles but I tried to play it again under xp & but found mouse pointer leaves trails all over the screen which I couldn't solve so I gave up, couldn't find any help anywhere on solving this problem

...under xp...found mouse pointer leaves trails all over the screen which I couldn't solve so I gave up, couldn't find any help anywhere on solving this problem

There's probably a better way to do this (like DosBox), but I have a sort of extreme solution that works with most any version of Windows. I run Win2000, and couldn't even get the installer to work. So here's what I did and what you can do:

Buy another hard disk (they're cheap nowadays), unplug the XP disk and plug in the new one in. Install a different OS. For instance, Black Dahlia (and Tex Murphy, for that matter) will run on 95, 98 or ME.

When you're done playing, swap the drives back and it's like you never left. That's how I've been playing BD and TM lately. The problem with this solution (besides the inconvienience of swapping disks) is that, depending on your hardware, you might have trouble with drivers for the CD, sound and video cards. But most still recognise Legacy drivers.

well actually what I did before was just install a new hard disk & installed 98 & then installed all the old games on it, worked fine for a while & I don't know what happened but I just started getting memory problems so I went back to xp & changed the drive to fat 32. Used multiboot on floppy & just booted into full dos . The only problem then was couldn't find a program to work to load my virtual cd drives under dos so I got a new faster pc so I could use dos box a lot better. Now the HD/DVD version came to light, too bad the timing was out.

My version of bd is a windows version as dos files have been disabled,well I can't run in dos anyway. the readme file states they changed the program due to people not having a pure dos enviroment.