A Nostalgic Look at the "horrifyingly bad" F13 by Stephen King (1999)

STEPHEN KING'S F13: CTRL, ALT, ...SHIVER!

In today's video, we're covering a forgotten horror-themed multimedia package from the late 90s with none other than Stephen King's name etched into it.

Stephen King's F13, published by BlueByte and developed by Presto Studios (Journeyman Project, Myst 3: Exile), released in 1999 for Windows 95/98 PCs was in many ways an absolute cashgrab shovelware product. Shoddy games that bring even a state of the art PC of the time, a small handful of lackluster desktop backgrounds and system sounds, a handful of screensavers that "don't save your screen", and one (very decent), previously unreleased novella by the man himself.

But despite it being such an obvious dumpster fire, I can't help but love it. The idea behind the horror of the "Mysterious, never-before seen F13 key on your keyboard" (never seen a F1-F24 keyboard I assume) is just so campy and the presentation is so peak 90s Multimedia Boom, that I have a deep nostalgic fondness for it. Today, let's unbox it and install it on my vintage PC and explore the MANY (few) things this strange package has to offer.

CTRL, ALT, SHIVER!!!

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Special voice over guest: Gianni Matragrano
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Collection Chamber's F13 Virtual Machine Pre-Package:
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Time Codes
00:00:00 Intro: The 90s Multimedia Boom
00:02:41 Dramatic Cover Text Reading by Gianni
00:03:42 Unboxing
00:06:51 Intro and SCREAM-savers
00:13:18 DEATHtop Backgrounds & Sound Effects
00:14:50 The FUNHOUSE: Three Games in ONE Package!!
00:18:04 Everything's Eventual Novella
00:19:50 Epilogue: That's it!
00:23:18 Collection Chamber Shoutout
00:23:58 Credits and Backer Thanks