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ith Resident Evil being released on the Gamecube this Friday it seems like a good time to look back at horror games, how they've developed, and where they're going next.
It seems that horror games started out, like many other genres, right at the birth of home gaming, on an Atari console.
Atari's Haunted House actually sounds like an original concept today, some 20 years later. In a haunted house are three pieces of a magical urn, and it's your job to go in and find them. Only it's dark in the house, and your only chance of finding things is by using matches to light up the room for a limited time. Only when the room is lit, you may see tarantulas, bats or ghosts, and if they touch you, you'll be scared to death.
Wizard Video Games had the rights to two big horror movies, and made games from both of them. Halloween had you in a house with Michael Myers, trying to save children and avoid him. He couldn't be killed, just knocked down, and he'd ALWAYS get back up. Secondly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now this is an interesting game idea, you don't play as the hero, you play as the villain, Leatherface. You have a chainsaw that runs constantly. Revving it up wastes fuel. When your fuel is gone, it's game over. You had to slaughter as many people as you could before you run out of fuel. Limited lastability, I'm sure, but it sounded like a fun and novel party game.
Given the thought and imagination that went into these games, it was rather disappointing when many of the horror games that appeared on the NES were dull platformers. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde were perhaps the worst offenders. 'Friday the 13th' at least attempted to scare you, with Jason popping up unexpectedly, trying to kill you.
Whether it can be described as a horror game or not I'm unsure, but Castlevania certainly hadthe characters to carry it off, hunting vampires and the like. It just seems too mainstream, compared to other games with such a theme back in the NES days. Castlevania has had a number of sequels too, taking the series onto N64, PSX and the Gameboy Advance.
The NES was also host to a number of games featuring the classic horror characters, games like 'Dracula', 'Frankenstein', 'Werewolf' and 'Zombie Nation' but none of which were particularly good.
Perhaps the two greatest horror themed games to hit the NES were titles you may not have heard of. 'Monster Party' deserves recognition for it's wicked plot twists at the end of each level, and for featuring the line of dialogue "Sorry, I'm Dead". 'Uninvited' took a first person point and click approach. This was a game that really worked, as you searched the house and encountered ghosts, demons and the like it was really quite chilling, given that scares couldn't be delivered through the graphics, anyway.
If the NES truly beat the Sega Master System on any genre it was in it's quantity of horror titles. I put this down to the deal that Nintendo did with third parties, which stopped them from developing for the Master System.
It wasn't without it's scary titles though. Ghost House was a rather enjoyable game, featuring vampires and a giy with a huge quiff. Quiffy had to destroy all the vampires in the house. Simple but fun.
Less fun was 'Master of Darkness', a typical platformer in which you came across zombies, vampires and the like.
The Megadrive washes flush with horror games either, but Altered Beast was a pretty fine start. An arcade classic, you had to punch out zombies, then you turned into any number of different creatures, werewolf, werebear, werebat - anything you could stick 'were' at the start of.
The Megadrive also got a port of 'Splatterhouse', a game that put you in the role of a Jason Vorhees look-a-like, slashing zombies with a meat cleaver.
Sega did venture deeper into horror territory in their later years though, with 'Mansion of Hidden Souls' on the Sega CD, followed up with the 'House of the Dead' series in arcades.
Back to Nintendo, it seemed that the horror games were dying out when it came to the SNES. The only one that springs to mind was Konami's brilliant B-movie inspired 'Zomies Ate My Neighbours'.
Horror games were soon to be reborn though. 'Alone in the Dark' and 'Resident Evil' came about at a time when graphical standards were good enough to be effective, and at the time these games were original, revisiting themes first suggested in those early Atari games. From 'Haunted House' 'Alone In The Dark' finds it's seeds firmly planted, and the running rather than fighting enemies that won't ie 'Resident Evil' borrows heavily from the concepts of 'Halloween'. Only now was there the processing power to carry it off.
Survival horror was born.
With gaming becoming increasily more appealing to late teens and early twenties age groups in the mid to late 90's more games appeared aimed at this more 'mature' audience. Some just boasting gore to get sales, others that were genuinely creepy. Silent Hill snuck out, and again, horror had moved on. This game was less about making you jump, it was about making you feel uneasy. Psycological horror was where it was at.
The horror games just keep on developing now, possibly faster than any other genre. Eternal Darkness throws insanity effects into the balance, building on the psychological elements seen in the likes of Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark. More than this though, it throws in a storyline any scriptwriter would be proud of, spanning the ages.
The Thing trys something different once again. A game based on the John Carpenter movie, where you have control over a party, but any one of them could be the 'thing'. Worse still, they believe it could be you too.
It's really funny that in the movies horror has been one genre that has become quite stagnant over the years, with very little new, but in gaming it's developing so much.
We're at the beginning of a stage where horror in games can be conveyed much better than it can on the big screen.
For this reason it's great to see one of the games that was a real turning point for horror games make it's way to the Gamecube.
It seems that horror games started out, like many other genres, right at the birth of home gaming, on an Atari console.
Atari's Haunted House actually sounds like an original concept today, some 20 years later. In a haunted house are three pieces of a magical urn, and it's your job to go in and find them. Only it's dark in the house, and your only chance of finding things is by using matches to light up the room for a limited time. Only when the room is lit, you may see tarantulas, bats or ghosts, and if they touch you, you'll be scared to death.
Wizard Video Games had the rights to two big horror movies, and made games from both of them. Halloween had you in a house with Michael Myers, trying to save children and avoid him. He couldn't be killed, just knocked down, and he'd ALWAYS get back up. Secondly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now this is an interesting game idea, you don't play as the hero, you play as the villain, Leatherface. You have a chainsaw that runs constantly. Revving it up wastes fuel. When your fuel is gone, it's game over. You had to slaughter as many people as you could before you run out of fuel. Limited lastability, I'm sure, but it sounded like a fun and novel party game.
Given the thought and imagination that went into these games, it was rather disappointing when many of the horror games that appeared on the NES were dull platformers. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde were perhaps the worst offenders. 'Friday the 13th' at least attempted to scare you, with Jason popping up unexpectedly, trying to kill you.
Whether it can be described as a horror game or not I'm unsure, but Castlevania certainly hadthe characters to carry it off, hunting vampires and the like. It just seems too mainstream, compared to other games with such a theme back in the NES days. Castlevania has had a number of sequels too, taking the series onto N64, PSX and the Gameboy Advance.
The NES was also host to a number of games featuring the classic horror characters, games like 'Dracula', 'Frankenstein', 'Werewolf' and 'Zombie Nation' but none of which were particularly good.
Perhaps the two greatest horror themed games to hit the NES were titles you may not have heard of. 'Monster Party' deserves recognition for it's wicked plot twists at the end of each level, and for featuring the line of dialogue "Sorry, I'm Dead". 'Uninvited' took a first person point and click approach. This was a game that really worked, as you searched the house and encountered ghosts, demons and the like it was really quite chilling, given that scares couldn't be delivered through the graphics, anyway.
If the NES truly beat the Sega Master System on any genre it was in it's quantity of horror titles. I put this down to the deal that Nintendo did with third parties, which stopped them from developing for the Master System.
It wasn't without it's scary titles though. Ghost House was a rather enjoyable game, featuring vampires and a giy with a huge quiff. Quiffy had to destroy all the vampires in the house. Simple but fun.
Less fun was 'Master of Darkness', a typical platformer in which you came across zombies, vampires and the like.
The Megadrive washes flush with horror games either, but Altered Beast was a pretty fine start. An arcade classic, you had to punch out zombies, then you turned into any number of different creatures, werewolf, werebear, werebat - anything you could stick 'were' at the start of.
The Megadrive also got a port of 'Splatterhouse', a game that put you in the role of a Jason Vorhees look-a-like, slashing zombies with a meat cleaver.
Sega did venture deeper into horror territory in their later years though, with 'Mansion of Hidden Souls' on the Sega CD, followed up with the 'House of the Dead' series in arcades.
Back to Nintendo, it seemed that the horror games were dying out when it came to the SNES. The only one that springs to mind was Konami's brilliant B-movie inspired 'Zomies Ate My Neighbours'.
Horror games were soon to be reborn though. 'Alone in the Dark' and 'Resident Evil' came about at a time when graphical standards were good enough to be effective, and at the time these games were original, revisiting themes first suggested in those early Atari games. From 'Haunted House' 'Alone In The Dark' finds it's seeds firmly planted, and the running rather than fighting enemies that won't ie 'Resident Evil' borrows heavily from the concepts of 'Halloween'. Only now was there the processing power to carry it off.
Survival horror was born.
With gaming becoming increasily more appealing to late teens and early twenties age groups in the mid to late 90's more games appeared aimed at this more 'mature' audience. Some just boasting gore to get sales, others that were genuinely creepy. Silent Hill snuck out, and again, horror had moved on. This game was less about making you jump, it was about making you feel uneasy. Psycological horror was where it was at.
The horror games just keep on developing now, possibly faster than any other genre. Eternal Darkness throws insanity effects into the balance, building on the psychological elements seen in the likes of Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark. More than this though, it throws in a storyline any scriptwriter would be proud of, spanning the ages.
The Thing trys something different once again. A game based on the John Carpenter movie, where you have control over a party, but any one of them could be the 'thing'. Worse still, they believe it could be you too.
It's really funny that in the movies horror has been one genre that has become quite stagnant over the years, with very little new, but in gaming it's developing so much.
We're at the beginning of a stage where horror in games can be conveyed much better than it can on the big screen.
For this reason it's great to see one of the games that was a real turning point for horror games make it's way to the Gamecube.
I've not seen "The Thing", but this idea of people not knowing who to suspect sounds good.
It'll be even better if every time you play it, it randomly chooses who is "The Thing", so you get that suspence, suspicion and mystery every time.
It'll be even better if every time you play it, it randomly chooses who is "The Thing", so you get that suspence, suspicion and mystery every time.
They're mentioned in the same sentence as they had the same kind of impact on the genre, and were THAT far ahead of the 'horror' games that came before them, in my opinion.
And was it reaaly 3 years? gee, does time ever fly!
And was it reaaly 3 years? gee, does time ever fly!
Meka Dragon wrote:
> Horror games were soon to be reborn though. 'Alone in the Dark' and
> 'Resident Evil' came about at a time when graphical standards were
> good enough to be effective,
How can you list those two games in the same sentance? Alone in the Dark was released three whole years before Resident Evil, and had its third installment out before Resi hit these shores. The creators of Resident Evil admitted that they had taken a lot of inspiration from AitD when making the game, which was returned when the makers of AiTD: The New Nightmare stole a lot of ideas from Resident Evil when making that sequal.
> Horror games were soon to be reborn though. 'Alone in the Dark' and
> 'Resident Evil' came about at a time when graphical standards were
> good enough to be effective,
How can you list those two games in the same sentance? Alone in the Dark was released three whole years before Resident Evil, and had its third installment out before Resi hit these shores. The creators of Resident Evil admitted that they had taken a lot of inspiration from AitD when making the game, which was returned when the makers of AiTD: The New Nightmare stole a lot of ideas from Resident Evil when making that sequal.
:o)
Fosbe wrote:
> Meka Dragon wrote:
> :o)
>
> I'll tell you what it is Uncle Albert, I wrote this, and another
> post
> at work today, and stuck them on a disk. When I got home I put the
> PC
> on before dinner, and posted these.
>
> Only as I was running in and out of the kitchen, I didn't check what
> I
> was doing, and on both posts, I failed to copy the first letter!
>
> d'oh!
>
> This is shocking!! What an appaling excuse i would never ever spell
> something wrong, i expect this type of writing form a JAT not a
> notable. You have brought shame to the forum.
See it only took me two times to get it right.
> Meka Dragon wrote:
> :o)
>
> I'll tell you what it is Uncle Albert, I wrote this, and another
> post
> at work today, and stuck them on a disk. When I got home I put the
> PC
> on before dinner, and posted these.
>
> Only as I was running in and out of the kitchen, I didn't check what
> I
> was doing, and on both posts, I failed to copy the first letter!
>
> d'oh!
>
> This is shocking!! What an appaling excuse i would never ever spell
> something wrong, i expect this type of writing form a JAT not a
> notable. You have brought shame to the forum.
See it only took me two times to get it right.
Meka Dragon wrote:
> :o)
>
> I'll tell you what it is Uncle Albert, I wrote this, and another post
> at work today, and stuck them on a disk. When I got home I put the PC
> on before dinner, and posted these.
>
> Only as I was running in and out of the kitchen, I didn't check what I
> was doing, and on both posts, I failed to copy the first letter!
>
> d'oh!
This si shocking!! What an appaling excuse i would never ever spell something wrong, i expect this type of writing form a JAT not a notable. You have brought shame to the forum.
> :o)
>
> I'll tell you what it is Uncle Albert, I wrote this, and another post
> at work today, and stuck them on a disk. When I got home I put the PC
> on before dinner, and posted these.
>
> Only as I was running in and out of the kitchen, I didn't check what I
> was doing, and on both posts, I failed to copy the first letter!
>
> d'oh!
This si shocking!! What an appaling excuse i would never ever spell something wrong, i expect this type of writing form a JAT not a notable. You have brought shame to the forum.
:o)
I'll tell you what it is Uncle Albert, I wrote this, and another post at work today, and stuck them on a disk. When I got home I put the PC on before dinner, and posted these.
Only as I was running in and out of the kitchen, I didn't check what I was doing, and on both posts, I failed to copy the first letter!
d'oh!
I'll tell you what it is Uncle Albert, I wrote this, and another post at work today, and stuck them on a disk. When I got home I put the PC on before dinner, and posted these.
Only as I was running in and out of the kitchen, I didn't check what I was doing, and on both posts, I failed to copy the first letter!
d'oh!
Oh my God, I think I've just witnessed something that will NEVER happen again in my lifetime - the almighty Meka Dragon made a spelling mistake in the FIRST WORD of his post! Shocking stuff!
Don't worry though, Meka, I won't mark you down too much on that...these damn keys can get a little sticky sometimes. ;)
Seriously those, thanks for providing me with loads of info on horror games before the 32-bit era...I'm not so hot on my retro games. :)
Don't worry though, Meka, I won't mark you down too much on that...these damn keys can get a little sticky sometimes. ;)
Seriously those, thanks for providing me with loads of info on horror games before the 32-bit era...I'm not so hot on my retro games. :)
ith Resident Evil being released on the Gamecube this Friday it seems like a good time to look back at horror games, how they've developed, and where they're going next.
It seems that horror games started out, like many other genres, right at the birth of home gaming, on an Atari console.
Atari's Haunted House actually sounds like an original concept today, some 20 years later. In a haunted house are three pieces of a magical urn, and it's your job to go in and find them. Only it's dark in the house, and your only chance of finding things is by using matches to light up the room for a limited time. Only when the room is lit, you may see tarantulas, bats or ghosts, and if they touch you, you'll be scared to death.
Wizard Video Games had the rights to two big horror movies, and made games from both of them. Halloween had you in a house with Michael Myers, trying to save children and avoid him. He couldn't be killed, just knocked down, and he'd ALWAYS get back up. Secondly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now this is an interesting game idea, you don't play as the hero, you play as the villain, Leatherface. You have a chainsaw that runs constantly. Revving it up wastes fuel. When your fuel is gone, it's game over. You had to slaughter as many people as you could before you run out of fuel. Limited lastability, I'm sure, but it sounded like a fun and novel party game.
Given the thought and imagination that went into these games, it was rather disappointing when many of the horror games that appeared on the NES were dull platformers. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde were perhaps the worst offenders. 'Friday the 13th' at least attempted to scare you, with Jason popping up unexpectedly, trying to kill you.
Whether it can be described as a horror game or not I'm unsure, but Castlevania certainly hadthe characters to carry it off, hunting vampires and the like. It just seems too mainstream, compared to other games with such a theme back in the NES days. Castlevania has had a number of sequels too, taking the series onto N64, PSX and the Gameboy Advance.
The NES was also host to a number of games featuring the classic horror characters, games like 'Dracula', 'Frankenstein', 'Werewolf' and 'Zombie Nation' but none of which were particularly good.
Perhaps the two greatest horror themed games to hit the NES were titles you may not have heard of. 'Monster Party' deserves recognition for it's wicked plot twists at the end of each level, and for featuring the line of dialogue "Sorry, I'm Dead". 'Uninvited' took a first person point and click approach. This was a game that really worked, as you searched the house and encountered ghosts, demons and the like it was really quite chilling, given that scares couldn't be delivered through the graphics, anyway.
If the NES truly beat the Sega Master System on any genre it was in it's quantity of horror titles. I put this down to the deal that Nintendo did with third parties, which stopped them from developing for the Master System.
It wasn't without it's scary titles though. Ghost House was a rather enjoyable game, featuring vampires and a giy with a huge quiff. Quiffy had to destroy all the vampires in the house. Simple but fun.
Less fun was 'Master of Darkness', a typical platformer in which you came across zombies, vampires and the like.
The Megadrive washes flush with horror games either, but Altered Beast was a pretty fine start. An arcade classic, you had to punch out zombies, then you turned into any number of different creatures, werewolf, werebear, werebat - anything you could stick 'were' at the start of.
The Megadrive also got a port of 'Splatterhouse', a game that put you in the role of a Jason Vorhees look-a-like, slashing zombies with a meat cleaver.
Sega did venture deeper into horror territory in their later years though, with 'Mansion of Hidden Souls' on the Sega CD, followed up with the 'House of the Dead' series in arcades.
Back to Nintendo, it seemed that the horror games were dying out when it came to the SNES. The only one that springs to mind was Konami's brilliant B-movie inspired 'Zomies Ate My Neighbours'.
Horror games were soon to be reborn though. 'Alone in the Dark' and 'Resident Evil' came about at a time when graphical standards were good enough to be effective, and at the time these games were original, revisiting themes first suggested in those early Atari games. From 'Haunted House' 'Alone In The Dark' finds it's seeds firmly planted, and the running rather than fighting enemies that won't ie 'Resident Evil' borrows heavily from the concepts of 'Halloween'. Only now was there the processing power to carry it off.
Survival horror was born.
With gaming becoming increasily more appealing to late teens and early twenties age groups in the mid to late 90's more games appeared aimed at this more 'mature' audience. Some just boasting gore to get sales, others that were genuinely creepy. Silent Hill snuck out, and again, horror had moved on. This game was less about making you jump, it was about making you feel uneasy. Psycological horror was where it was at.
The horror games just keep on developing now, possibly faster than any other genre. Eternal Darkness throws insanity effects into the balance, building on the psychological elements seen in the likes of Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark. More than this though, it throws in a storyline any scriptwriter would be proud of, spanning the ages.
The Thing trys something different once again. A game based on the John Carpenter movie, where you have control over a party, but any one of them could be the 'thing'. Worse still, they believe it could be you too.
It's really funny that in the movies horror has been one genre that has become quite stagnant over the years, with very little new, but in gaming it's developing so much.
We're at the beginning of a stage where horror in games can be conveyed much better than it can on the big screen.
For this reason it's great to see one of the games that was a real turning point for horror games make it's way to the Gamecube.
It seems that horror games started out, like many other genres, right at the birth of home gaming, on an Atari console.
Atari's Haunted House actually sounds like an original concept today, some 20 years later. In a haunted house are three pieces of a magical urn, and it's your job to go in and find them. Only it's dark in the house, and your only chance of finding things is by using matches to light up the room for a limited time. Only when the room is lit, you may see tarantulas, bats or ghosts, and if they touch you, you'll be scared to death.
Wizard Video Games had the rights to two big horror movies, and made games from both of them. Halloween had you in a house with Michael Myers, trying to save children and avoid him. He couldn't be killed, just knocked down, and he'd ALWAYS get back up. Secondly, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now this is an interesting game idea, you don't play as the hero, you play as the villain, Leatherface. You have a chainsaw that runs constantly. Revving it up wastes fuel. When your fuel is gone, it's game over. You had to slaughter as many people as you could before you run out of fuel. Limited lastability, I'm sure, but it sounded like a fun and novel party game.
Given the thought and imagination that went into these games, it was rather disappointing when many of the horror games that appeared on the NES were dull platformers. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde were perhaps the worst offenders. 'Friday the 13th' at least attempted to scare you, with Jason popping up unexpectedly, trying to kill you.
Whether it can be described as a horror game or not I'm unsure, but Castlevania certainly hadthe characters to carry it off, hunting vampires and the like. It just seems too mainstream, compared to other games with such a theme back in the NES days. Castlevania has had a number of sequels too, taking the series onto N64, PSX and the Gameboy Advance.
The NES was also host to a number of games featuring the classic horror characters, games like 'Dracula', 'Frankenstein', 'Werewolf' and 'Zombie Nation' but none of which were particularly good.
Perhaps the two greatest horror themed games to hit the NES were titles you may not have heard of. 'Monster Party' deserves recognition for it's wicked plot twists at the end of each level, and for featuring the line of dialogue "Sorry, I'm Dead". 'Uninvited' took a first person point and click approach. This was a game that really worked, as you searched the house and encountered ghosts, demons and the like it was really quite chilling, given that scares couldn't be delivered through the graphics, anyway.
If the NES truly beat the Sega Master System on any genre it was in it's quantity of horror titles. I put this down to the deal that Nintendo did with third parties, which stopped them from developing for the Master System.
It wasn't without it's scary titles though. Ghost House was a rather enjoyable game, featuring vampires and a giy with a huge quiff. Quiffy had to destroy all the vampires in the house. Simple but fun.
Less fun was 'Master of Darkness', a typical platformer in which you came across zombies, vampires and the like.
The Megadrive washes flush with horror games either, but Altered Beast was a pretty fine start. An arcade classic, you had to punch out zombies, then you turned into any number of different creatures, werewolf, werebear, werebat - anything you could stick 'were' at the start of.
The Megadrive also got a port of 'Splatterhouse', a game that put you in the role of a Jason Vorhees look-a-like, slashing zombies with a meat cleaver.
Sega did venture deeper into horror territory in their later years though, with 'Mansion of Hidden Souls' on the Sega CD, followed up with the 'House of the Dead' series in arcades.
Back to Nintendo, it seemed that the horror games were dying out when it came to the SNES. The only one that springs to mind was Konami's brilliant B-movie inspired 'Zomies Ate My Neighbours'.
Horror games were soon to be reborn though. 'Alone in the Dark' and 'Resident Evil' came about at a time when graphical standards were good enough to be effective, and at the time these games were original, revisiting themes first suggested in those early Atari games. From 'Haunted House' 'Alone In The Dark' finds it's seeds firmly planted, and the running rather than fighting enemies that won't ie 'Resident Evil' borrows heavily from the concepts of 'Halloween'. Only now was there the processing power to carry it off.
Survival horror was born.
With gaming becoming increasily more appealing to late teens and early twenties age groups in the mid to late 90's more games appeared aimed at this more 'mature' audience. Some just boasting gore to get sales, others that were genuinely creepy. Silent Hill snuck out, and again, horror had moved on. This game was less about making you jump, it was about making you feel uneasy. Psycological horror was where it was at.
The horror games just keep on developing now, possibly faster than any other genre. Eternal Darkness throws insanity effects into the balance, building on the psychological elements seen in the likes of Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark. More than this though, it throws in a storyline any scriptwriter would be proud of, spanning the ages.
The Thing trys something different once again. A game based on the John Carpenter movie, where you have control over a party, but any one of them could be the 'thing'. Worse still, they believe it could be you too.
It's really funny that in the movies horror has been one genre that has become quite stagnant over the years, with very little new, but in gaming it's developing so much.
We're at the beginning of a stage where horror in games can be conveyed much better than it can on the big screen.
For this reason it's great to see one of the games that was a real turning point for horror games make it's way to the Gamecube.