Hey guys, I’m Andrew and my machete finger has been itchin’ for ‘Friday the 13th: The Game’ since the Kickstarter in 2015.
But did you know that Jason and other movie maniacs have been hacking and slashing through videogames since the beginning.
Before you head to that virtual Crystal Lake, let’s take a leisurely canoe ride through the history of slasher games.
The slasher genre emerged at the end of the 1970s.
Influenced by classic horror movies and sleazy grindhouse cinema, Slashers were a huge craze in the 80s.
At the same time, the world was falling in love with early videogames.
No other company offers you as many different videogame cartidges as Atari!
In 1983, Wizard Video published two games for the Atari 2600, based on the movies that kicked off the slasher genre:
‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Halloween.’
Wizard’s marketing claimed they were “the first violent and adult videogames,” and “a new way to take out your frustrations!”
Games were still pretty much abstract blocks at this point, but these two caused a big controversy.
Let’s see how early videogame violence stacks up to the real thing, starting with 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'
You play as Leatherface, a chainsaw-wielding cannibal in a mask made from human flesh.
I’ll give the game some credit: It’s cool that it lets you play as the killer.
You get to run around the woods chasing down victims, avoiding obstacles like skulls and Grandpa’s wheelchair from the movie.
This blue blob with a pumpkin for a head is Leatherface, and that golf club growing out of his belly is the chainsaw.
There aren’t any other characters from the movie, like the Hitchhiker or the OId Man.
There aren’t any meathooks either.
You just touch someone with your chainsaw thing and they turn into a mess of brown pixels.
Each kill is worth 1000 points.
And there’s literally no way to die.
Your chainsaw fuel slowly drains, and it’s game over when you run out.
The ending doesn’t involve a wild dance with your chainsaw as the final girl escapes.
Leatherface just gets kicked in the butt, and the game restarts.
The other Atari slasher game had a little more to it.
Halloween
You control babysitter Laurie Strode, Jamie Lee Curtis’ character from the movie.
You have to save a bunch of kids before your psycho brother Michael Myers gets them first.
The game starts with an 8-bit version of the Halloween theme song that actually isn’t bad.
Until you hear it every single time Michael shows up.
There’s more to recognize in ‘Halloween.’
That’s clearly Michael Myers, with his jumpsuit, mask and constant stabbing.
And Laurie and the kids kind of resemble humans.
She can attack Michael with a knife, like in the movie.
And the flickering lights are a scary touch. Pretty annoying though.
The decapitation graphics are definitely a step up, but they’re still not as thrilling as the real deal.
Get away from him! He's stopped breathing!
Let’s face it-- even ‘Pac-Man’ looked like shit on Atari.
There’s no way a slasher could scare you.
Maybe they’d have better luck on the NES.
Now you're playing with power!
Friday the 13th.
The first ‘Friday the 13th’ game came out for early PCs in 1985, but the one everyone remembers is the NES version.
Right off the bat, it looks better and is way more complicated than the Atari games.
You control six counsellors as they travel around a huge map of Crystal Lake trying to rescue campers.
You mostly fight zombies, wolves and crows, but every few minutes Jason shows up.
There’s no warning. Nothing to let you know he’s coming.
You take one step, the music changes and bam-- Jason is flinging axes at your skull.
You can also fight him indoors with a behind the back view, kinda like ‘Punch Out.’
Jason looks pretty good.
He’s got a big sprite for the era, so you can see his mask and machete.
The game came out alongside ‘Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.’
Jason’s a full-blown water zombie at this point, so even the purple and teal colors kinda fit.
Jason’s mom’s also in the game. You fight her decapitated head from ‘Part 2.’
A little bit of fanservice for you.
This game is notoriously hard.
It’s impossible to navigate, and Jason can kill you in an instant.
The difficulty actually makes the game kinda scary, though.
You really feel lost in the woods, like Jason is watching your every move.
Waiting to strike.
You can kill Jason, though.
Your reward is a few lines of text, this picture of him manspreading, and the knowledge that Crystal Lake is safe… for now.
In the meantime, let’s swing over to Springwood, Ohio and see what Freddy Krueger is up to in 'A Nightmare on Elm Street.'
The NES game is based on the third ‘Nightmare’ movie, ‘The Dream Warriors.’
Nancy, the survivor from the first film, and a group of troubled kids destroy Freddy’s remains to kill him forever.
Until the sequel one year later.
The game was made by Rare, the studio that later made ‘Goldeneye’ and ‘Banjo Kazooie.’
And, unpopular opinion, the best Donkey Kong game ever.
If ‘Friday the 13th’ was an open-world game of hide and seek, this is a more standard sidescroller.
You run up and down Elm St. collecting Freddy’s bones.
It plays a lot like Castlevania, only there’s a sleep meter that drains away.
You can slow it down by collecting coffee, but when it runs out, you fall asleep and enter Freddy’s dream world.
In the dream world, enemies are way harder, and if you stay asleep too long the game throws you into a boss fight against the man himself.
Freddy is a perfect videogame boss, with lots of different forms and powers.
He’s a little easy though.
You get special abilities in Freddy’s world, just like the Dream Warriors in the movie.
This ‘world within a world’ mechanic was pretty cool for 1990.
It’s like an early version of the Dark World in ‘A Link to the Past.’
After the game came out, Freddy paid tribute to the NES in the sixth movie, ‘Freddy’s Dead.’
He uses a tricked out Power Glove to throw this gamer doofus down the stairs.
Whaddya know? I beat my high score!
These aren’t the greatest games, but there’s a lot of nostalgia attached to them.
There are even official toys of Freddy and Jason in their videogame colors.
See, slasher movies had gotten kind of stale by the '90s.
Audiences were burnt out by endless crappy sequels.
Until ‘Scream’ revitalized the genre in 1996, slashers were dead in the water.
Videogames included, but there were a couple exceptions.
There’s the super-gory Splatterhouse games, which are basically Jason vs. Re-Animator.
They, ah, had to change the mask in the sequels.
There’s also ‘Clock Tower,’ the Super Nintendo horror game where your helpless character is stalked by the Scissorman.
The pacing was actually pretty dope for the time.
There aren’t really “slasher” games in the 32-bit era either, but there are definitely elements in survival horror like “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill.”
But we wouldn’t see any of the classic killers until the modern age.
The last few Mortal Kombat games have DLC characters from way outside the franchise.
It’s a great fit for any ultra-violent cult character. There’s an Alien, a Predator, but more importantly, Freddy, Jason and Leatherface.
They all have fatalities referencing their sickest movie kills.
Like Freddy and Johnny Depp here:
Or Jason’s sleeping bag slam.
Jason even has a throwback skin in his NES colors.
We’ve come a long way since the Atari, and the kills looks incredible with modern graphics.
But they’re just slasher characters in a fighting game.
If you really want the slasher experience, check out the PS4 exclusive ‘Until Dawn.’
Teens go on vacation in a mountain cabin and SPOILER ALERT: they start to die.
It’s a narrative adventure game like the Telltale ‘Walking Dead.’
The choices you make determine who survives the night.
It’s kinda short and there’s not much actual gameplay, but it’s a very cool experience
and worth replaying for the multiple endings. Seriously, there's like a billion endings.
Our last game, ‘Dead by Daylight,’ plays a lot like ‘Friday the 13th.’
It’s an asymmetrical multiplayer game, where one player controls a rampaging psychopath and four others play as his victims trying to escape.
The mechanics do a great job mimicking the imbalance of power in a slasher movie.
But the game was hurt by its lack of familiar characters, even though they later released a Michael Myers DLC.
‘Friday the 13th’ won’t have that problem. It’s doubling down on its franchise roots.
Series creator Sean Cunningham is involved as a producer, and original composer Harry Manfredini is providing the soundtrack,
Everyone’s favorite Jason, Kane Hodder, is doing motion capture, so Jason’s kills in-game will match their onscreen brutality.
I'm glad we're doing it, because I get to kill lots more motherf---ers, and you know I love that.
Nearly every incarnation of Jason is unlockable too, except for the little bald zombie kid.
There’s even a new skin designed by special effects god Tom Savini.
It’s a hell of a pedigree, and if you’re fan of the franchise the game has to be on your radar.
It’s not the highest bar to clear, but ‘Friday the 13th’ might be the best slasher game yet.