The world of video games actually had a huge impact on introducing horror into my childhood. It was my cousin who first took me to a local pizza place, put a quarter in my hand and introduced me to the concept of defending the earth against relentless zig-zaggy “bleeping” Space Invaders. And I can vividly recall almost every game I really loved having at least some element of horror/monster to it. I mean come on Pac-Man was ghosts and freaky chomping thing, even if all your energy was directed to replaying your favorite level patterns.

But the horror came home with the Atari 2600. And I hope I’m not alone in this little trip down memory lane, because my parents were very cool about what content I listened to and watched and in the case of the home gaming system played as well. So I had a plethora of Horror based content (for better or worse) that I could enjoy on the 19” color screen of wonder that we had at home (often having never seen the horror movie property the game was based
on.)

So gateway scares on the Atari 2600 (and 5200)…

First and foremost I would be remiss if I didn’t put Haunted House at the top of the list. This was a very early adventure type game, the kind that really made us early “gamers” want the kind of first person shooter quality many of the most popular games today enjoy. In this game you would glow your way through a haunted labyrinth (all be it from an overhead perspective) trying to find the pieces of a candelabra, all while avoiding much faster moving ghosts and bats. The gameplay was decent, but it wasn’t exactly a suspenseful terror fest.

One of my favorites (and hopefully one our founder Norm got to play) was Halloween. This was a really fun video game complete with squirting blood (well pixels really) whenever Michael managed to get you with his somehow realistic enough looking knife.

Somewhat less honorable mention goes to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which played strangely like a game of park tag and made Leatherface look more like Franklin from the Peanuts gang. But hey, it was as close as I got to seeing or knowing anything about the movie at the time so it was worth the laughs back in the day.

Now I will bring up E.T. the game that “supposedly” put the nail in the coffin of Atari. This is a game that featured a monster but was much more horrific for the gameplay (which sucked), the concept (which was darn near unintelligible) , and the frequent spots where you just got stuck and had to reset the game.  I got the game for free because they couldn’t get rid of the things fast enough.  And I still feel like I needed a refund.

A much better Spielberg property that made it into a tiny
cartridge was Gremlins. In this game you were Billy trying to keep all the Magwai from eating after midnightor multiplying in water, and if they did happen to go all “Strype” on you, well you could find a TV, distract them for a moment, and lop their fricking heads off….good wholesome family entertainment even by today’s standards.

But the all time top of the heap was Wizard of Wor. It was almost like an adventure game / Pac-Man hybrid, and I remember it would always bring my fight-or-flight reflex response to the maximum, especially when the monsters became “fast movers.”

Here you can relive it in HD

There were also some ports of Alien, and Jaws that I remember owning, but never playing that much. I’d love to hear back from early gamers if you remember these or others that were a part of your “Horror Genetics”.