Considering that horror & video
games are two of my favourite things in the world, you can be sure
that I was on point for this one. The talk was presented by indie
game developer and journalist Jamie Love, who was very eager to show
his presentation, if only for the fact he would no longer have to
“rehearse it every night in front of his cats.”
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| Jamie Love talks horror in gaming. |
This was a great presentation that
brought back a lot of memories for me. Love's reasons for being drawn
to horror gaming echoed my own in that,
“it often showcases strong
female characters, is not bound by any one mechanic or gameplay
element and gives the player an active experience, rather than the
passive one offered from other mediums.”
The lecture was broken down into three
sections, consisting of origins, survival horror and indie horror.
For the former, Love went right back to the beginning with the
Magnavox Odyssey's venture
Haunted House in 1972.
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| Screen overlay for Haunted House (Magnavox Odyssey, 1972) |
This was an elaborate little game,
that Love compared the instructions of which were like “assembling Swedish
furniture.” It involved the use of an external deck of cards, a screen overlay and a minimum of two players, which already sounds more complicated than it
needed to be.
From there, Love moved onto the
Atari
2600, which is where my home gaming experience began. In 1982, Atari released
Haunted House, which had you (shown as a pair of eyes) moving around a
darkened house looking for pieces of an urn, while avoiding all
manner of creeps.
I was never able to get my hands on
this game as a child, but it bore a strong resemblance to
Adventure
– the third game I got for the system – which had you
travelling between one to three castles (depending on the three levels
of difficulty) looking for a chalice, while slaying dragons and
avoiding a thieving bat. They both even had a light/dark mechanic –
the first in gaming – where you could illuminate your way around
your surroundings.
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| Haunted House (Atari 2600, 1982) |
A year later, Love explained that after
Atari had lost a legal battle to prevent other companies from
developing games for their system, the first movie-adapted properties
started appearing for the system, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and Halloween.
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| Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Atari 2600, 1982) |
 |
| Halloween (Atari 2600, 1983) |
They were archaic, but TCM was the first
– and still one of the few – horror games that you were able to
play as the antagonist as you to took control of Leatherface and
tasked with mauling as many people as possible before your chainsaw
runs out of fuel.
The first title in Love's talk that I'd
never heard of was
Ubisoft's first release in 1986 for the
Amstrad
CPC called
Zombi.
 |
| Zombi (Amstrad CPC, 1986) |
As you may have guessed already, it was
inspired by Romero's Dawn of the Dead. You took control of four
characters in an abandoned mall during a zombie apocalypse. I'm
bummed I never knew about this game because it was ported to the
Atari ST in 1990, so I could have if I'd known. I have to remember
than living in suburban Ontario, I really only had access to top tier
titles.
And then came
Nintendo. Love was quick
to point out that due to Nintendo's stance on violence, there were
very few – if any – straight-up horror games on this console, but
there were several very popular titles that used horror themes and
tropes, including
Ghosts & Goblins,
Castlevania and even
Metroid.
Nintendo didn't even dip its toe into
the horror merchandising pool until late in its cycle with the
notoriously horrendous Friday the 13th and Nightmare On Elm Street
games.
 |
| Jamie Love showing off one of gaming's most notorious missteps. |
As if to make up for this,
Namco
released a port for its popular arcade title
Splatterhouse for the
Turbo Grafx 16 in 1990. Love was quick to point out that this
was the first mainstream game to
“raise eyebrows” among parents
and censors. In response, the box below had the brilliant disclaimer;
“The
horrifying theme of this game may be inappropriate for young
children... and cowards.”
 |
| Splatterhouse (TurboGrafx16, 1990) |
It was here, in this area between 1989
and 1996 that Love said ushered in the rise of survival horror to gaming,
which began with the
Famicom title
Sweet Home.
 |
| Sweet Home (Famicom, 1989) |
It was never released
domestically, and was, in actuality, a movie tie-in. By design, it
was an RPG, but instead of having a entire world to explore, like in
similar titles like Final Fantasy, you were confined to a mansion.
However, the game mechanics of exploration and item management would
later become survival horror cornerstones.
Love then brought up the first
important title of the survival horror genre,
Infogrames'
Alone In The Dark.
 |
| Alone In The Dark (PC, 1992) |
This game, released in 1992, was revolutionary for its 3D
rendered characters moving in static backgrounds and the ability to
choose between two different characters. This title would pave the
way for all survival horror games that came after it.
That year also brought us the
Sega CD,
and the ability for titles to employ full-motion video. This brought
a slew of horror titles, most notably
Night Trap.
 |
| Night Trap (Sega CD, 1992) |
Unfortunately, Love said, this level of realism
brought with it criticisms that could no longer be ignored by
congress.
 |
| The infamous blood-draining scene from Night Trap. |
This would eventually lead to the
creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or the ESRB.
From then on, much like the MPAA for films, all game titles would
need an official rating based on their content to get any type of
official release.
Over the next few years, Love stated
that horror crept into a few other gameplay styles, from first-person shooters (
Doom,
Half Life) to point and click adventures
(
Clock Tower). The latter is significant in that it involved
“run
and hide” mechanics as opposed to actual combat, as well as one of
the first instances of Quick Time Events in the form of a
“panic
button”.
 |
| Doom (PC, 1993) |
 |
| Clock Tower (Super Famicom, 1995) |
1996 was a banner year for horror
games, as it included a number of releases. The light-gun shooter
House of the Dead would become popular in Japanese arcades and
subsequently here, as well as the game
D, which was the first time
full 3D rendered CGI characters were used in a game. The real reason though, as Love pointed out, was the release of the flagship survival
horror series,
Capcom's
Resident Evil.
 |
| Jamie Love & “eye”. |
This ushered in the golden age of
survival horror, and the
Sony Playstation would see the release three monster
titles – what would become known as the
Raccoon City Trilogy –
over the next few years, as well as many others like
Parasite Eve,
Enemy Zero, the aforementioned Clock Tower and RE clone
Dino Crisis.
From that, Love announced the other
“goal post” of survival horror,
Konami's
Silent Hill.
“Whereas, RE
was a series that felt the need to explain everything, Silent Hill distinguished itself from its competitor – and later collectively as a franchise – by thriving on atmosphere, rather than answers.”
 |
| Silent Hill (Sony Playstation, 1999) |
The next generation of gaming at the
turn of the millennium, brought forth a quartet of new systems and tons of
new horror content. One of the most significant had to be
Resident Evil Code: Veronica on the
Sega Dreamcast.
 |
| Resident Evil Code: Veronica (Sega Dreamcast, 2000) |
I remember this game fondly, as it was the first time I became aware of the shrinking gap between cinematic cut scenes and actual gameplay. I recall sitting there waiting for Claire Redfield to start moving around her prison cell, oblivious that control had shifted to me. That's why I now
refer to such breakthroughs in gaming immersion as “Code Veronica moments.”
Other significant horror titles that
Love mentioned that released on the Dreamcast were
Activision's
BlueStinger,
Crazy Games' Illbleed and perhaps the game with the most
bat shit storyline I've ever heard, WARP's
D2. Just listening to Love explain it was worth the price of admission alone;
“...a plane gets hijacked by
terrorists, which is then hit by a meteorite and crash lands in an area
in the Canadian mountains inhabited by plant-like aliens.”
 |
| Silent Hill 2 (PS2, 2001) |
This one, which bore no connection to the previous game, featured a man arriving in
Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his deceased wife. Love
spoke of this game with a great fondness.
“Silent Hill is one of the most
important horror games of all time. This game laid down all the rules
we would see in future SH games. The weird creatures the character
would encounter were all physical manifestations of his own guilt and
frustration. It was an intensely philosophical and metaphorical game
that really made a lot of people reconsider what narrative in video
games could do.”
Love then brought up that this
generation also saw Nintendo finally embrace horror with the
Gamecube. They re-released all the previous Resident Evil games, as
well as bringing out two exclusives,
RE Zero and the super important
Resident Evil 4.
 |
| Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube, 2005) |
Capcom had again raised the bar, with a new engine, over-the-shoulder camera mechanic and a
sizable bump in graphics.
There were also a lot of games based off horror movies put out in the '00s, the most significant of which,
Love stated was
The Thing.
 |
| The Thing (PS2/PC/Xbox, 2002) |
Though the mechanics were clunky at times,
there were several new ideas bandied about in the game, including
maintaining the trust of the other computer controlled characters
(via a trust meter) and not freezing to death outside.
Love then brought up another game that
I'd never heard of,
SCEI's 2003 experimental title,
Lifeline.
 |
| Lifeline (PS2, 2003) |
The voice recognition element sounds
incredibly fascinating to me, even though the level of frustration
involved would probably rival that of those old text adventures from back
in the day.
Around this time, first person shooters
were also evolving.
F.E.A.R. capitalized on the current Asian horror film craze by utilizing many of its tropes, and the melee combat
within
Condemned: Criminal Origins sought to raise the level of
intensity.
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| F.E.A.R. (PC, 2005) |
Love then said that it was around 2006,
when survival horror really started to emphasize action gameplay.
The mechanics brought in by Resident Evil 4 would be refined and used
in subsequent titles like
Dead Rising,
Left 4 Dead and
my personal favourite horror franchise,
Dead Space. Following that, was
Resident Evil 5 in 2009, which in my opinion still stands out as one of the
best co-op experiences I've ever had.
Love then talked about one of his
favourites, the 2010
Xbox title
Alan Wake.
 |
| Alan Wake (Xbox 360, 2010) |
He trumpeted the wonderful
Stephen
King-like narrative, the light/dark combat mechanic as well as its
perfect blend of East & West gameplay sensibilities. I have to admit, this is the only title that I regret not experiencing because of my allegiance to
Team Playstation. However, I wouldn't trade
my memories of
Heavy Rain for anything.
“Agent York Morgan is a very
eccentric character. He talks to an imaginary character named Zach in
front of people and looks for clues to his case in his morning cup of
coffee. It's pretty much Twin Peaks the video game. It's also a game
that is broken, and annoying and jarring, but it's just so strange
and fascinating. It's a game that probably shouldn't exist but does.
It's also the most polarizing game, as it's been called the best game
ever made and also the worst.”
 |
| Deadly Premonition (PS3/Xbox 360, 2010) |
Love pointed that with the rise in popularity of
zombies in pop culture, gaming has followed suit with countless
“zombie simulators” over the past few years, including
Day Z,
Dead Island,
State of Decay and
Zombi U.
It was then that Love concluded his
lecture with the third and final leg about indie horror, which included
titles like
Home,
Lone Survivor,
Slender and
Outlast. The most
notable, of course, was
Telltale's episodic game,
The Walking Dead.
 |
| The Walking Dead (PS3/Xbox360/PC, 2012) |
The main gameplay mechanic of having to
“make horrible choices in a horrible world” made for one of the
most affecting game experiences in years.
Probably the most interesting thing I
learned during Love's lecture was the existence of
The SCP Foundation
– which I will most likely be devouring for the next few
weeks.
A (fictitious?) database of dangerous
objects and creatures from around the world, it has so captured the
imagination of its readers that it has inspired a few video games.
SCP-087 involves a staircase to nowhere, and
SCP Containment Breach
involves you escaping a research facility that houses all sorts of perilous creatures, including THIS!
 |
| SCP-173 |
It was here that Love gave a brief
rundown of what is coming up in the future before wrapping things up.
These included the PS3's
Until Dawn,
Bethesda's
The Evil Within, and
perhaps most importantly a possible reboot – as Capcom realizes
they may have to once again reinvent it – of Resident Evil.
In addition to the talk, there was also
an added element to this edition of The Black Museum. Curators Paul
Corupe and Andrea Subissati had set up some video games in the lobby,
which included Slender on an iPad, Splatterhouse on a laptop and Left
4 Dead projected on the wall.
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| A little Left 4 Dead. |
I had a blast at this. I think my only
criticism was that there was no video during the proceedings. Though
Love had prepared a lot of terrific slides – a hundred and forty
apparently – it would have been nice to see some of those classic
video game moments, like the seminal zombie dog jump scare in the
original Resident Evil, or the first appearance of Pyramid Head from
Silent Hill 2, unfold on the big screen. I understand the technical limitations of the event,
so I'm not broken up about it.
This was a great start to the third
stanza and I await the second one in a few weeks called
Black Glove Ballads, where Mark Hasan will cover the artistry behind the music of
the gialli. For more info on The Black Museum, click
here.
