Back in the early 90s, the console wars heated up pretty intensely between Nintendo and Sega. Hell, we had gangs in our schoolyard dedicated to either system willing to fight each other over which was the superior gaming console. NES fans loyal to the Mushroom Kingdom believed it to be the OG and automatically better in every way while Sega Heads stood proud of being the more “mature” way of gaming mocking the kiddie games of NES. So which was better? I mean, there are certainly a lot of variables to consider, however, I’m not here to debate an age-old argument. But, I will point out that ONE of those systems converted some kids to switch sides all with one game that BOTH systems had in their arsenal, but with one small, but highly significant difference that both changed the quality of the game itself and hell made it that much more enjoyable.
That is, of course, ABACABB.
In honor of 30 years of Mortal Monday this year-the day the arcade game dropped to home game consoles– it’s pretty important we commemorate what we schoolkids gossipped about outside of the classroom about a game where we’d seen a character fighter rip their face off and breathe fire onto their opponent, reducing the other guy to ashes and bones. And there was BLOOD. Enough of it to make Sam Raimi envious. It was almost like the forbidden fruit for those of us with uptight parents and on September 13th, 1993, we got to take this now legendary beast of a game home on multiple different platforms, depending on which one you owned of course.
I mean, this was a pretty killer promo and to be honest, it’s pretty much the only thing we gaming enthusiasts talked about for months leading up to MORTAL MONDAY.
Alas, however, when you brought that long-awaited sucker home, you were in for an enraging awaking upon the first few minutes of play. So much so that anyone standing in your way wasn’t getting any friendships in terms of conversation when it came to talking about the game. The blood had been replaced by squirts of grey goo crap that looked like 4-day-old oatmeal. And even worse, NO FATALITIES. Thanks to pearl-clutching parents and congressmen shitbags, MK had been stripped of what made it unique among its peers to appease the elder whiners for the home video release.
Nintendo, the family-friendly console, had a pretty friendly reputation with politicians at the time who blasted games such as MK in particular for the violence and sanitized the game down to a barely PG rating. But Sega being the rebellious teenager it was, inserted its own middle finger to those opposing us of our right to play a game filled with blood and gore.
Sega engineer, Paul Carruthers who was on hand for the game’s final processing and debugging was the man behind the infamous code as he himself received permission to sneak blood and gore into the game from the higher-ups’. At the main menu, players could press down, up, left, left, A, right, and down, spelling out DULLARD, to reveal a cheat menu. In the secret screen, they could do things like enable blood, which also reinstated the original arcade fatalities, and choose which arena to fight in. According to lore, Acclaim worried that DULLARD would be too hard for players to remember. So ABACABB was born from Carruthers in retrospect to a pretty sweet Genesis album and Sega players could restore MK to all its violent glory.
The code was meant to be secret, but I don’t even think SEGA cared all too much as it hinted that there was one right in the game. SEGA stood for chaos friends. Fuck your censorship.
Mere weeks after Mortal Monday, Congress and Senator Joe Lieberman rallied to get parental guidance and ratings for video games mostly solely based on Mortal Kombat alone, and now with this added not-so-secret blood code from SEGA in the mix, it was only a matter of time before we got what we now know as these rating systems that we see on games purchased today; 30 years after MK dropped into our homes forever changing the history of at-home gaming.
At the end of the day and because of this cheat blood code, SEGA sold as much as five times more MORTAL KOMBAT games than Nintendo, which hit the Mario Party goers hard in the 16-bit console wars. However, NES learned their lesson when it was time to drop MK II and fully restored all the blood and guts into the game with no code needed.
Which was great because I want my characters to bleed…like…a lot.
As a byproduct of the early 80s, one of my earliest home gaming memories was the Atari 2600. This beast of a console was the first system a wee Patti owned and was shared, albeit reluctantly, between my little brother and I. I can’t tell you how many times I would get the urge to play Kaboom or Haunted House, and find my 8-bit hogging 4-year-old sibling snotting all over the joystick playingFrogger.
The struggles of a one-console household is very real boils and ghouls.
Presently, the original Atari 2600 is pretty much a dinosaur (and looks like one too) compared to the sleek Playstation 5. However, Brontasauraus console boasted some graphics that looked like sorcery in our eyes at the time. Regardless of the now outdated sights and sounds of the Atari, the gaming system launched the beginning of household video games over 40 years ago, and hell, we need to respect that. Not to mention, hosted some pretty off-the-wall cartridges that embodied the glorious horror genre within them. Four decades later, and I still haven’t seen one damn Texas Chainsaw Massacre OR Halloween video game! Unless of course, you look towards the Atari 2600.
That being said, kudos to the breakthrough video game system that honored the horror genre in 8-bit fashion. So let’s look back at some of the coolest horror-themed video games the breakthrough gamer device had in its library, shall we?!
Halloween
First released by Wizard Video in 1983, The Shape was forever immortalized 2600 style with his very own Atari game. You actually don’t play as Michael Myers, but the “babysitter”, whom I can only guess is supposed to be Laurie Strode.
The object of the game is to save the children you’re supposed to be caring for from the Boogeyman. Who, by the way, is running through the house waving a knife all to an Atari-sized version of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. FANTASTIC. You’re given three lives which are represented by jack-o-lanterns on top of the screen, of which will disappear one by one when you are caught and killed. The highlight of this game, and I’ve been known to purposely do this just for fun, is when you’re caught by Myers. Why? Because he decapitates you (as shown in the video below). Yes, ladies and gentlemen,this appears to be the very first video game decapitation in history. You only get a tiny bit of blood spurts from said kill, but nevertheless is extremely amusing.
Another horror treasure from Wizard Video brings the Tobe Hooper classic to the Atari world in 1982. Unlike the Halloween game, gamer roles are reversed and you actually get to play as Leatherface; with a chainsaw attached to his dick.
You basically just run across a field of cow skulls and wheelchairs trying to get to your next victim. It’s heavily rumored throughout the gamer community that the high-pitched tones you hear when a victim appears is actually supposed to be a girl’s scream. The chainsaw in the game is run on fuel, and when you press the appropriate button to run it, your fuel starts to deplete. When you run out of fuel, you lose a life. So, just an educated guess here, the point is to kill off as many people as you can before running out of gas.
It’s a fun way to murder ten minutes of your life. But one thing that really irked me about this game other than the inability for game developers to give Leatherface’s body a different color than the chainsaw, is the fact your character gets “stuck” quite easily. The obstacles I mentioned above, as it turns out, you better steer clear of them. If even one pixel of Leatherface breathes too close to these in-game hazards, you’re stuck for a good couple of seconds. It’s a total pain in the ass.
Developed by Fox Interactive Games in 1982, Atari Alien has no shame in hiding that it is, in short, a basic rip-off of Pac-Man. However, instead of dodging ghosts through a maze, you’re running from Xenomorphs, which is just way cooler anyway.
The in-game maze is supposed to be designed to look like the inside of a spaceship, and said ship is infested with adult aliens laying these eggs all over the place. Just like Pac-Man, the pellets littering the screen are eggs and can be destroyed by simply running over them. There really isn’t too much else to explain, as it really is just Pac-Man with aliens. Though if you enjoy the classic arcade game, as a horror fan you’ll likely get a kick out of something different from that floating yellow head.
Published by Data Age for Atari in 1983, Frankenstein’s Monster, for me TBH, is one of the more entertaining games to come out of the 2600 era of gaming.
The basic object of gameplay is to build a wall surrounding the monster before he comes to life. To do this, you have to climb up and down the screen grabbing bricks one by hellish one. Along the way, you’ll encounter a giant tarantula, bats, ghosts, and a lovely pool of acid. You know, normal creepy castle shit. If you build the wall before the timer runs out, you save the village below from a monster rampage. If you don’t make it in time, Frankie comes to life and destroys every damn thing in its path, which is kind of my favorite part anyway. If you get a chance to play, let yourself lose at least once.
Birthed by Activision in 1985, Ghostbusters for Atari 2600 comes one year after the theatrical release, and is fuckin’ fun as hell.
You immediately begin by trapping ghosts in front of buildings, which in most cases, takes the form of Slimer. All the while, a synthetic Atari version of the Ghostbusters theme plays in the background. The graphics when ghostbusting aren’t half bad considering the console, and the driving sequences with the Ecto-1 are not as stretched out as other versions.The greatest part, however, is when you finally get to the end and fight Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s goddamn hilarious because he just kind of jumps around in front of a building like a little kid.
It’s not uncommon for franchisees to lose their way from the initial lore that made them legendary in the first place. Sometimes a filmmaker is just lucky and catches lightning in a bottle. If he manages to catch it again with a follow-up movie then he’s just a legend at that point.
Sometimes it’s just not possible to capitalize on the success of an original concept. And any attempts to do so fall by the wayside.
image via Terminator 2
Case in point ask any horror fan which is the best Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and they’ll point back to Tobe Hooper’s very first film. To my knowledge there have been 7 movies to follow TCM and, though, admittedly, some are fun to watch and entertaining, none of them come close to the original’s raw style and horrific grit.
It’s not easy to build upon success like that without just (exhaustively) repeating the formula rather than adding to it, allowing it to grow without it getting weird.
It’s also not uncommon for fans to find and latch onto mediums – outside of movies – as true successors to the legends they grew up loving.
One more example before moving on – HELLRAISER.
Hellraiser has suffered through enough sequels. Many of them were never intended to be Hellraiser films in the first place, but in order to keep the franchise’s license – and, not to mention, for the studio to sell really shitty horror movies – they shamelessly slapped the infamous Hellraiser title and a Roman numeral at the end of it to inferior projects and put Doug Bradley back in the makeup to appear as Pinhead in one or two scenes.
Most Clive Barker fans know these aren’t true Hellraiser films. They don’t match the lore Barker established.
But then in 2011, BOOM comics released Clive Barker’s Hellraiser that followed the story of little Kirsty Cotton as she seeks out to complete her hellish journey with the Lament Configuration and the insidious Order of the Gash. This comic book run is sensational and a must-read for fans of the first two films. Much like how Halloween (2018) works for Laurie Strode these comics work for Kirsty and goes into some amazing and unexpected places but feel so genuine and authentic that many fans – myself included – consider these to be the lost sequel we all deserved.
The comics are so well done that even Clive Barker himself calls them the true Hellraiser III.
Sometimes we find better continuity outside of the films.
In today’s case, it’s in a video game.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
Released back in 2019, Terminator Resistance sadly passed under the radar and was not well-liked by critics. But slowly it’s been finding a rampant fan base of late, and, like the nuclear flood of Judgment Day, I’ve been swept up in the pure metal and might this game has to offer.
There have been some noteworthy Terminator games in the past. Pretty sure some of your guys fed plenty of quarters to that beloved Terminator 2 arcade cabinet. How could we not play that thing for hours? Our first mission was set in the dystopian warscape where man fights machines to the death.
image via Terminator 2 arcade game
Damn that was cool! That’s the thing that I always remember most from that game. But to be fair, Terminator, though built for great games, doesn’t have the best record for good games. I think that could be why TR passed by all of our notice.
And if it weren’t for me being such a fan of Civvie 11 over on YouTube I may have never played this game and missed out. Civvie gave it a good review and I immediately went out to get it. And right now it’s available on Steam, Xbox, and PSN. For $40 it’s not a bad way to spend your weekend.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way and answer the most important question. Is the game good? Yes. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but holy shit it is very good. It’s a shame it wasn’t given a bigger budget or more time to work out a few animation bugs or included a more open world base to walk around in. These are minor gripes, and at times it feels like it’s a Terminator game set in Fallout. I swear I kept getting Skyrim vibes while playing it though.
What makes this game great though is the intense nostalgic morphine jolt you’ll get pumping down your retro feels while playing this game. This is a project built upon love and admiration for the first two Terminator movies.
image via Terminator 2
The game menu starts playing the classic Terminator theme, and yeah, ok, that feels good. But soon as you choose to start playing you are thrown directly into the nightmare scape of that violent new world where machine armies cross abandoned cities to terminate all human existence. You are part of the resistance and fight for John Connor!
Music from the original movie will start playing as you duck away and hide from T-800 troops marching sardonically through the night. It looks just like how Cameron filmed the war scenes too. I had moments when I forgot I was playing a game and felt like I was part of the movies.
Yes, I said you have to hide from T-800 soldiers because, like in the movies, you start off with weapons that are not able to take one down. You are really up against an army of Terminators and your choices have consequences.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
And your choices do have consequences. In your fight for the future, you can build friendships and later be responsible for their deaths or survival.
Game mechanics include crafting your own weapons, skill learning that will make you a master lock picker and/or give you the ability to remove proximity mines and then use them against the metal assholes wanting to kill you. I can’t deny how satisfying it is to set a trap and see a T-800 walk right into one of my mines and KABOOM!!!!
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
But you gotta be picky over which skills you want to build up first.
You can also hack turrets for some unexpected little WTF moments. Early in the game, I hacked one and it ended up taking own an HK Aerial while I was off doing my thing. I watched it shoot down one of those things and it crashes to pieces! Then I got to go loot the fuck out of its wreckage,
Who’s a good little turret? Yes, that’s right. You are.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
You start off with your basic bullet-based weapons that can take down smaller machines. And you do get a pretty sweet shotgun that gets things done nicely. As you advance you start to carry more sophisticated weapons like a plasma rifle. But then you get some of the biggest and baddassiest weapons like the purple glowing plasma weapons seen in the movies.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
You’ll be tasked with taking down an HK Tank and a few of those flying Hunter Killers too. Pipe grenades come in handy in a clutch and you’ll even face off against the Infiltrator, the Arnold character Kyle Reese sees in a nightmare in the first movie, the one who invades the bunker.
And that’s where this game really outdoes itself and excelled over my expectations. From the music, the lighting, the sound effects, and the overall look of everywhere you go and everything you fight. It’s all rooted in the Terminator’s lore and makes you feel entirely swallowed up in the future world Cameron introduced us to.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
Story-wise you are the one who gets ahold of the CPU chip making it possible to reprogram a T-800 unit to serve as protector…you feeling T2 yet? And I couldn’t contain my stupid glee when I spoke with John Connor for the first time. But then, towards the finale of the game, you actually meet the man himself. And guess what? It’s the real Jon Connor! The guy we see at the beginning of T2 Judgment Day.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
Not stupid Nick Stahl or that other moron idiot fuck from Genysis. We stand before the real Connor,
You join the fight on the frontline and punch a hole straight into the fields outside Skynet’s HQ. Gotta say standing in front of that damned pyramid felt intimidating.
Yes, time travel elements are used in the story, just like a good Terminator plot should have, but is not the main drive. At no point do you get tossed back into the ‘80s or ‘90s. You start in the war and stay there for the whole game.
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
And because of that, and thanks to the perfect atmosphere, music, and story it really does play as the conclusion to the first two films we didn’t realize we needed. I think deep down every fan wanted a movie based on the future war. One that would lead up to Kyle Reese being sent back in time, one that would involve the hijacking or a Terminator CPU and the T-800 protector. All of that is in this game.
SPOILERS! The game ends with you standing with John Connor at the TDP, or ‘time machine’ if you will. Kyle has already been sent through and so has the T-800. So you end at the beginning of the events of Terminator 1 and 2, tying the knot and making you feel 100% complete lore-wise.
I’m not joking You could finish this game and then watch the first two movies back to back and feel nostalgic seamlessness.
And expect a buttload of Easter Eggs. In one mission you have to invade a medical facility where Skynet is doing some bad experiments on people. You walk into one room with a dead human subject left in the chair. And it looks exactly like Robert Patrick…the fucking T-1000!
image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance
It left me feeling dazed and awed. Like what the hell were they doing in here? Is this man THE roots of the T-1000? Their model for the next stage of Terminators? The game has moments like that everywhere though!
As a fan, I’m very satisfied with it. I’m playing through again hoping to see anything else I may have missed. If you’re a fan of the Terminator and a gamer you won’t want to miss out on this. For many of us, this is the truest sequel to Cameron’s immortal lore.
image via Terminator 2
In closing this really does feel like the true successor to T2, what T3 should have been. A story set in the future and that leads up to the time-traveling events of the first couple movies. A completed trilogy set in past, present, and the future. This game is a huge accomplishment and compliments the lore beautifully.
