Halloween

Looking up information about this game might lead one to the conclusion that Wizard Video Games set out to capitalize on violence of the Halloween movie franchise by selling an ultra gory game to young children. In fact, its all true, except for the children. They clearly designed and marketed their game for adults.

In the movie, Michael Myers is a psychopathic killer escaped from a mental institution to kill the rest of his family (having killed his sister who was babysitting him many years earlier). Additionally, he targets all female babysitters. In this game, The Killer primarily targets children. The game lets the player to control The Babysitter in a sequence loosely based on the climax of the first Halloween movie. In the movie, Laurie unsuccessfully tries to avoid Michael in her home, while successfully keeping two children she's babysitting out of harms way. The game is basically the same, only much simpler. There's unlimited children and two rooms where the kids can be locked away safe and points scored (just 1 room in the movie and only 2 kids). The house has 6 other rooms where The Killer can appear from the side of the screen or a door in the middle. The 8 rooms fit together more or less realistically. And there are two floors. When there is a door in the middle of the screen on both floors, The Babysitter can enter and exit the other one to go up stairs or downstairs. There are windows but The Babysitter cannot fain escaping out the window to fool The Killer as Laurie did in the movie. The Babysitter can also find a knife to temporarily stop The Killer, and score some points, if an attack can be successfully performed. Laurie used three different weapons in the movie, and she got the knife from Psychopath. Occasionally, the lights in certain rooms the house will flicker and go out out. This results in complete darkness and is a real problem if The Killer is in the room at the time. Otherwise just wait, the lights come back on eventually. Once you have a child safely locked away, another child will leave start to wonder around the house. If The Killer finds one of the children, he slashes them to death and blood spurts out of the body. The designers managed to outdo the movie on this one, as the children are never physically harmed in the movie and are actual never targeted by Michael. If The Killer catches The Babysitter, he will decapitate her. The Babysitter's body will take off running, spurting blood in the air. What, you don't remember any decapitations in the movie? That's because there were none. There were only slashings, impalings, stabbings, strangling, throat cuttings, and shootings. Anywho, you win the game by...
Violence being their main selling point, the game delivers as well as can be expected for the 2600. It just manages both blood and gore. Slashings, child slashing, spurting blood, and spurting blood decapitation unmistakably depicted.

The Halloween movie theme music is present in the game. Quite rare for a 2600 game to include any complex music at all, let alone replicate a well known theme. It plays in the 'title sequence' and whenever The Killer enters the room.

Oh, and something important to note is the characters are never named in the game, on the cartridge, or in any of the game's materials.

When Wizard Video Games realized the game was not going to sell well, they began shipping bare cartridges without making labels for them. They simply wrote "Halloween" on them with a black marker to save costs. The ratio of labeled to unlabeled copies is not yet been determined with certainty by collectors but 50/50 seems to be a safe guess.

zerothis # 2014-06-30 01:25:44

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