Gah! For some reason, my computer decided to be exceptionally rubbish today and crashed lots and is recovering from two (no...make that 3...crashed again while I was typing this...) "serious errors" so I've spent the last 4 hours trying to get it up and running properly so as I can post some stuff...and it's nearly not Halloween anymore! And I haven't really done anything remotely spooky yet!!! So you'll just need to watch the HALLOWEEN TRIPLE BILL or listen to Vincent Price for now, because now my brain is numb and I'm going to relax and watch horror-type stuff and play horror type games....and we'll continue with the gruesome games and other horrible things throughout November!! Hope you've been enjoying it all so far....
Yes, not one, not two...but three fear-filled films to sate your nefarious nightmarish needs this Halloween! And a bonus creepy cartoon to start with too! So grab yourself a pint of your favourite beverage, cuddle into your crypts and prepare to be petrified, or at least mildly amused, by this terrible trio of treats in today's Cinema Of Stuff.......
Oh dear...it definitely looks like we won't be making it through 100 games before Halloween then! I should however make it to 50....so that just leaves the question of what to do about the next 50....What do you guys paying attention reckon? Do you want me to leave them until next year, and let you have time to find and play the first lot? Or do you want me to keep ploughing through them, posting them up over the next month or so?
The problem with the second option is that Halo 4 comes out next month, so I'll be spending a fair bit of time playing that! I'm sure I could still drag myself away every few days to write the blog though...so not really too much of a worry.....
But yeah...let me know what you think in a comment below....for now, let's get back to the next lot in the list!
60 - Realms Of The Haunting:
Not far into this one, but loving every minute of it so far! You play the role of Adam Randall as he returns to his home village after a strange priest arrives with a package from his recently deceased father...distrusting of the priest, he ignores the package, but starts having dreams about a strange house! So he eventually opens the package, and finds inside fragments of some carved objects...He decides to go a house mentioned by the priest, who had said that his father had discovered something there.....and it turns out to be the very house in Adam's nightmares!
The actual gameplay is a nice mix of first-person-shooter and point-and-click adventures, something which made it stand out at the time, but now makes it feel like the granddaddy of games like Penumbra or Amnesia. It's loads of fun exploring the mansion, with Adam giving voiced descriptions of the things he's examining...and there's puzzles to be solved in order to get deeper in to the house and try to uncover the mysteries inside. These usually involve finding the right key, object or switch...but they do help give a survival-horror-type feel to the game as well..
Various monsters will appear to try and stop you in your tracks too, but a nice variety of guns and magical weapons you can pick up along the way and use in the FPS style the game does very well, will help you dispose of these creatures and keep moving....
The FMV scenes are nicely filmed too, feeling more like a low budget, but not low quality, movie..the actors are all pretty good and it feels a step up from the normal b-movie type fair you usually get in 90s videogames.
All in all, it's a great game that should appeal to FPS fans, point & click fans and survival horror fans! I got my copy from gog.com, which is probably the best place to get it from if you're going to be playing it on modern PCs...I'll now let you have a look at the making of documentary, so you can see the hard work the folks who made it put in making this underrated classic! Watch it and then go buy the game immediately!
59 - Fright Night (Amiga) :
Another game I only recently discovered, this is a game based on cult 1985 horror movie Fright Night! You play as vampire Jerry Dandridge, as he roams his newly bought house looking for victims to satisfy his blood lust!
The victims have armed themselves with crucifixes and holy water, and they'll throw these at you as you approach them to sink your fangs in, so you'll need to try and avoid those or they'll hurt you and you'll lose vital energy. Also, some of the victims aren't particularly healthy and are filled with bad blood, so keep an eye out for those too, as drinking too much of that can be harmful to Jerry too!
You'll need to be sure to make it back to your coffin before sunrise too, or you'll end up rather crispy! This will move you on to the next night, or level, where you can start hunting down more victims! As you progress through the levels though, things get a little more difficult! Strange spirits and ghostly hands appear to try and stop you too, and these really drain your health rather quickly so extra care should be taken to avoid them...
It's a pretty fun arcade action game, alright for playing in small doses and ideal for a game or two to celebrate Halloween! I recommend you hunt it down and get your fangs into it sharpish!!!
58 - Kid Dracula (Gameboy) :
Time for one of the weirdest entries in the Castlevania series now! In this 1993 sequel to NES game Akumajo Special : Boku Dracula-Kun (a game I might look at next year) you take control of Kid Dracula as he is again woken from his slumber by evil demon and general all round nasty-sort Galamoth!
Having been asleep for quite a while, Kid has forgotten most of the spells he learnt in his previous adventure and so must try and find or remember these during the course of the game...which plays more or less like a slightly easier, more platformy version of other Castlevania titles.
Kid jumps around firing projectiles, transforming into a bat to reach difficult areas, etc....whilst also climbing ladders and avoiding falls and traps...all the stuff you'd expect, but in a cutesy, more child-friendly style...
Needless to say, it's a lot of fun...the levels sometimes feel a bit bare, but if you're looking for some portable spookiness to play on the bus whilst making you way to a Halloween party or whatever, you should definitely consider giving this a go!
57 - Super Godzilla (SNES) :
Initially, this SNES game looks to be doing everything right....there's a snazzy intro that has the proper Godzilla theme music, and a great sample of Godzilla's roar and the plot seems suitably crazy and monster filled to make for a decent conversion of the movies...
What a pity then, that the actual gameplay basically involves you trudging around a rather boring map, looking at a Godzilla that, whilst nicely realised, only does about two different things...smash buildings or get shot...Once you find the monster you have to face on that particular level, the gameplay changes and takes an even bigger turn for the worse...
Again, everything looks as it should and rather groovy, but the bizarre fighting system that the game uses means that for the most part you'll just be wildly mashing buttons, watching cutscenes of you or the monster bashing each other, then mashing more buttons with little to no effect....
Once you do beat a baddie, it's on to another trudge around another boring map....Not worth playing except for the novelty of being Godzilla for an evening I guess......
56 - Makai Prince Dorobochan (TG16/PC Engine) :
We take control of another little vampire in this title, and go on a nice little platform adventure over various levels filled with all manner of ghosties & ghoulies! Again, it's one I only discovered in the last few weeks whilst getting ready for the blog...
Your little vampire controls really well, and you can collect power-ups to upgrade to different suits with various abilities to help defeat all the nasties... Strange, Easter Island-headed zombie butler statues occasionally appear too, to make platforms for you to stand on to reach more areas...
It's another great little platformer, with some of the enemies being particularly groovy! My favourites are the totally insane looking zombies that you can see below, and right at the top of this post...funny little guys!
As I say, it's a groovy little game, and well worth a bash....I'll be taking a look at it's sequel, The Twisted Tales Of Spike McFang on the SNES, a bit later in the list, so hopefully we'll get to find out a little bit more about the little vampire prince then!
Blargh! Am a bit too sleepy today for normal blog-ness and stuffs, so here...have a lazy watch of a few spooky cartoons (which seem to favour dancing skeletons for some reason!?) to get you in the mood for Halloween! Only 2 days to go!!! Cripes!!!
Games are sometimes inspired by some odd sources, including 14th century poems about a journey through Hell it seems! Yes, the next two games I'm going to look at both use Dante Alighieri's epic Divine Comedy's Inferno section as their source material, and as such are filled with suitably Halloweeny-Hellish imagery.....
First up is Denton Design's take on the poem....it has us take the role of a pilgrim trying to escape Hell, by traipsing through all 9 of it's circles and reaching Satan, who hopefully will allow us back to live for a bit longer and hopefully end up in heaven next time.....
The game is basically a series of little mazes, with items lying around that you'll have no idea what to do with, but are important for progressing through the game. The first one for instance is a bag of gold that you give to Charon the ferryman by holding it up so he'll stop his boat allowing you to climb aboard and get ferried to the other side....something you'll want to be doing sharpish, as if you stand on the banks of the river too long, wasps will appear and try to sting you...and they can only be avoided by hopping on the boat!
When you reach the other side, you'll have to avoid getting caught up with the poor chaps and chapesses who were a bit too lusty in life, as they get blown around by strange winds which form two or three lines you'll need to run between to get past....and then you'll discover what hell has in store for you next!
It's surprising how true to Inferno the game manages to be, and if you're familiar with the work you'll see references to lots of aspects of the circles of hell. I only made it as far as the Garden Of Suicides though, as I found it incredibly difficult! This isn't helped by the fact you'll need to work out for yourself what each of the items lying around actually does, but I suppose that adds to the longevity of the game, as it doesn't seem particularly lengthy....
Overall, it's not too bad....just bloody difficult...but you should probably play it just too see what fate awaits a huge proportion of today's society, most likely including yourself, if the criteria for entering Heaven is as strict as it appears to be from the rules presented in the poem!
64 - Dante's Inferno (360) :
Viscerals take on Inferno also has lots taken form the source, but also adds some of its own storyline to make it a better fit for the God Of War style game it so obviously wanted to mimic. Its Dante is a man who returns from the Crusades to find his lady Beatrice's soul taken captive by Satan and dragged to Hell....a fate for which Dante and the sins he commited whilst away are to blame......
Off he trots down to Hell, aided by the poet Virgil, who imparts his knowledge about the various circles to help guide Dante. All manner of twisted denizens will be met, and luckily you'll constantly be finding relics and power-ups to help absolve or punish them so you can rush on to the next level.
You get souls from the creatures you dispose of, which act as currency for purchasing upgrades. The souls are either Good or Evil, depending on whether you decide to punish the baddies and rip them to bits, or redeem their souls and send them to heaven. Occasionally you'll also come across various figures from history, who you must also judge! This starts up a little mini-game sequence where you'll have to hit the correct buttons as souls fly into a circle in the middle of the screen, gaining you extra souls upon completion.
All of these souls you collect can then be spent on two different sets of upgrades.....again both Evil & Good...and these will help improve your health or magic or give you new moves with which to batter your foes with.
The main meat of the game is the God Of War style hacking and slashing and block-moving, lever-pulling, monster-mashing puzzles though...and very enjoyable stuff it all is! The game feels suitably epic, and despite a few camera issues and the occasional annoying jumping sections, you should have lots of fun as you make your way through the wonderfully-hellish looking, nicely constructed levels. It's definitely not a title for younger players either, as it's filled with violence and nudity...so keep it away from youngsters or you'll definitely find yourselves going downward when you pop your clogs!
But yeah, definitely recommended for action game fans and horror lovers...although maybe not for some overly religious or stuffy literary types who have been quite vocal concerning the fact a game based on Inferno was ever considered for release in the first place, failing to notice that such a thing already existed as early as 1986! (see above)
And these two weren't the only ones either...whilst looking for videos and info on the games for the blog, I stumbled upon another game that was due for release based upon Alighieri's work...
Irrational Game's The Lost was due to be a modern take on the theme, but was unfortunately canned before release due to various issues....still, you can read more about the game by clicking here... and here's a couple of videos to show what it would have been like..
The game code and rights were eventually picked up by an Indian company FXLabs who changed some of the graphics and plot, gave it a Bollywood makeover and released it on PC as Agni : Queen Of Darkness so maybe I'll try and hunt that down and take a look at it next year!
63 - Blood Will Tell (PS2) :
Another game based on literaturenow, this time based on Osamu Tezuka's manga series Dororo! It tells the tale of Hyakkimaru, who due to a deal with demons his father made before he was born, is now comprised of mainly prosthetic parts...The demons each demanded a part of Hyakkimaru in exchange for "bringing peace back to the land", and now rescued by an old inventor and all grown up, Hyakki decides to hunt these fiends down and retrieve all 48 body parts that were stolen from him.......
He soon meets up with a young thief named Dororo, who decides to accompany him on his quest, and at various points in the game you give commands to Dororo, or even take control of him at certain points....The game plays as a standard third-person action adventure type affair, with Hyakkimaru hacking, slashing and blowing up demons using his prosthetic arm-swords and knee cannons...and occasionally you'll be required to solve some puzzles, especially in the sections where you take control of Dororo as these are less combat based....
I've really only just started playing this game, but so far I've noticed a few things that really make me want to continue playing this game right the way through...Firstly, it uses the lost body parts thing really well! At the start of the game, everything is in black & white...and it stays that way until you recover your eye from one of the demons, which then lets you see the game in colour! Every part you recover adds something new to the game with your nose allowing you to sense demons for instance, which vibrates your PS2 pad when one is near! It's a really cool game mechanic, and I like it lots....
Second is the plot! The storyline is crazy, and will make you want to stick with the game just to see how it all pans out...and playing through has made me want to check out the manga series too! There's even a live action film I'll need to try and find an English subbed version of that looks pretty good too....
But by far my most favourite thing about Blood Will Tell is the freakish enemies you'll have to fight throughout the course of the game...some look creepy, some look weird..all of them are wonderfully bizarre and Japanese and some would provide great inspiration for some totally mental Halloween costumes!
It does have problems...the camera can be really annoying and fiddly at times, and it can get a bit repetitive...but so far, the story, enemies and fun of unlocking new stuff with every body part has got me hooked! I definitely recommend it for monster lovers or fans of manga!
62 - Nosferatu (ZX Spectrum) :
The written word references continue, with this...the game based on the film that was based on Bram Stoker'sDracula! Not the 1922 original but the 1979 Werner Herzog remake....
Unfortunately, it's one of those isometric 3D wander-a-round-a-thons that there seem to be approximately 7 kajillion and 1 of on the Speccy....I've only played it briefly though, and it does seem to be a pretty good example of one. I did manage to get stuck fairly early on though and couldn't work out where I was supposed to go, and my interest really wasn't held enough for me to continue.....
It all looks suitably creepy though, and has a nice day-to-night lighting thing going on and is probably really good once you get into it...I'll need to revisit it some other time though, when I get the urge for isometric stuff..which does happen every now and again actually! Anyway, if you're looking for exactly the same sort of thing, why not give this a try and see what you make of it? If you find it to be the most amazing game ever you can always come back and tell me and then I might be persuaded to give it another go....
While we're talking about Nosferatu again, why don't I just stick the film up for those who have yet to see it to take a gawp at? Yes....I think I will!
Enjoy.....
61 - Gogo the Ghost (C64) :
I don't know what it is about the Commodore 64, but I've always seemed to find its games a lot harder to play than the ZX Spectrum's.....any game I haven't played that I find on the Speccy, I can usually get quite a bit into it and manage to see a fair few screens at least before getting killed by anything....
Not so with the C64...most newly discovered games have me dying every two bloody seconds, getting really frustrated with them and giving up on them pretty quickly! This is another such game....(maybe I'm just really crap at C64 games through some psychological want to not be good at the Speccy's rival's games or something? I dunno....)....
You play as Gogo the ghost as he tries to make his way through 150 screens of obstacles and enemies in a haunted house, to reach his "dream princess!"....Well, she'll be waiting a long bloody time, as I only made it as far as the second screen after quite a few goes.....
The game is far too difficult to get anywhere at all in, and although I know I'm pretty rubbish at C64 games, looking around online suggests that others find this game way too tricky as well.....one to be avoided then....unless you're a masochist.....
John Anders discovers a terrible secret about accidents in this comic strip from September 1953 that appeared in Comic Media's Weird Terror Issue 7... and then quickly happens upon another, even more terrifying secret!!
I actually meant to post this last year, but completely forgot to go back and find it again...so thanks to TwoHeadedBoy for reminding me which comic I has seen it in! And thanks also to Tigger for uploading the scans to The Digital Comic Museum!
