100 Gruesome Games for Halloween! (100-96)

Every year when Halloween approaches, I like to play as many spooky games as possible to get me in the proper horrible mood. I usually ask around the various retro forums for suggestions on what games to try out that I might have missed, and I now have a rather vast selection of freaky deaky wonders to play through...

But I was finding it tricky when it came to decide which ones to talk about on the blog! So I decided to include as many as possible, by choosing a horrific hundred and giving a brief but hopefully informative few words about each one! So lets not waste any more time, and get on with taking a look at them...in no particular order of preference......Here's the first batch...

100 - Blinky's Scary School (ZX Spectrum) :

Already talked about in detail on this very blog! Go read the review a few posts down.....

99 - Alan Wake ( Xbox 360) :

In this game, you play the the role of Alan Wake, a writer who is having problems writing new material. His wife drags him to the middle of New England to try and get him some relaxation and inspiration....but when he arrives in the town of Bright Falls, things start to get a little strange....



This is a great game with a really compelling story and it'll keep you entertained most of the way through.. It does have a few faults, becoming a bit repetitive in bits and suffering fiddly controls at times, but the story and excellent use of the soundtrack more than make up for those.

I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it yet! Oh, and check out the live action shorts that came out in the run up to the game's release for some freaky Twin Peaks type action too! You can find them on Youtube!



98 - Gregory Horror Show (PS2) :

A weird and wonderful take on the Survival Horror Genre played in 3rd or 1st person...Based on a japanese cartoon, this game sees your soul enter a spooky old hotel run by Gregory, a freaky gimpy-eyed mouse! He sets you up with a room, but as you drift off to sleep you meet Death (complete with Swedish hat), who informs you that the hotel is filled with lost souls that need returned to him.

They are being held by the weirdest bunch of mixed up characters you're likely to see for a long time, and it is they who make the game the joy it is to play! Anyhoo, Death sorts you out with a new body, hideous and cuboid as it may be, and then you go around peeking through keyholes to find out the hotel guest's dark secrets and how to steal back the souls they carry around with them...

It plays like a cross between Resident Evil and old point-and-click titles, with you trying to work out which of the many items lying around to use where...and if you manage to work it out and steal back a soul, the guest you pinched it from will then chase you around whenever they see you!

If you get caught, you are subjected to the horror shows of the title..basically a sequence where something horrible happens to you, which depletes your energy bar. It can get a bit boring trudging around, and a bit tricky later on when you have loads of guests hunting you down, but the quirkiness of it all and mental characters should keep you entertained! Definitely worth checking out if you like Survival Horror, but want to try a different slant on it....



97 - The Adventures Of Dr. Franken (SNES) :

You, as Dr. Franken, must traipse around looking for bits of your dismembered girlfriend so you can put her back together and get on with some dodgy dead dating! Not played much of this to be honest, but it seems to be a fairly run of the mill platformer with some nice spooky graphics. Has a couple of nice classical tunes in it too to add to the atmosphere. Will need to play it some more before I can give you a proper verdict....

96 - Weird Dreams (Amiga, Atari ST) :

Properly freaky stuff! This game came with a rather large back story told in a 64 page novella which came with it ...to cut it short, you fancy this girl who turns out to be possessed by a demon who is a bit fed up and trapped in her body, only you don't know that and the aforementioned demonic chappy decides to faff about with your mind for some giggles. You start having crazy dreams after it gives you some pills to help "cure" you , and eventually end up in hospital where you start having another, and possibly your last, weird dream!

You have to try to work through various puzzles and defeat the various nasties which are living in your head thanks to that old demonic numpty inhabiting you lady friend...but this is a very tricky game, or at least I found it to be...and I remember that a modified version appeared in a phone-in game on the old Saturday morning show Motormouth and people were pretty useless at getting anywhere in it on that too!

It is filled with freaky graphics and bizarre gameplay, and definitely deserves a go or two, but I just kept getting killed and watched a video of someone else playing it on Youtube instead...so here's the video, which obviously contains spoilers, so if you do fancy giving the game a bash without knowing anything, don't watch it!

Stuff gets Spooky!!

October is upon us already, and the nights are drawing in...and Halloween fast approaches!

As you can probably already tell from the stuff already posted, I do tend to like the spooky side of things, so keep an eye on this here blog for a whole load of horror related stuff throughout this whole month...including gruesome games, scary sounds, creepy comics and fearsome films!!!

AIEEEEEE! The Teeth!

Time for another freaky story I've found whilst scouring the vaults of the Digital Comic Museum...

This one's a cautionary tale for jealous dentists, from the pages of Fawcett Publications' title Strange Suspense Stories ( Issue 2 - Aug.1952 )...Enjoy! :)

The Fiend In Fur

I've been reading loads of cool old horror comics over at Digital Comics Museum...and so thanks to them, from the pages of American Comic Group's Forbidden Worlds -Issue 4, here's a cautionary tale about how you shouldn't wander off into the woods by yourself....but if you're foolish enough to do so, at least take your compass!!

Game Reviews - Blinky's Scary School (ZX Spectrum)

Drumtrochie Castle (like any old castle worth it's salt) was haunted. Ancestral ghosts had wandered it's halls for years...moaning and groaning, rattling chains, all the usual stuff...They had a rare old time of it..

All that is, until Red Laird McTavish decided he'd had enough! "Och! It's ma castle, and nae ghosties or ghoulies or long-leggity beasties are going tae spoil ma legendary Haggis Banquets!" he thought to himself. So he decided to take up ghost-hunting and rid Drumtrochie of every last spooky spectre.

Exactly 100 years have passed since he did just that, and the Head Spectre at the Ghost School has decided that Red's descendant and current Laird, Hamish, has bragged about his ancestor's antics once too often. And anyway, no castle should be without some spooks to scare things up a bit...

And so he sends his star pupil Blinky out on his first assignment..to recapture the castle for haunting! Blinky has only one night to succeed in his mission or he faces another 100 years at scare school! Yipe! Truly a fate worse than death! It is up to the player then, to help our sheet-like chum to accomplish his task and put the wind up Hamish's kilt!

Blinky certainly lives up to his name, fluttering his eyes as you bounce along the platforms trying to round up ingredients for a magic potion. These are scattered throughout the mansion, which although devoid of spooks has a nasty collection of rats, bats, insects and the like..all of which seem to be out to get poor Blinky! The old place is also in a bit of a state and pieces of it keep tumbling down, making it even trickier for our hero to travel unscathed...

Bouncing around on the platforms can be a bit annoying sometimes too, as you'll occasionally clip the edge of one, which sends you bouncing off in a different direction from which you intended to be travelling in...sometimes landing you in one of the castles many spikey trap pits! A bit of practice soon fixes this though, and before long you'll be zipping about over battlements and down the loos!

Oh yes...did I forget to mention the loos? Another way to traipse about is via the toilet-warps, which will flush you away to another part of the castle! You have to make sure you have enough bog paper though.....I suppose Blinky needs to wrap himself in something so he doesn't end up as a poopy poltergeist!

It's the little touches in Blinky that really make it stand out from the crowd a bit....the aforementioned eye-fluttering, the bits when you go into a dark room and can only see his eyes, the toilets...all of these give it a certain charm. The sound is a bit functional, but there's a nice tinkly tune on the title screen that sets it up nicely as a cutesy, colourful little adventure.

Ultimately, I found our pale little pal a lot of fun to hang around with, and although the spikes and falling masonry can get a bit annoying at times, the game has a definite one-more-go quality that saw me jump straight back into it for another attempt. Blinky gets his A+ from me at least....and as it wasn't the last time he haunted the Spectrum, we might be hearing from him in this blog again at some point...

Game Reviews - Tusker on the ZX Spectrum

About time I actually started to do some reviews I reckon....first up, Tusker on the old Speccy, mainly because it was on top of my games pile, staring up at me! Right, what's the story with this one then....

Your father was a great explorer, traipsing around Africa having spiffy adventures and staring danger in the face on a regular basis...you however, have been a bit of a disappointment to him. You prefer to stay at home and write his diaries and act as his biographer rather than follow in his footsteps. You had no wish to experience danger or horrible, icky insects...and sand would get in your undies and everything! No thank you!

However, 3 years ago, your father's mutilated corpse was found floating down the Turkwel River, skewered to a native raft...he had finally met his match. Whilst attempting to write his memoirs, you stumble upon his private journal, and reading through it you discover his life-long quest...to find the treasures of the Elephant's Graveyard ! 2 pages have been torn from the back, but there remains a clue that his last port of call was Nyahururu....

Suddenly filled with a totally uncharacteristic (but helpful for the plot) desire to find out what all the fuss is about, you decide to hurry off to Africa and pick up the trail....

Upon starting the game then, you find yourself stood in a desert, seriously under-equipped...maybe you rushed off a bit too hastily! You take a wander and find the place populated by Arabs intent on ending your little jaunt before you've even had a chance to get properly going...a swift couple of kicks to the groin should see them off until you find some weapons! You also have sandstorms to deal with, and as they have no groins your best bet is to try and avoid them...

Graphics are pretty good and a mix of colourful backgrounds and monochrome sprites, but your character does run like he's had an "accident" in his trousers and looks a bit on the portly side too! There's no music, and sound effects are never more than functional, but what is there is perfectly fine.

For some reason, when I used the joystick I found it incredibly difficult to connect any kicks or punches. It seemed like the game was having trouble receiving the inputs. It does appear to be difficult to hit opponents whilst they are hitting you anyway, and can be quite annoying if they start really smacking you as there's nothing you can do to stop them. But having retried it with keyboard controls I got a lot further and found the game a lot easier! Dunno if that's maybe my Speccy's fault or the game in general, but if you have similar problems with the joystick give the keyboard a bash....

Clearly influenced by Indiana Jones, Tusker is filled with puzzles and traps and you'll need to really use your brain to work out a few of them. I personally even have difficulty getting off of the first level without a solution, but you can look forward to dealing with slug-type monstermen, witch doctors and monkeys...you'll have to hunt around for the right objects for the job.

It does all add up to a quite enjoyable if flawed little adventure, and if you persevere with it you might end up liking a game that feels more like Indiana Jones than any of the actual spectrum Indy games. For me though, it's just a bit too fiddly to control and difficult...the Effalump's final resting place can stay bloody hidden!

Tusker - System 3 -

WOS page = Tusker

Cinema Of Stuff - Evil Brain From Outer Space !!

Here's a classic from 1964....A monstrous evil brain from outer space leads his minions on a crusade to conquer the universe, and unleashes hideous monsters on Earth that spread deadly diseases. Superhero Starman must rescue Earth from the menace of the evil brain while battling armies of monsters the brain sends against him.





IMDB page....http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058072/

THE DINOSAUR AND THE MISSING LINK

King Kong's ancestor comes a cropper in Willis H O'Brien's 1915 animation....

Out Of The Inkwell - The Ouija Board (Max Fleischer, 1920)

Was bored and decided to treat you to some animation.....Here's a nice little silent cartoon from Max Fleischer, produced for the Bray Studios in 1920.

Games Collection - Sony Playstation (PS1)

After loads of technical difficulties, I finally bring you my PS1 pics.....I used to have loads more, but I sold a load of stuff a couple of years back from all my systems.... Probably just as well, or I'd have nowhere to sleep.....Anyway, here's the collection!

Terror In The Haunted House!

From IMDB :- American-born Sheila Wayne has lived in Switzerland since childhood. Now newly married, she has a recurring nightmare about an ominous old house she can't recall having seen in waking life. Returning with husband Philip to Florida, they go to live at a country house...the house in her dream. Mysterious events multiply; who is responsible and why? Who is crazy? The answer is rooted in dark days of the past... This bit written by Rod Crawford

 

Coming soon to Cinema of Stuff!