Survival horror then and now

[Zettaijin]

As it ever occured to you that some of today's fads are not quite as "new" as some might have you believe?

In some cases, what seems "new", "fresh" or even "original" was attempted with little or no success years ago.

This is the case with Survival Horror.

We've all had our fill of post-apocalyptic genetic mutations. We've all seen the busty heroines and their phallic guns kicking some mutant zombie ass. And we've all heard the old government/corporate America cover-up stories.

But back in the more innocent days of the Atari 2600 - well, as innocent as a system featuring "classics" like Custer's revenge can be - the very idea of such "edgy" storylines and "mature" themes was the stuff of weird, reclusive geeks with a passion for horror movies.

It just so happens that SOME of those geeks over decided to build what would be, in my opinion, the first actual Survival Horror game - Halloween.

Think of it for a moment. You have almost every single basic building block of any and all good Survival Horror game!

• Gore and violence (Micheal Myers stabs the innocent babysitter to death and you, in turn, can do a number on the Shape with a knife)
• Tense atmosphere (the Shape is clearly at an advantage and you're constantly running from him)
• Claustrophobic feeling of being "trapped" within a limited environement (you can't run out of the house)
• "Edgy" storyline ( a murderous freak is trying to kill a young babysitter and the kid she's trying to protect)
• Constant games of "hide and seek" between the protagonist and his/her antagonist (instead of a DOOM-like both barrell blazing attitude, one must be careful to avoid fights)

Granted, the game was repetitive and difficult to play, but it represents the very first actual survival horror game. Of course, more interesting Japanese games would come later on such as Sweet Home for the NES and, for the SNES, the very spooky Clock Tower inspired by Italian horror "auteur" Dario Argento and his (now ex-)wife Daria Nicoldi's foray into the supernatural horror genre Suspiria and Phenomena. Stilll, it's intresting to see that this "new" genre is not new at all with variou systems having their own "survival horror" games long before the Resident Evil craze hit North America.

[digitalpress]

Excellent post

*sticky-fied*

I don't know if I'd personally categorize Halloween as a survival horror game. You make a good case for it but the whole style, where there are some puzzles to solve, a story in the background, and a feeling that YOU are there (not necessarily controlilng a video game character) kinda made survival horror a viable "new" genre.

When I think of the roots of this genre I think of Infogrames' 1992 game "Alone In the Dark". At that time it was quite unique, and I remember the first time I played Resident Evil I thought that AITD had to be their inspiration.

My 2 meseta.

[GENESISNES]

what system was this game for?

[digitalpress]

what system was this game for?

Alone in the Dark was pretty big in its day. It was available at LEAST on PC-DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64, maybe other computers.

[Sniderman]

There have been other discussions on other message boards about the "origin" of the survival horror genre. Now, to begin with, I'll give the nod to Resident Evil/Biohazard because Capcom actually coined the term "survival horror." They defined it, ergo they get the kudos.

Now then, if we move away from "who" came up with survival horror and movetowards "what" is survival horror, then I agree that the videogame horror genre's been around since videogames were invented.

Taking the theme of "try not to let the monsters kill you," pretty much ALL videogames are survival horror in some way. After all, that's the underlying theme of most games - rack up a big score until the monsters/enemies/creatures kill off the last of your three lives.

Now, if you're looking for something that has a horror theme to it (ghosts, zombies, blood splattering, haunted houses, etc.), that narrows the field a lot. I agree that Halloween is a good start, but I'd go back just a few more years and say that Atari 2600's Haunted House predated it. I defy anyone to play this game in the dark with the sound turned up and not leap out of their skin the first time the spider (bat, ghost) passes through a door and gets you. By the loosest of definitions, HH is a great "survival horror" game.

I'm kinda fuzzy on early computer games, but wasn't there a game called Transylvania for the old Apple systems that was quite graphic and gory? there was a game called "Zombies" for the C64 that was basically a top-down Dawn of the Dead sim. And DP's right, Alone in the Dark set the stage for RE, even as far as introducing the interface we've come to expect. And, the scariest survival horror game I ever played was "The Lurking Horror" text adventure by Infocom. Not a picture or sound in the entire game, yet it has haunted my nightmares for years.

Other grand console survival horror games that predate RE by years and years include Splatterhouse, Frankenstein's Monster, Midnight Mutants, Dracula (Intellivision and Lynx), etc.

Resident Evil only "defined" a genre that, until that time, had been unnamed.

[Queen Of The Felines]

Snider, you may be thinking of Crypt of Medea instead of Transylvania. COM had a ton of gore including severed hands, decomposing dogs, heads-on-spikes, blood-filled rooms, the works.

Kristine

[Sniderman]

Hello Kitty!

Yup, COM it is. Thanks for helping out my decrepit ol' memory.

[Zettaijin]

Umm good point about Haunted House, although I for one believe that the "edgy" storyline is also a major part of the game genre itself.

Outside the actual gameplay, atmopshere and "story" are two elements that I consider essential to Survival Horror. I admit I'm neither shocked nor even remotely phased by your average X-Files-like "government conspiracy" stories featuring aliens, mutants and corporate interests, but at the time they were still somewhat "edgy" and, to those living under a rock without a television set, "new". So RE, with much hype, did manage to get some folks talking.

I'm not sure Haunted House was in any way "edgy" in terms of storyline - it was a fairly usual "horror" story about a haunted house and the creepy crawlies that inhabit it. It WAS, however, creepy.

Halloween, for it's sake, had Micheal Myers running after a teenage girl and a child, attempting to murder both of them. Its content was deemed too controversial for its time and we all know of the infamous "behind the counter" rule regarding the sale of this game and the equally controversial Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Sure, you could say many videogames featured very violent deaths - ever see one of those puny humans in Defenders exploding after being dropped from your ship onto the very very hard ground? What about all those planes you shot down in various shooters? Did anyone pilot those planes? The difference is simple - Halloween hit much closer to home than most games before it.

It showed something which remained controversial for years to come in the videogame world (all the way up to Mortal Kombat and others) - graphic violence.

But again, violence itself does not make a Survival Horror game.

I don't feel like bringing up the topic of graphic violence in videogames, but suffice to say that graphic violence closely follows technical progress and the capacity to represent and/or re-constitute "reality" faithfully. It also tends to "grow" as people get used (and perhaps bored) with the usual level of violence.

Still, Halloween went one step further than other "horror" games by haviing clearly "human" characters involved - including minors - in graphic acts of "realistic" violence. As we know, using minors is still a bit of a no-no in today's gaming world as there is something particularly disturbing about maniacal children (see Clock Tower's Bobby Barrows or the various "cihild monster" movies like the It's alive! series and even Pet Semetary) or child victims (controversy in Europe surrounding the use of small zombie children in one of the Silent Hill games).

But what about Romero's Dawn of the Dead inspired "kill all the zombies" games? Those games often lacked atmosphere, quickly turning into glorified shoot em' ups and the basis for the ID games (DOOM and others).

This is interesting since there are two major schools of Survival Horror - one makes you a kick ass warrior and the other a poor, helpless weakling. On the one hand, you are armed and capable of dealing with almost any danger, on the other, you are a weak and unlikely hero unprepared for the horror that awaits you.

One asks you to master guerrila tactics, the other asks you to hide or, better yet, run for your life.

One is warfare, the other is a slasher movie.

One is DOOM, the other is the original Clock Tower.

Is DOOM Survival Horror? Not really. But RE is closer to DOOM than it is to CT. The special agents in RE are far more dangerous to those evil zombies than poor little Jennifer is to Bobby and his twisted family. And while the agents are faced with a house full of zombies, Jennifer has only three actual foes in Bobby, Dan and their psychotic mum (ok, so maybe the starved mr.Barrows might be a threat if you didn't bring the meat with you and got locked up in the cage with him). Besides, if you take out the interesting political commentary featured in the Romero zombie flicks and Fulci's (sometimes) brillant cinematography in his own zombie movies, what are we left with but DOOM-lite?

Be it a tropical jungle or an abandoned shopping mall or a space-age fortress/labyrinth - the point remains the same: kill all zombies/monsters!

In any case, I'd say RE is closer to the shoot em' up zombie games than Halloween much like CT is closer to Halloween than to the zombie games. But both are recognised by a vast majority of gamers as Survival Horror and so the question is should we also recognise those games that inspired them and how far back can we go?

If we wanted to, we could easily say that Gone with the wind, A Clockwork Orange and [Mr.Deeds are all the same because they follow a linear narrative instead of the completely weird and often non-linear narrative in Lynch's Lost Highway. The same with videogames - we could easily say that every Dawn of the Dead inspired zombie shoot em' up game is in the same league as Haunted House, Halloween and RE because they all feature a hero(ine) fighting against impossible odds or that every "avoid the monster" games (from Qix to Clock Tower) are the same.

But that would be counter productive - using a concept means defining and establishing certain exclusions so that it can focus more clearly on certain objects rather than being vague and inclusive and thus useless in categorising anything.

But in the end, all I really wanted to do was write something with a Halloween them to it, discuss classic video games, give you folks some food for thought and, more importantly, offer a new look at the much maligned Halloween video game. Sure, it may not be as controversial a topic to old school gamers as the legendary Atari 2600 E.T. game is, but I believe it may have been too quickly dismissed as a bad attempt at cashing in on cheap violence and a popular franchise. I for one thinl it may just have influenced a number of games from CT to Alone in the Dark - another often forgotten franchise that brought polygons to the forefront at a time when it wasn't the "in thing" to do.

[DeanoCalver]

While porting Silent Hill 2, Jayenne (an Artist) decided it reminded him of CRI Jack the Ripper which he was involved in back in the Spectrum days (IIRC its his cousin who is the victim on the cover :-))

He came to this conclusion that both are survival horror via this logic

You run around being scared trying to figure out whats going on.
Many things kill you and various things/people are killed
It deliberately trys to spook you out
There are woman in it.

Last one seemed a bit strange to me...

CRI did a few horror games in the UK, they deliberately got a video classification (required by law for movies but had never been used on video games back them), so they could place an BBFC 18 (BBFC 18 means its illegal to sell to anybody under that age) on the box.

They got a lot of press attention for it. But how much visual gore can you have in a text adventure?

I've always considered it down to the deliberately scaring you bit. Thats defines a horror game (rather than something thats just scary by accident. e.g. I find Chorton and the Wheelies scary but I doubt they set out with that intention). Some games go out of there way to scare you, they are horror games (Like some of the sound effects in SH2) Most games are survival based if it involves horror, its survival horror.

Deano

[digitalpress]

Welcome to the forums, Deano!

If you have a moment, please introduce yourself at this link:
http://www.nullunit.com/dpforum/viewtopic.php?t=11

Enjoy your stay!

[Mayhem]

what system was this game for?

Alone in the Dark was pretty big in its day. It was available at LEAST on PC-DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64, maybe other computers.

Just PC afaik Joe. I've never seen an Amiga version and it definitely didn't come out on C64. But I will agree it was a great game at the time

[GENESISNES]

Alone in the Dark was pretty big in its day. It was available at LEAST on PC-DOS, Amiga, and Commodore 64, maybe other computers.

I had a shareware version of this game on my old MS-DOS windows 3.1 pc. i played it once or twice pretty fun.

[lionforce]

I believe that the first true survival horror game has to be a game that really scared the crap out of you and it must have those "horror themes" that have been discussed already and right now I can't give my opinion on the first SH game because there are a couple that have scared me

[Thief187]

There are two games, fitting for the survival horror genre, that freaked me out IMO.

1. Uninvited[/color] for the Nes. Like Shadowgate, except this takes place in a haunted house. However, creepy things will happen if you're not careful.

2. D for the Ps1. You are Laura, in a quest to find your father. In the beginning, you enter into the hospital when somehow you are teleported into some castle. I'm not sure you can die here, but it's just too scary to play with the lights off.

[Zettaijin]

I'm curious though, has anyone (besides me) ever tried the original ClockTower for the SNES (and re-released on PSX later on as ClockTower:First Fear)?

Am I the only one here brave enough to face Bobby "Scissorman" Barrows?

[jaydubnb]

I'm curious though, has anyone (besides me) ever tried the original ClockTower for the SNES (and re-released on PSX later on as ClockTower:First Fear)?

Am I the only one here brave enough to face Bobby "Scissorman" Barrows?

The only Clocktower that I've played was the first one that came out for the PSX and it ruled and ruled hard. To me, thats the only survival horror game that lives up to to the genre's name (i havent spent enough time with Silent Hill to judge). I find it hilarious when ppl saw "RE scared the crap outta me".....IMO, CT was the only game to have me on the edge of my seat and scared to move, because those infernal heavy footsteps were always creeping. The RE series creepiest moment was when the mutant dogs burst through the windows.

[bargora]

Yeah, I liked Clock Tower (PSX, NA), but I've never seen Clock Tower: The First Fear for PSX. Isn't that a Japan-only release? And wasn't Clock Tower (SNES) also Japan-only? I'd like to check it out, but I don't speak or read Japanese. Wouldn't that make it really hard to follow what's going on?

[Zettaijin]

Emulation my friend, emulation!

Find a Japanese SNES ROM of CT, get the Aeon Genesis translation and you're in business!

The SNES/PSX/Wonderswan versions are almost identical with perhaps one or two extra scenes added to the PSX/Wonderswan versions that were taken out of the SNES (which explains the mysterious "knife" item found in the SNES version with no apparent use).

The original CT is by far the spookiest SNES game ever!

Although only 2D it has great atmosphere and some very inventive scenes - not to mention Dario Argento references! (the slylight murder comes to mind, as well as Bobby Barrows himself)

The trick to being spooky is making your heroine weak and almost helpless - you don't have guns and armour, you don't have hand grenades and various weaponry. You CAN'T kick everything's butt and get away with it - you are a mere mortal and you're facing something stronger, meaner and more dangerous than you could ever imagine.

That's why I mentionned Halloween as a Survival Horror game instead of the Dawn of the Dead inspired shooters.

[kainemaxwell]

You guys got me intrested enough to find and try Clock Tower out now!

[bargora]

bargora casts: Resurrect. RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

I dipped my toe into Doom 3 (Xbox) the other day (well, night). Some creepy stuff there. I walk into a room that's mutating into some sort of organic nightmare. Imps teleport into the room and hallway, hurling gouts of flame at me. I blast one, run out of the room. A hideous voice starts laughing. AT ME. More imps come. From the front, from the back. Enveloped in flame, my corpse falls to the floor. I decide that I've had enough for the evening. Because that was just friggin' freaky.

It seems to me that Doom 3, despite the availability of heavy weaponry, is a lot more survival horror than the original 1990s Doom games were. I think that a large part of it is whether the game tries to scare you.