7 Classic NES Horror Games to Get You in the Halloween Spirit
Dust off your NES or break out your Retron console — we’re going retro!
Don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of summer and I’m ready to for the nights to get longer and the season of horror to begin. Not sure how you all celebrate the coming Halloween season, but I start off by going through my library of games, starting with classics from the NES era.
If you’re a horror fan, you should give these seven classic horror titles a shot — even if some of them haven’t aged very well.
Monster Party
Maybe I’m a little partial because the protagonist’s name is Mark, but I loved the heck out of Monster Party. Even umpteen years later, I find myself scouring local retro gaming stores so I can enjoy its quirky take on horror and nonsensical gameplay elements once more.
Where else can you find a game that understands the dangers of eating fried foods? That stuff is evil incarnate.
The collection of bosses scattered throughout the eight horror-themed worlds is fun, albeit sometimes incredibly silly. But a big part of Monster Party’s charm is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. At all.
Castlevania
I’d like to argue that Castlevania had one of the best, simplistic openings in all of NES history.
That ominous castle shadowed in the background. The hero strolling up to it in what I have to assume is an 8-bit version of a “badass walk.” Yeah, this is gon’ be good.
The gothic castle is filled with all sorts of terrors: ghouls, skeletons, specters, and — the worst and most persistent of all — mummies.
Equipped with a trusty whip, crosses, holy water, and daggers, players take control of the holy warrior, Simon Belmont, in the first in a series that, 31 years later, is still going strong.
Uninvited
Point-and-click adventures were never my thing, but there was something about ICOM Simulations’ haunted house adventure, Uninvited, that I got a kick out of.
It was far from perfect and many of the changes from the Mac and MS-DOS versions to the NES port were weird and not entirely for the best, but scouring the mysterious mansion, solving its puzzles, and enjoying its antiquated design was at least memorable.
The few haunts that did jump out at you were, at least by today’s standards, feeble attempts at jump scares, but you have to hand it to the developer for trying to get a jolt out of the gamer.
Friday the 13th: The Video Game
Stave the outrage for a moment. I know just how awful the original Friday the 13thgame was, but a list of NES horror games without the terrible adaptation of a cinematic horror classic just felt incomplete.
Trying to describe Friday the 13th isn’t easy, and the only telltale signs that it was based on the movies are the use of Camp Crystal Lake and Jason Voorhees. Though the latter is conspicuously absent for most of it.
Rather than spend your time beating up on or running from Jason, you spend your time leaping over zombies and giant crows. You know, zombies and crows, just like in the movie.
But maybe the most hilarious part of the game is the Punch Out!–styled mini-game you play with ’ol Mr. Voorhees himself.
Nightmare on Elm Street: The Video Game
Far less cringeworthy than Friday the 13th, all the quirky, weird things in Nightmare can actually make sense.
This is Freddy Krueger we’re dealing with. And when it comes to your dreams, your world is his oyster!
Nightmare takes an approach similar to Castlevania, with a lot of jumping over enemies and…kicking ghosts?
Unlike Voorhees, Krueger shows up a lot, both in standard enemies and level bosses. It’s not a great game, but it’s the only Nightmare on Elm Street game we have, so it’s good enough.
Mark LoProto is a horror-loving video game enthusiast. Look for more from him on his horror-themed Instagram or connect with his gaming side on Twitter.
