Today, the multitude of horror or Halloween-themed video games on the market are so voluminous that to chronicle all of them would require an entire book, and, actually, there are quite a few of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, these horror-themed home video games were not always popular. In fact, they were significantly suppressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The history of Halloween video games can trace its origins back to the 1970s<\/strong> when science-fiction-based arcade games such as Berserker, Space Invaders<\/strong>, and numerous horror and sci-fi genre-themed pinball machines were commonplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the home arcade game debuted with Pong in 1976, most games were sports-related. Even when Odyssey<\/strong> and Ataru <\/strong>debuted their home video games, the bulk of the games were sports-related and\/or sci-fi related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were war games, western games, and fantasy games, but no horror games. Perhaps the video game producers sought to avoid controversy. But, eventually, a company named Wizard decided to meet controversy head-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wizard Video was a home video distributor that dealt with, to put it bluntly, total sleaze and junk. It seemed this company was a subsidiary of the now-defunct Vestron Video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Vestron was arguably the biggest VHS tape supplier on the market and distributor of numerous A-level studio projects, the Wizard imprint seemed to mine the low-budget trash from 1970s drive-in releases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1983, Wizard decided to branch out into the home video market with now get this Atari 2600 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering the 1974 <\/strong>film made a recorded 30 million dollars it would seem logical that fans of the film would check out the video game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Recorded is put in quotes because the distributor, Bryanston Films, was a mob-owned company and the true box office gross will never be known)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The demented Atari Game saw the player assuming the role of LEATHERFACE and the object of the game was to chainsaw innocent victims!<\/p>\n\n\n\n As gruesome as this sounds, the graphics for the game were horrible even by Atari’s miserable standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the game was downright silly, too. If your chainsaw ran out of gasoline, a victim would kick you in the butt! Really dumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The video game was a bomb. No self-respecting store would keep it in stock and even if you wanted a copy, finding one was pretty much impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wizard <\/strong>was not deterred and it released an Atari Game based on John Carpenters Halloween. The graphics were improved and the game a little bit more sophisticated, but stores didn’t want to carry it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It bombed as well and Wizard got out of the home video game market. Actually, Wizard and Vestron would both be out of business entirely by the late 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, horror video games would get a niche as the horror games of the late 1980s\/early 1990s emphasized action and adventure over grue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This, of course, all went out the window in the 1990s as extreme violence became the order of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh well, you can always get those Wizard games on eBay. For 300.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, the multitude of horror or Halloween-themed video games on the market are so voluminous that to chronicle all of them would require an entire book, and, actually, there are quite a few of them. But, these horror-themed home video games were not always popular. In fact, they were significantly suppressed. The history of Halloween […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":""},"categories":[1583],"tags":[189,735],"yoast_head":"\n