Halloween 2014

We’re opening up the request line again. Comment below if there’s a game you’d like included in the yearly review-a-thon. You don’t have to specify who you’d like to review it, but you can if you want. Only rules: it must be retro, and it must be spooky.

And yes, you can request games for 80s-90s systems we haven’t added yet…  😮

26 thoughts on “Halloween 2014

  1. Hi J Man and The Crew,

    There’s Nightmare Creatures series for PSX (I still own the NC2), a 3d-person slasher, ambiented in Europe, in the beginning of 1900’s. This one has particular quality in terms of script, and is a pretty spooky – often, gory – experience. You may try that.

    For now, I don’t have anything else in mind, but will try to come up with another title or two.

    Cheers.
    \m/

  2. Ok, here I go:

    1. Nightmare Creatures, as per my first request.

    2. I remember Dark Seed, a point-and-click adventure game. I don’t like the genre, but I’ve heared that it was praised for the visuals that were strongly influenced by artwork of H. R. Giger. Also, it was released for Amiga, DOS, Mac, and some other platforms.

    3. Deep Fear, a japanese survival horror for Sega Saturn System, heavily based on the movies Leviathan, starring Peter Weller (!) and Richard Crenna(!) (a little gem for your video collection 😀 ), and The Abyss (that we all enjoyed). It was also released in Europe, so there is an English version available.

    All curiosities, but I think that they may work for this year’s Halloween issue.

    All the best,

    Oleg

  3. Ok, well I’m not a fan of scary games (as you know!) but how about the 8-bit version of Aliens? Amstrad CPC version preferred, but will reluctantly accept C64/Spectrum as alternatives. It’s the European release by Electric Dreams, not the US Activision title, that I’m talking about.

    Also to my eternal shame I was traumatised by the educational title Granny’s Garden on the BBC Micro as a kid. (I feel partially exonerated by it getting a mention in a ‘scary games’ feature in this month’s Retro Gamer).

    Not sure if either of these are ‘spooky’ enough so feel free to ignore my requests!

  4. Nightmare Creatures and esp. Dark Seed would be awesome. I believe I have already read Resident Evil and Silent Hill plus a few other horror games I’ve already read about on here (besides having played them!)

    Splatterhouse can’t remember though…

    1. Splatterhouse 2 is here, but I never rewrote Splatterhouse 3. It was part of a feature collection from 2002 or so. Splatterhouse SD too.

      Any other 8/16 bit console games? Am I correct in my sense that we’ve covered all the NES and SNES horror there is to cover?

  5. God yes J Man, I would think so and I forgot about that regarding Splatterhouse!

    Only other horror games that come to mind are some PC ones, SH and RE sequels and obscure NES ones whose names elude me…

  6. I’ll probably tackle Nightmare Creatures, and I’d LOVE to do Deep Fear, but it might be a Christer to track down, so I make no promises. Also, if anyone’s interested, and time permits, I might take a whack at Resident Evil 3.

    1. Dark Seed has been aired in the GOG.com community: they plead to bring it into the downloadable roaster. I’m sure, they will do, but who knows when… Meanwhile, the times for the Halloween’s shots of reviews are becoming shorter.

      Resident Evil series are very welcome; though, I only praise the 4th installment… call me picky! 😉

      P.S.: Outrageous request (for this rubrique) – when will you make an Unreal review? You covered almost all the important FPS titles, but this one is MIA, here.

      Cheers.
      \m/

  7. Castlevania also comes to mind and some Nintendo games like Luigis Mansion, a N64 game too and some PC FPS/Adventure games but my mind is now blank.

    p.s. First review I read on JRG was the DOS horror island FPS on the PC from 1993.

  8. A couple of people have mentioned Darkseed – as a game it’s actually kind of frustrating, but it’s got some chilling themes and visuals.

    Also, there’s a bunch more Castlevanias you could cover. They’re not exactly scary but they have all your traditional halloween monster stuff.

  9. Clive Barkers Undying also comes to mind. And System Shock 2 as games I can’t remember reading about on JGR.

    Other then that only scary games are either too current or have been reviewed on here like Doom 1, 2 and 3, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc.

  10. We got to more than it was looking like we were going to, but certainly fewer than we wanted. Time permitting, I have hopes/plans to add a few more from this list (not as “official” Halloween reviews) in the coming weeks.

    Thanks for sticking with us, and keep an eye on that new “Extras” section! We’ll be using it for one-off reviews of interesting games on other systems. Once we have enough for a particular system, we’ll transition it to a full category.

      1. I’m pretty pleased about that, considering how much of an absolute bitch this last month has been for me.

        Oh well. Still here and knocking out the reviews!

        (Though I am looking forward to some “me time” with Alien: Isolation)

        1. I actually tried Isolation for the first time this week. It’s…um…not for me, though I don’t understand why I’m so freaked out by it, considering I actually love that franchise.

  11. Excellent work, as always, guys. One small point: only Mystic Midway: Phantom Express got a ‘too scary for Rik?’ rating this year. I demand to know which games are too scary for me! (To which the answer is probably: all of them, even Mystic Midway: Phantom Express).

    1. I intended that as a one-off joke last year (something related to a Twitter comment, as I recall), but maybe we should make it our official Halloween rating 😛

      1. I figured it was a one-off but then I got a surprise mention in the first review of the Halloween season…as mentioned, all games are too scary for me, so it would be a pretty redundant scoring system!

  12. Hi guys,

    Thanks for picking up my suggestions and for your great work at reviewing the titles!

    Too bad that their quality turned out to be from mediocre to poor, but not all donuts come with a hole, right?

    I hope to read your other reviews soon!

    Cheers.

    P.S.: I mistakenly put this comment to Nightmare Creatures review, can you delete it from there? Thanks again.

  13. Also, thank for the insights about the other titles! RESIDENT EVIL is truly a strange franchise, but somewhat satisfying.

    \m/

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