You guys missed a good one. Rescue on Fractalus for the Atari 5200 and Commodore 64. Created by Lucasfilm games. Yeah prelucasarts.
It was released between 1983 and 85. Yeah after the great Video Game crash and before Nintendo rose from the ashes like a Phoenix. Essentially the dark ages for console gaming.
I picked it up at K-mart for $9.99. This was the first game to genuinely scare me. On the surface it seems simple enough. Your spaceship launches. You go through a planets atmosphere and shoot alien turrets over mountains.
Occasionally a human needs rescuing. You land your ship and you watch as the human comes running towards your ship and comes onboard. Yay! You rescued him.
Then you rescue a few more. Oh look here comes another human AHHH!!!! WTF!!! An alien pops up in front of the screen and smashes your ships window and you die.
This comes as a total shock. No where does it say in the manual this will happen. It just comes out of no where. The first time it happened. I nearly fell off my chair and screamed like a little girl.
From then on every time I picked up a human I was waiting for the alien to pop up. It was nerve wracking because it was random. So you never knew when it would happen.
You guys missed a good one. Rescue on Fractalus for the Atari 5200 and Commodore 64. Created by Lucasfilm games. Yeah prelucasarts.
It was released between 1983 and 85. Yeah after the great Video Game crash and before Nintendo rose from the ashes like a Phoenix. Essentially the dark ages for console gaming.
I picked it up at K-mart for $9.99. This was the first game to genuinely scare me. On the surface it seems simple enough. Your spaceship launches. You go through a planets atmosphere and shoot alien turrets over mountains.
Occasionally a human needs rescuing. You land your ship and you watch as the human comes running towards your ship and comes onboard. Yay! You rescued him.
Then you rescue a few more. Oh look here comes another human AHHH!!!! WTF!!! An alien pops up in front of the screen and smashes your ships window and you die.
This comes as a total shock. No where does it say in the manual this will happen. It just comes out of no where. The first time it happened. I nearly fell off my chair and screamed like a little girl.
From then on every time I picked up a human I was waiting for the alien to pop up. It was nerve wracking because it was random. So you never knew when it would happen.
When I read about how you can get to grandmother's house in under a minute if you don't get off the path, I literally said, "That's genius!" The concept is so nice. A shame that the graphics don't have the same power to reinforce the type of experience.
Playing a game like that with the realistic polish of a game like, say, Arkham Asylum, would be an incredible experience.
Also, as a writer of short stories, the concept for "The Lurking Horror" really gave me inspiration for a new story!
OMFG!!! I bought that path game last week at half priced books!!! that thing is disturbing and gives you nightmares and i'm 22 years old!!! one time i followed the path the entire time and it was really nice and pretty but *SPOILER ALERT:IF YOU GO IN THE FOREST AT THE END, IN GRANDMA'S HOUSE YOU FALLIN A PIT AND DIE!!!* it's on youtube!!!