Editorials
My Strange Fondness For a Disastrous Game: Remembering ‘Spawn: The Eternal’
I’ve been thinking a lot about Spawn recently. Ever since leaks suggested he would be added as a DLC character to Mortal Kombat 11, I’ve been taking trips down the memory lane. After he was finally confirmed, these trips have only grown in frequency.
It’s not that I’m remembering the old movie that I first watched at the tender age of five, or his appearance in SoulCalibur II, nor his PS2 game Spawn: Armageddon that I barely played. The one thing about Spawn that I remember, with fondness, confusion and anger, is Spawn: The Eternal for the PS1, also known as one of the worst games ever made.
Chances are you probably don’t know the game I’m talking about. Spawn: The Eternal was released in December of 1997 for the original PlayStation and was even developed by Sony Computer Entertainment themselves. It was a different era, clearly, as these kinds of licensed games were more common than they are now and the developer names attached to them were more well-known.
If you do know what I’m talking about, however, then you probably know that not even Sony’s name could save this game. The thing is, not a lot of people talk about Spawn: The Eternal, and when they do it isn’t in the most joyful tone. While I didn’t realize it myself when I first played it, since I didn’t have anyone to talk about it, is that this game received nothing but negative comments, with some even comparing it to the infamous E.T. videogame that almost killed the industry.
Those comparisons are a bit exaggerated, but the game is very bad indeed. It’s hard to find any written opinions about it on the internet since in those days magazines were the norm, but if you try to look for any kind of video of the game you will immediately realize what I’m talking about. The game looks ugly even by early 3D standards, the animations are slow and painful to watch, plus there’s barely any music or dialogue, and the plot is almost nonexistent.
At the time, I didn’t really notice any of this. I was a kid, completely floored by what was one of his first 3D games. I had watched the movie before, though I didn’t remember much of it given my age. All I knew was that, for me, Spawn was cool. He had a cool look, he fought cool monsters. Of course I was going to play his video game on my relatively new PlayStation.
The Scariest Video Game Fighters
Still, my first impressions weren’t exactly the most positive. While I couldn’t exactly judge the game based on its looks, the controls were indeed bad and noticeable even for someone without a lot of experience in 3D games. The exploration segments of the game had you controlling Spawn with tank controls trying to navigate environments that were very poorly designed for the kind of movement they expected out of you. Even at the time, I could tell that a game with those kinds of poor controls shouldn’t have platforming sections like this one did.
The thing I remember the most, and the one aspect of the game that I never fully understood, was the combat. While the levels were mostly empty and devoid of anything interesting, you could see enemies roaming around, and whenever you got close to them the game switched to what essentially was a 2D fighting game with some limited lateral movement. This was, single handedly, the most confusing aspect of the game for me because it’s an entire pillar of the experience that the game never even tries to explain.
In combat, you could switch from cape form to chain form in order to have access to different moves. You could also use different power-ups that you picked up during exploration, like buffs or projectile attacks. You could even rip off an enemy’s arm and use it as a weapon against them. On paper, this sounds interesting, but in practice I never could do any of this, not even by accident. There is not a single screen in the entire game that teaches you how the combat works, let alone the controls for it. You are just thrown into it and have to figure it out by yourself. Or at least I was.
It is undeniable that the game itself didn’t even attempt to explain its own systems to the player, but I was running with a different kind of disadvantage too: I didn’t have the manual. Here’s where I admit that, as a kid, I didn’t have any idea what piracy was and in a country like Argentina, where getting original copies of video games was (and still is somewhat considered as) a luxury, PS1 manuals were as nonexistent as Spawn’s platforming capabilities.
It wasn’t until only a week or so ago that I stumbled upon the manual for this game on the internet and learned all these aspects about the combat that I never knew about. All of a sudden, I realized that the reason why I never could pull any of those moves off was because the motions were a giant mess for a game that came out years after fighting games established themselves. How would I think about throwing a fireball in Spawn by inputting back, back, down, down and X after having played actual fighting games like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat?
The manual also shed light on another of the game’s many question marks: the story. The amount of voiced scenes that offered any kind of context for the story can probably be counted on one hand, and maybe you will still have a few fingers left to count. However, as Latino kid growing up in a Latin American country, I didn’t speak English at the time and as such I had no idea what was going on in the game. I could infer some things, but nothing too concrete.
Turns out that the manual at the very least attempts to explain what is up with the narrative. In between absolutely embarrassing lines like calling Spawn a “green-blooded American”, the manual informs you that Malebolgia, the demon of hell that brought Spawn back to life, is sending you through time to train in order to lead his army. I’m not familiar with Spawn to know if this is a plot point from any of the comics, but the game does such a poor job at telling this story that even if is an original plotline, no one should ever try to experience this story through Spawn: The Eternal (maybe Mortal Kombat 11 will do a better job there?).
I never finished the game at the time. Honestly, how could I? Without understanding how it played, there was no real way for me to go through all of those fights against enemies that could counteract my very basic strategies with cheap projectiles and such. When my PlayStation finally died, I was left with a disc that I had no use for so I did the only logical thing left to do: I picked up a wooden stick, threw the disc in the air and hit it as it came down, shattering it in many pieces. I was a kid; I thought it was a good idea. My parents didn’t, but that’s beside the point.
Only a few years later, when I got into emulators, I thought about revisiting Spawn: The Eternal. This time, things were different. The game was still the same poorly design brawler with terrible controls that I didn’t know how to play, but I had a different kind of advantage this time around. With the help of save states, I could go through those terrible combat encounters without essentially nothing to lose. After a few hours (because turns out that the game isn’t as long when you don’t have to retry constantly), I could finally beat it and close an incomplete chapter of my life.
There’s no denying that Spawn: The Eternal is a terrible mess, with its reputation as one of the worst games ever being more than earned. But even so, I still remember my time with it somewhat fondly. After all, it was the game that taught me I could smash a disc to pieces with just one swift strike. That has to amount to something, I guess.
Now, with Spawn about to make his debut in the Mortal Kombat universe, I can’t help but be a little excited. Sure, I might not be a Spawn fan and my relationship with him is more than a little complicated, but at the very least I am looking forward to seeing him in a game I enjoy. It’s not that he deserves a second chance, since his time has already passed and the 90’s are far behind us, but having him in a video game again, especially a very good fighting game, should be fun. Maybe then I’ll remember him for something other than the terrible Spawn: The Eternal.
After fifty years of continuous writing, Stephen King has become a genre unto himself.
The unrivaled Master of Horror made a splash in 1974 with his debut novel Carrie and has been terrifying readers ever since. Two years later, Brian De Palma brought this shocking story to the screen with an equally electrifying horror film that remains a genre classic and a prototypical example of “Good For Her” horror. This dual debut seemed to open the floodgates, unleashing endless waves of Stephen King films.
From the highs of Misery, Cujo, and The Shawshank Redemption to the schlocky fun of Cat’s Eye, Creepshow, and Children of the Corn, the last five decades have seen just about every notable horror creator take a stab at the author’s massive collection.
In recent years, this singular subgenre has begun to burst at the seams, expanding to include Stephen King-esque fare. In 2016, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer debuted Stranger Things, a sci-fi series heavily inspired by two of King’s most famous books. The Netflix series remixes Firestarter and It by following a little girl with psychic powers and an intrepid group of kids on bikes who must battle an otherworldly foe and a sinister government agency. With its clever blend of modern effects and comforting nostalgia, this gateway horror series paved the way for Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation which remains the highest grossing horror film of all time.
Four years later, Mike Flanagan would create Midnight Mass, a spiritual adaptation of King’s second novel Salem’s Lot. Published in 1975, the book sees a tiny New England town torn apart by a centuries-old vampire. Though Flanagan’s story is perhaps more tender, both iterations of the classic horror tale follow close-knit communities shaken to their core by the presence of an ancient evil.
In addition to these recent hits, 2025 was a banner year for the Master of Horror. Audiences delighted in six mainstream adaptations, including the massively popular It: Welcome to Derry which chronicles earlier cycles of the titular clown’s reign. With this boost to King’s cultural cache, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to see more unofficial adaptations of the author’s work and horror creators who build their own unique castles in King’s creative sandbox.
So what defines a Stephen King-esque story?
For the past fifty years, the prolific author has dipped his toes in nearly every subgenre from supernatural stories and grisly gore to western fantasy and science fiction. Including his vast catalogue of short fiction, King has tackled ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies, aliens, mutants, and self-driving cars, not to mention bizarre monsters of his own creation. But what truly unites this vast array of horror is King’s focus on relatable characters. In his 2000 memoir/instructional text On Writing, the prolific author describes the amusement he finds in writing disparate characters, placing them in horrific scenarios, then exploring the ways they try to survive.
An unofficial Stephen King adaptation may take place in the author’s native New England — bonus points if it’s set in Maine — and reference his well-known heroes and villains. But what makes the King connection unbreakable is a character-driven story about average people who band together in the face of abject terror.
Weapons Captures Small Town Stephen King
Following his 2022 shocker Barbarian, Zach Cregger returned with Weapons, a sprawling story that begins in a doomed elementary school. On an otherwise ordinary day, Justine (Julia Garner) arrives at her desk to find that all but one of her students have disappeared. As the mystery grows increasingly violent, Justine and Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of a missing boy, find their way to the home of Alex (Cary Christopher), the class’ only surviving student. In some ways reminiscent of Salem’s Lot, Weapons swings wildly through the unfortunate town, introducing us to its flawed inhabitants as we watch their lives fall apart.
Cregger’s setup nods to a pair of King short stories. Both “Suffer the Little Children” and “Here There Be Tygers” tackle monstrous presences in elementary schools, but as Weapons reaches its final act, Constant Readers may remember another Stephen King tale. Featured in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, “Gramma” introduces us to George, a little boy tormented by an aging witch. On an afternoon alone with his sickly grandmother, the frightened child gradually realizes that the imposing old woman has been waiting for an opportunity to cast a spell that will extend her own life by possessing his body.
Alex finds himself similarly tortured by his aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), a garish witch who orchestrates a desperate plot to sustain her own strength. Transforming humans into mindless weapons, Gladys has taken over Alex’s family home and lured his classmates to the basement. Holding them in a comatose state, she syphons off their energy to extend her own supernatural life.
Vastly different in many ways, both “Gramma” and Weapons hinge on a sinister witch who uses horrific magical spells to sacrifice the bodies of her vulnerable prey.
Hokum Echoes The Shining and 1408
It’s nearly impossible to watch a film about a haunted hotel without thinking of King’s third novel, The Shining. This icy story follows Jack Torrance, an angry writer struggling with his sobriety and a shameful incident haunting his past. Accompanied by his wife and young son, Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook, a haunted hotel situated high in the Rocky Mountains. Snowed in, Jack finds himself tormented by dangerous ghosts who amplify his greatest fears.
Damian McCarthy’s Hokum follows a similarly troubled figure. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a surly writer who travels to the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes. Haunted by his own tragic past, Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, a decaying room that’s been permanently closed to protect visitors from a dangerous witch trapped within its walls. Visual nods to King’s text abound with woodcut figurines and an animated clock, mirroring ominous descriptions found in King’s text.
Another terrifying sequence sees Ohm staring with horror at a closed door, the only thing separating him from the approaching witch. As the door knob slowly turns, Constant Readers remember Jack’s narrow escape from the ghostly woman in room 217. And Ohm’s popular Conquistador books directly reference King’s long-running fantasy series The Dark Tower which follows a gunslinger named Roland Deschain tasked with protecting the nexus of the universe.
In addition to these thematic comparisons, Hokum bears striking resemblance to King’s terrifying short story “1408.” Collected in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, the terrifying story follows Mike Enslin, a dejected writer who’s risen to fame penning essays about his adventures in haunted locations. Mike arrives at the Hotel Dolphin and bullies his way into the titular room, despite the manager’s dire warnings. McCarthy nods to this story with an ominously misplaced hotel room door, reminiscent of King’s entry to 1408, an unsuspecting portal that appears to move each time Mike looks away.
However, McCarthy’s most direct reference lies in a minicorder Ohm uses to capture notes. Trapped inside the dreaded honeymoon suite, this device offers well-timed messages while sitting next to a decomposing corpse. Mike records his time in 1408 with his own trusty minicorder. Described for the reader, his tape has captured the man’s slow descent into madness as the room prepares to swallow him whole. With conclusions that differ wildly in tone, both Ohm and Mike find their lives irrevocably changed by encounters with the supernatural realm.
Widow’s Bay Builds Its Own Version of Castle Rock
Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay has taken the idea of an unofficial King adaptation and turned it into an art form. The Apple TV series sees the residents of the titular island plagued by a curse that dates back centuries. Not only does the picturesque hamlet not accommodate wifi connections, those born on the island face certain death should they ever try to leave. Desperate to modernize the tiny town, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) draws in waves of tourists just as a new cycle of terror begins.
Blending horror with deft comedy, Dippold makes cheeky references to King’s body of work. Tom warns that, “there’s something in the fog,” reminding readers of King’s 1980 novella The Mist. And Loftis’ own stay in the town’s haunted hotel sees him tormented by the ghost of a murderous clown. We even spy a vintage King hardback peeking out of a local book trade box.
In many ways Widow’s Bay feels like a new iteration of the author’s Little Tall Island, a tiny village off the coast of Maine. In addition to the 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne and a handful of harrowing short stories, this quaint fishing village is also the setting for King’s 1999 teleplay Storm of the Century. Premiering on ABC primetime, this tragic tale follows a terrified group of islanders who batten down the hatches for a dangerous Nor’easter only to find a more sinister threat lurking within.
Constant Readers may also be reminded of Castle Rock, the author’s favorite fictional town.
First introduced in the 1981 novel Cujo, the charming village becomes the star of Needful Things, King’s satire about consumerism. After several Castle Rock stories, we’re reintroduced to its residents as they gossip about the arrival of Leland Gaunt and the grand opening of his curio shop. Anything their hearts desire can be found in his varied inventory, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Pitting cantankerous neighbors against each other, Gaunt ignites a wave of grisly violence by exploiting long-held resentments and feuds.
The town’s only defense against this supernatural threat is beleaguered sheriff Alan Pangborn. Still grieving the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alan struggles to connect with his older child and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Also a widower, Loftis struggles to raise his own restless son and explain the strange details of his wife’s tragic death. Attempting to unravel the island’s dark secrets, Tom is aided by quirky residents including a surly fisherman named Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), an earnest Town Hall employee. King’s own novels feature many of these proactive alliances with disparate characters combining their strengths to overcome insurmountable odds.
With Widow’s Bay renewed for a second season and Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series on the horizon, the future seems bright for new King adaptations, both spiritual and directly pulled from his catalogue. The prolific author also shows no signs of slowing down with two publications nearing release. His upcoming novel, Other Worlds Than These, is the long-awaited third Talisman book which teases direct ties to his Dark Tower world. Holly Forever will be a new installment of his crime series, offering a different kind of genre fare.
This embarrassment of riches spawning multiple worlds seems ripe for spiritual adaptation and will likely inspire horror creators for decades to come.
Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root and Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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