Movies
Fan Makes Playable NES Games for Horror Movies That Never Got Them
A small handful of horror films made the leap to the Nintendo Entertainment System back in the 1980s, most notably Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Jaws. Bizarre relics of an era long gone by, those 8-bit classics are more popular than ever in the present, thanks in no small part to a line of game-inspired toys recently put out by NECA, and one fan is capitalizing on that nostalgia by literally making NES games for horror movies that were never fortunate enough to officially get them. And the world, thanks to his hard work, is now a better place.
The clever hacker, known as Pacnsacdave, turns existing NES titles into entirely new games, and he’s perhaps most known for bringing Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees into the world of Donkey Kong. The game, one of the most popular in Nintendo history, was used as the basis for two different Freddy vs. Jason NES games: in Jason vs. Freddy, you play as Jason, while Freddy vs. Jason puts Freddy in Mario’s shoes. Most recently, he whipped up a brand new version of the Freddy vs. Jason game, which puts you on a quest to collect Freddy’s gloves and kill Jason.
Earlier this year, Pacnsacdave added to his collection of custom horror games with a playable version of Joe Dante’s Gremlins. As you may recall, Gremlins 2: The New Batch spawned its own NES game back in 1990, but the original classic only became the basis for an Atari 2600 game. In this brand spankin’ new Gremlins 8-bit adventure game, you play as Gizmo and travel through various film-inspired levels that are loaded with the lovable fur ball’s evil adversaries. Believe it or not, the Hudson Hawk NES game was used as the model for this one!
Yes, there was a Hudson Hawk video game. The early ’90s were super weird.
As requested by Corey Feldman himself (seriously!), Pacnsacdave also turned The Lost Boys into a NES game, and it may very well be his masterpiece. Using 1990 video game Shadow of the Ninja as his launching point, Dave created a game that allows you to either play as Edgar or Alan Frog, and in it you travel through Santa Clara doing what the Frog Bros. do best: killing vampires.
Head over to Pacnsacdave’s website to purchase these and other custom-made NES cartridges. And check out some photos and game-play videos below!
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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