Editorials
5 of the Rarest Horror Video Games
With so many great looking horror games on the horizon, it’s easy to forget that they used to be a little hard to come by. Especially before the PS3 / Xbox 360 era of gaming, you had to put in some legwork to find good, scary games to play. A big reason many horror games are rare in the first place is due to some interesting controversy, so I’ve collected five of my favorites.
1. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Atari 2600)
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600 and it let you run around as a block-form Leatherface. The goal of the game was to murder teens while avoiding Leatherface’s sworn enemies, fences, wheelchairs and skulls.
Leatherface’s chainsaw looks like it’s attached to his body, and when you run into obstacles, your fuel depletes. If your fuel bar hits empty, you lose. A cutscene of Leatherface’s chainsaw failing plays and a little girl runs up behind him and kicks him in the ass, killing him instantly.
The reason this game is rare is because it was one of the first horror games ever released. On top of the fact hat limited copies were produced, many stores wouldn’t carry the game so it’s hard to come by these days. It’s not very good, but it caused an uproar when it was released, so it’s desirable to a lot of Atari 2600 collectors.
2. Gremlins Gizmo
Did you know NECA, the incredible horror toy company, was once in the video game publishing business? As far as I can tell, they only published two variants of the same game – “Gremlins: Gizmo” for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS.
It’s a game that let you care for your very own pet Mogwai. You chose between Gizmo or a bunch of other random ones. By playing different mini games, you could unlock new environments, games and outfits for your Mogwai.
“Gremlins Gizmo’s” rarity stems from the fact that nobody knew about it. It was released in the tail end of the Wii’s lifecycle, so people were already done with its piles of shovel ware. As for the DS version, the 3DS had already been available for months when it was released, so it was basically sent out to die. You can pick it up for about $10 on Amazon these days and it’s actually pretty fun!
3. Cursed Mountain
One of the Wii’s double-edged swords was that when good, unique titles DID come out for it, they were buried by the piles of shovel ware that caused hardcore gamers to turn their backs on the system in the first place. “Cursed Mountain” was sadly a victim of this occurrence.
While it’s not a genre-defining title, “Cursed Mountain” was a lot of fun. It pulls from ideas found in Buddhism and Tibetan folklore, and it’s set in the 1980s.
You played as Eric Simmons, a man trying to ascend the mountain the game is named after to find his brother who has mysteriously disappeared. Combat involves purifying ghosts with Eric’s third eye and beating them down with various weapons.
It’s not very action-heavy, but it nails atmosphere in a way that very few games have, both before and since it was released. It doesn’t exactly hold up, but it’s worth a try if you can get your hands on a copy.
4. P.T.
This one is a game you’ve definitely heard of, but it’s extremely rare thanks to an insane turn of events.
“P.T.” was a teaser for a new Silent Hill title that “Metal Gear Solid” creator, Hideo Kojima was teaming up with Guillermo Del Torro to create, which would star Norman Reedus. Unfortunately, since Kojima was ousted from Konami in a move that resulted in them exiting the video games industry as whole, “Silent Hills” never came to fruition.
Even more bizarre is the fact that the only way to play “P.T.” is if you already had it on your PS4 before Konami removed it from the PlayStation Store. Even if you “purchased” the title, the ability to re-download it has since been revoked. PS4’s with the game installed sell for a hefty amount of cash on eBay, but it looks like “Resident Evil VII: Biohazard” is going to fill the void “Silent Hills” left.
5. Rule of Rose
“Rule of Rose” was published in Japan back in 2006 for PS2 by Sony Computer Entertainment. Atlus published the title in North America because SCEA expressed little to no interest in localizing the title.
Gameplay was reminiscent of many other PS2-era horror games with a third-person perspective and a near-defenseless main character named Jennifer. She had the ability to use improvised weapons, but her moves were extremely week.
The game faced a ton of controversy due to it having erotic undertones involving its cast of underage girls. It met average reviews, but since it was never released in the EU, it’s actually pretty rare and worth checking out if you can get your hands on a copy.
So there you have it, five of the rarest horror games out there. Have you played any of these? Are you going to seek any of them out? I’d love to hear from you, so hit me up on Twitter and let me know.
Despite what the higher-ups at Marvel would have you believe, Stan Lee’s original vision for Spider-Man was very different from the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler that fans ultimately got.
It was comics maestro Steve Ditko that turned him into the lovable web-head that we all know and love, though even that first draft of the character wasn’t exactly meant to be a child-friendly mascot. Ditko envisioned an uncanny arachnid-human hybrid whose freakish poses and dark costume would strike terror into the hearts of criminals, with the inclusion of web-shooters possibly having been a suggestion by Ditko’s roommate at the time, renowned fetish artist and bondage enthusiast Eric Stanton.
These more adult-oriented origins may have changed over the years, but one could argue that Spidey never completely lost his darker side. In fact, we’d eventually see several grim storylines that explored the horrific consequences of Spider-Man’s radioactive blood. While having his irradiated body fluids give Mary Jane cancer is likely the most terrifying of these yarns (track down Spider-Man: Reign if you’re up for a depressing read that was at one point set to be adapted to film by Michael Jackson), one of the most memorable horror-adjacent moments in these comics has to be the acceleration of Peter Parker’s mutation and the eventual introduction of Man-Spider – a storyline that appears to have been one of the main inspirations behind the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
I sincerely doubt that Marvel Studios is really going to give their toy-selling juggernaut a Cronenbergian rebrand, but the most recent trailer for Brand New Day suggests that the creative team is pulling from some surprisingly spooky source material in this latest superhero sequel. Specifically, the trailer makes it seem like the film is set to be a loose adaptation of the Neogenic Nightmare arc from Spider-Man: The Animated Series, commonly known as the best exploration of Spidey’s radioactive dark side that also features the most iconic version of Man-Spider.
If you’re wondering what these influences could mean for the upcoming film, I’d like to invite you to join me as we look back on some of the animated series’ most horror-tinged episodes.
A fourteen-episode story arc that made up the show’s second season, Neogenic Nightmare began airing in September of 1995. At this point, the series had already earned a reputation as the definitive version of Spider-Man despite dealing with absurd levels of censorship and executive meddling. It’s widely known at this point that this incarnation of Spidey was prohibited from ever punching his villains, and the studio even insisted that realistic guns should be replaced with futuristic laser weapons in order to avoid enraging concerned parents.
And that’s not even mentioning bizarre demands like setting up Hobgoblin as the original Goblin villain simply because the folks responsible for the toy-line had already prepared the character’s merchandise before scripts were even written.
At the end of the day. the show’s success mostly came down to John Semper’s excellent writing, with the (mostly) faithful recreation of the Spider-Man’s core principals and a handful of iconic storylines (coupled with an excellent cast behind the scenes) elevating a what was intended to be a kid’s show promoting ToyBiz products.
Naturally, the rampant cartoon censorship of the 90s couldn’t keep Semper from wanting to explore darker themes from his own favorite Spider-Man comics, and that’s how his team came up with a season-long re-imagining of iconic arcs like the Six-Arm Saga, The Mutant Agenda and even the first appearance of the Sinister Six. These stories would be enhanced with additional “dark” characters like Blade, The Punisher and even Morbius (though the latter had to exchange his vampiric blood-drinking for bizarre plasma-absorbing powers in order to conform to network guidelines).
If you haven’t yet seen it, the complete Neogenic Nightmare arc follows Spider-Man as he discovers that his mutation is progressing beyond his initial superpowers and threatening to turn him into a more monstrous hybrid. After developing extra arms, Spidey goes so far as to request help from both the X-Men and several other super-heroes as he becomes embroiled in a criminal conspiracy involving a team-up between some of his most iconic villains. The arc eventually introduces us to the show’s version of Man-Spider, which is depicted here as the monstrous final stage of the process which began when Peter was first bitten by that radioactive spider.
Personally, I think this werewolf-like addition to Spidey’s genetic curse is the best incarnation of Man-Spider that we’ve ever seen. This is because the six-armed body horror of it all adds even more weight to Peter’s decision to keep helping others regardless of what his powers may cost him, with the creature’s final rampage even giving the supporting cast a chance to help Spider-Man for a change. While I don’t hate the Morbius movie as much as some other comic fans, it’s a shame that Sony relegated that story to a solo film instead of later incorporating it into the Man-Spider saga like Neogenic Nightmare did.
Season two of the animated series ended up being an even bigger hit than the first, with fans loving the show’s take on an expanded Marvel Universe (which even included the ’90s X-Men cast) as well as the darker take on a more monstrous Spider-Man. That’s why it makes sense that the MCU’s return to street-level comic adventures would harken back to this particular storyline – especially since it appears that the Disney wishes to use the upcoming film as an opportunity to shine a light on other Marvel characters just like Semper did back in the day.
From what we can see in the trailer, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man appears to be going through his own additional transformations, including creepy fully black eyes and organic web-shooter, as well as the cocoon-building behavior previously seen in Marvel’s The Other arc in the comics. As I mentioned before, I doubt that the MCU will allow this particular cash cow to fully transform into a nightmarish spider freak that can scare away children, but there’s always a chance that the studio could surprise us with more horror elements. I’d also love to see the story explore Spidey’s mutation and use that as an excuse to formally introduce X-Men’s mutants into the MCU, especially since Sadie Sink is rumored to be playing Jean Grey in the flick.
However, even if Brand New Day doesn’t adapt as much of the Neogenic Nightmare as the promotional material has suggested, I’d argue that this particular season of Spider-Man: The Animated Series is still worth revisiting simply because it’s a great example of artists being able to work past network limitations in order to tell complex stories that approach full-on body-horror.
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