Editorials
Has Time Tamed the Cancelled and Controversial Fighting Game ‘Thrill Kill’?
The video game industry is full of canceled projects. Most of them never see the light of day, living their short lives without the public ever catching wind of their existence. Very few of them get hyped up then canceled at the 11th hour like Paradox Development’s boundary-pushing fighting game Thrill Kill. The controversial nature of the project, at least for 1998, had a lot of people talking and ultimately led to its cancellation. But aside from its shocking-for-the-time theming, did it have anything to offer to the genre?
Oddly enough, Thrill Kill started as a game called Earth Monsters, a violent take on basketball. After abandoning that concept, they decided they wanted to make a four-player fighting game, a big feat for the time, that would outshine Mortal Kombat with its brutality. Initially, they wanted to push things so far that they would be the first Adults Only-rated game to have a major release, but pulled back after the realization that most retail outlets wouldn’t stock them with that rating.
Thrill Kill’s story followed a group of souls banished to Hell fighting for a chance to be reincarnated. This setting was populated by characters ranging from an evil plastic surgeon to a deadly dominatrix, all custom built to push the boundaries of taste in the most shocking ways possible. It wasn’t anything particularly deep or terrifying, often resorting to clichés like the hulking postman who “went postal” and killed his coworkers or a hillbilly cannibal who fights using a severed leg. To really get the game noticed, Paradox upped the sexualization of the female characters, pushing it into BDSM territory.
Unfortunately, publisher Virgin Interactive was purchased by EA, and the game never ended up being released. Despite being basically finished, they decided the game would harm their image if released. Eventually, the studio would repurpose their at the time impressive fighting engine for the 1999 game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, a four-player fighter featuring the iconic rap group. The game was an interesting use of the Wu-Tang license, creating an experience that’s fondly remembered by some.
Thrill Kill’s legacy has lived on due to the nature of its cancellation and controversial content, with bootleg copies of it floating around for years. But the real question remains: would Thrill Kill have been successful if released? The 3D fighting genre was still a novelty at the time, and this game was built from the ground up to support four players, so it seemed like it would have been a shoo-in for players gathering in places like college dorm rooms. Boundary-pushing fighting games were also popular at that time, with Mortal Kombat flourishing and many edgy imitators, such as Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. and the like, joining the fray.
That being said, the violence in the game is pretty tame by today’s standards, especially compared to the type of realistic yet over-the-top violence seen in the modern Mortal Kombat series. The sexual content of the game was also pretty juvenile, mostly focused on outdated jokes at the expense of its female characters. Even the violent Thrill Kills, this game’s version of fatalities, didn’t keep up their shock value after repeated viewings.
Thrill Kill did have some neat ideas going on gameplay-wise. While not even close to being as smooth as something like Power Stone, the value of having a four-player 3D fighter was undeniable, especially given the way player elimination worked. Rather than having a traditional life bar like in most fighting games, you build up a meter by attacking. Once the meter is full, the player becomes supercharged, allowing a short window where you can eliminate the next player you hit. If the meter is filled when it’s down to just two, you’ll get charged for your “Thrill Kill,” the extra violent final kill.
These moments made for a tense chase, as everyone tries to run away to prevent their brutal death. The focus on building up a meter also gives the player incentive to be more aggressive, both fitting with the tone of the game’s world and making sure you don’t have one player hiding out in the corner while the others whittle each other down.
The combat itself is heavily based on combos and counters, which can be a little difficult to perform when fighting multiple players from all angles. The levels themselves have some good theming, but all amount to square rooms, meaning there’s a lot of crowding in a corner when a player has their meter charged. It’s easy to see why EA saw promise in the engine, because it feels like Thrill Kill is a good first try that would have improved greatly with subsequent sequels and better tech. I could easily see it throwing in some Super Smash Brothers-style items to mix things up a bit and add variety.
No matter how you felt about the game itself, it will live on in infamy due to the nature of its content. The dark backstories try to reach for heights that Twisted Metal: Black would eventually hit, but still, feel rooted in trying to push the envelope rather than attempting to tell a “mature” story. The premise and characters all were unique, and with a little more polish and care the game could have lived up to its reputation as a video nasty-style classic. I’m surprised there hasn’t been an attempt at a modern release, as it was a finished product, and not nearly as controversial as it would have been 20+ years ago.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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