The unique genre of horror games actually originated as early as the 1980s.
Its creator—obviously Atari, the video game giant of the 70s and early 80s, whose grave is now overgrown with weeds.
It must be said that before Atari completely became an assembly line factory, it did release countless excellent works.
Despite being limited by performance bottlenecks, their image quality has always been pitifully poor.
However, that creative attitude of embellishing limited functions truly inspired many imaginative developers to create a style unique to that era.
Activision.
"Haunted House?"
David frowned and thought for a moment when he heard the somewhat familiar name Lin Lixin mentioned. "I vaguely remember it, but it shouldn't be the work of any of us."
As a former top Atari producer, David is extremely knowledgeable about Atari Games division.
However, he didn't really have a deep impression of this work.
It's probably not a well-known work.
He went to a display case filled with game cartridges and started searching through it.
This was something Lin Lixin had specifically instructed him to do beforehand.
After all, both Activision and Atari have quite a few good titles on their hands.
It's somewhat wasteful to just sweep them into the dustbin of history.
Even keeping it for future reference is good.
And so, this entire wall of cassette tape collection was born.
From E. T., which ruined Atari's future, to games you've never even heard of, everything is here, even categorized and arranged alphabetically.
"Let me see—it should be an AVG game—E, F, G, H—H, Haunted, I've got it!"
He grabbed a small package from the shelf.
On the cover, it's a dark and stormy night, and a group of people are standing in front of a gloomy mansion.
Lin Lixin took the cassette tape and casually inserted it into the classic Atari 2600.
As its title suggests, this is a game where you control the protagonist as they explore a haunted house.
Of course, without the cover, Lin Lixin might not be recognized at first glance.
In the Atari era, this level of image quality already pushed the console's performance to its limits.
The gameplay is somewhat similar to "E. T.", still the classic method of finding items to complete levels.
The only thing that could be associated with the word "horror" is perhaps the enemies that the designers painstakingly created, which resemble some kind of monster.
emmm*
Lin Lixin completed the game in a very short time.
He silently put down the handle, unsure of where to begin.
"This is way too... way too damn rudimentary!"
It's hard to imagine what kind of semiconductor environment I would have faced if I had traveled five years earlier.
Praise Moore's Law!
Lin Lixin originally came here to learn from this so-called pioneer of horror games, recalling his past experiences.
I never expected that this would be the kind of game I would end up with.
Admittedly, considering the conditions of the late 1970s, this was actually a pretty good game.
At least the theme is quite original, and the gameplay of finding things is all normal.
But what era are we living in now?
16-bit handheld consoles have already been released; if such a scenario were presented to the market now, it would undoubtedly be a mess.
"It's not very useful for reference----"
This is understandable, as the true golden age of horror games came after the 1990s, when graphics technology advanced by leaps and bounds.
We are now at the end of the 1980s. Although the performance of graphics chips is slowly catching up, it will probably take a long time before it can be implemented in works.
"Lin, you want to make a... uh... horror game?"
The concept of HorrorGames, though unprecedented, is not difficult to understand.
It means exactly what it says, just to scare people.
I guess so.
Lin Lixin nodded. "I plan to develop a zombie-themed Adventure game."
He pulled the cassette tape out, casually placed it on the table, and looked at David, asking, "Anything else?"
"Well----"
David scratched his head, unsure of what to do.
This kind of subject matter is completely unheard of.
"Ah, I remember now."
He suddenly perked up and hurriedly returned to the cabinet to rummage through it.
Before long, he found the two games.
" Porky's " and " The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ".
"Although they're not horror games, they should be somewhat related to thrillers? Both of these games have a lot of violent elements, which caused quite a bit of trouble back then."
"Ha?"
Lin Lixin took the game with a puzzled look and tried to load it.
Before long, he understood what David meant.
Is this a video game?
Lin Lixin's eyes twitched.
The image shows a corpse hanging from a prison concrete wall, nailed to it.
No, that thing is still alive.
The room was filled with instruments of torture used on people with rashes.
The player's task is to use these objects to inflict violence on prisoners.
The more brutal the abuse, the higher the score.
Lin Lixin frowned, and a surge of anger erupted from his chest.
"What a twisted sense of humor!"
This kind of work goes beyond a simple R-rated content.
The developer is indeed quite capable to achieve this level of visual fidelity using an 8-bit machine.
But they used their skills in the wrong direction.
Even for adults, this work is simply too outrageous.
No wonder there were rumors in the past that "video games can lead to violent tendencies."
If Lin Lixin's first encounter with video games was this kind of work...
Honestly, he would wholeheartedly agree with such a statement.
This is absolutely outrageous!
"Dung work."
Lin Lixin succinctly defined this lump of stuff.
This thing is no different from the infamous " Super Columbine Massacre " of later generations; both should be swept into the dustbin of history.
He took the game cartridge off his hand and held it in his hand.
"Click"
A sound like a PCB breaking rang out. To David's astonishment, the cassette, which had a pitifully small print run and which they had worked so hard to get their hands on, was broken in two by Lin Lixin and remained inside its plastic casing.
Violence can be a game, but it should never be the goal.
Lin Lixin rubbed his temples; this damn thing was really ruining his mood.
It's not that he hasn't played games with a strong emphasis on violence.
Mortal Kombat, Beat the Boss, People Playground
A qualified interpreter of "every single one is violent".
Functional violence and representational violence will lead a work to two completely different outcomes.
In fact, "killing" is a core gameplay element in a vast number of video games.
However, these are all functional; violence serves the game mechanics, and any additional visual stimulation is merely a visual reward.
The player's brain is constantly focused on processing the game mechanics itself.
But this piece is different.
It is symbolic violence.
Contrary to previous statements, the entire game exists to serve the ultimate goal of violence.
Lin Lixin had no idea what the developer's mindset was when they created this project.
Perhaps inspired by blood plasma, they thought this would work.
It could also simply be a case of antisocial personality disorder.
This thing is literally a form of revenge against society.
"Pure gore horror—that's even lower—"
Lin Lixin sighed helplessly, using a classic American horror tactic, "Wait a minute?"
When it comes to playing the horror genre, it seems like people across the ocean are the real experts.