Big thanks to my cousin and her husband for letting me know this was online – this is one of those bits of nostalgia it never occurred to me to go looking for.
Behold, a primitive yet still pretty unsettling shooting game that was one of my favorites in the late 80’s. Gore! Torture! Blood! Now that I’ve grown up a little, ah…WTF?!
(Trigger warning for those who appreciate these things: Gore! Torture! Blood! And believe it or not, nudity.)
(You’re all clicking now, aren’t you? Naughty little pumpkins.)
First, some context. Out of all the places this game could have materialized in my life, it was in Cape May, New Jersey, that it reared its questionable head. You’d think this was more up Wildwood’s alley, but no. It was in genteel, Victorian Cape May, with its architectural gingerbread and salt water taffy, antique shops and beach trinkets, that I found this little slice of mayhem in one of the boardwalk arcades. It was usually the first thing I headed for, playing a round before hitting the skeeball lanes. This was before the days of a big mean boss sucking quarter after quarter out of you to keep the game going, and I never made it all the way to the end.
Fast-forward to this year, when I found out it’s up on YouTube.
The game stomps right into the carnage, no 101 levels to ease you in to the rougher stuff, the torture chambers are right there in Boards 1 and 2. I remember the game’s instructions saying something about “shoot the monsters for points” or somesuch guidance, but…they’re chained down. To a guillotine, a head-crushing vise, and for one unfortunate soul, suspended above an alligator. And they look a lot like regular old humans, screams and all. No self-defense adrenaline from gunning down a clearly evil-intentioned zombie running towards you with an axe or swooping down with hungry fangs. But, to twelve-year-old me, “yeah! BANGBANGBANG BLOODBLOODBLOOD!”
Board 3 is more of the classic haunted castle with a nightgowned candle-bearing maiden, rapidly followed by a giant vampire head which should be vanquished with a shot to the eyeball, but wasn’t in the above clip. I’m a little ticked about that because I ALWAYS shot the eyeball and I never made it to Board 4.
So…after years of anticipation…
It’s a graveyard! On fire! With zombie hands coming out of the dirt, one of them yanking its head off to throw across the ground. A bleeding obelisk, a distended hand pointing you to shoot the eyes in the tree, a figure pushing a baby carriage. Inexplicably there’s a girl buried waist-up in the middle of all this, and where she’d now be the victim you’d have to shoot around or lose points, back then you’d just dismember her down to a ragged stump of torso along with everything else, but not before shooting her bra off first. Pardons, but the whole “we’ve seen your breasts, now you must die” horror trope has always squicked me out. Probably for the best I never made it to Board 4 while I was still prepubescent.
Here’s a shot of the bonus round game, which is pretty cute:
By the way, this game was made by the same people who did the high-fantasy pixelfest Crossbow. A more widely-known game, which has it’s own YouTube clip – including the Halloweentown board! Yay! – here.
