Why so few horror games?

[Jae200]

Just curious about this.. I like horror movies and getting back into emulation and looking over the list of all the new games that have been emulated over the past couple of years, I can still count on 1 hand the number of games that had a horror theme. Seemed like they would be more popular or more would have been made in the 20+ years that the arcades were popular. Any ideas? Any games out there that I might have missed?

[Howard_Casto]

The horror genre makes for bad gaming for a few simple reasons:

1.  Generally there is only a lone bad guy in a horror movie, so it's hard to make levels that fit the theme of the game. 

2.  Until recently it has been an un-heard of concept to play as the villian and everybody knows that in horror movies the good guys are bland and uninteresting. 

3.  Even assuming you do play as the bad guy, what would you do?  Generally in horror movies the bad guy easily kills off dozens or even hundreds of teenagers that put up little or no fight.  And at the end the bad guy has to loose or else there can't be a sequel so it makes for a confusing ending for a game. 

4.  Most horror films have low budgets.  They can barely afford to get the film finished, much less commission a company to make a game. 

5.  Film to Game conversions almost always lead to crap.  Don't believe me?  Well check out the few horror games that have been released. 

Nightmare on Elm Street (NES):

You play as random kids who all have little to no fighting ability.  Freddy only appears in the game when you are running out of time and kills you with his three frames of animation.  You are forced to babysit non-playble characters and more often than not die because some kid three screens back got killed.

Friday the 13th (NES):

Same random kids, same baby-sitting tactics.  When you stumble across Jason you are presented with rpg fight menus.  It's an RPG!  A frakkin horror game that's an RPG!! I thin enough said on that one. 

Evil Dead Games:

All but the last sucked. They didn't suck as bad as the above games, but that's not saying much. 

But getting back on topic, there are tons of generic horror titles out there, they are only rare in the arcades for obvious reasons. Prior to Mortal Kombat "mature" games weren't put in regular arcades so a "Freddy the Arcade game" would have never sold in 1984.  With that being said post mortal kombat a few did slip through including all the house of the dead games, slaughter house, and a slew of generic, bloody fighters. 

There are plenty of console/pc horror titles including but not limited to:

The Resident Evil Series
The Silent Hill Series
Dino Crisis
Alice
The Buffy Games
The rest of the Slaughter House Games

And I won't even list the 80+ horror-based fps, including Quake, Doom and those who rip them off. 

[PCtech]

Chiller, splatter house, laser ghost, crossbow(kinda) all good games (not overly scary though).