The evolution of video games has a come a long way, especially in the ways of Horror games. A brief note though, even though I’ll cover a lot of material, there’s no way I can cover everything. It would just be too much. So I’ll cover all the major stuff. I’m strictly sticking to console titles, for these articles, even though other platforms had a heavy influence in the genre.

We’ll start with the Atari 2600.

Back in 1981, Atari released Haunted house. In the game you played a pair of eyes which wondered around the Haunted House. The object was to assemble the pieces of a shattered urn and get out of the mansion without losing nine lives. Not that scary, but it was a start, right?

In 1983, Wizard video games came out with The Texas Chain Saw massacre, in which you got to play as Leatherface and kill people. Kinda cool cause it was one of the first games that you got to play the bad guy. Kinda bad, cause all you did was run around trying not to trip over wheelchairs , and slaughter those dam hippies. Poor Leatherface.

Then we had Halloween the game. This game was also made by Wizard in 1983. But this time around you play a babysitter. The object of the game was to save the children from the knife wielding maniac Michael Myers. In order to save the kids you would have to bring them to safe rooms in the house. It’s pretty funny when one of the kids get a knife to the head, all that you see is no head and a fountain on blood pouring out. You could also get a knife in the game in which you could attack Michael and drive him away. The game would advance after you saved five children. The only difference was that Michael got faster.