Friday the 13th on NES

Up until now I have written about games that were wonderful parts of my childhood and that i have fond, yet at times frustrating, memories of. Friday the 13th on NES is anything but that.

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They were always going to sell a bunch of these because even though most of us likely were not allowed to do so, myself and my young friends had all seen the original slasher horror film and probably rewinded it a bit for the boobies.

The NES cover art promised a bloodbath horror game like we had never experienced before and wow oh wow did it not live up to that even a little bit.

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Basically, you control a team of camp counselors who run all over the camp for god knows what and these werewolves or zombies or something keep blocking your path, you can kill them or jump over them in order to progress. Every now and then, even though it appears to be the middle of a friggin really nice day, Jason will pop up and look out if he does, because he will one or two hit kill you. There are ways to avoid this but again, as someone just starting to play this game, we did not have access to this easily-found-today information.

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You could enter cabins as well, where a sorta 3-d environment takes over to try to find upgrades.. but yet again, if you encountered Jason and he hits you, he can do some serious damage. Over the past 30 years people have figured out exactly how the CPU controlled Jason operates and can avoid all of his attacks but we didn't figure that crap out in my neighborhood. We just got frustrated and quit... probably called the game some names that would have gotten us in trouble if our parents had heard us.

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It was extremely confusing, had rather dumb gameplay and was extremely repetitive even once you figured out what the hell to do. It is largely considered to be one the worst games the NES ever produced and while it does have some fanbois out there, most people agree that this was one of many games that certain where game manufacturers used a famous film to dupe people into a poorly contrived game.

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On a final note, one of your constant objectives is to protect children from being slaughtered by Jason and given how crazy the censorship was back in the 80s, especially in regards to products that were marketed to kids (such as video games) it was really surprising tom that that the slaughter of minors was allowed in a game.

Although I really don't recommend it, you can download the ROM for free here