NES box art for Friday the 13th, the cover of NEStalgia episode 161

161 · Friday the 13th

▶ Game info

VerdictPlay it

GenreAdventure

ReleasedFebruary 1989

SeasonSeason 5

DeveloperAtlus

PublisherLJN

March 12, 2021 · 56 min · transcript available

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Based on the popular movie franchise, Friday the 13th casts you as one of six camp counselors (three girls or three boys) at the infamous Camp Crystal Lake, and you are tasked with destroying Jason Voorhees once and for all.

SHOW NOTES

Friday the 13th Longplay

A VERY in-depth guide to Friday the 13th

Jason X

Friday the 13th - Commodore 64 1985

Jason in Mortal Kombat X

Friday the 13th: The Game

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle

Our verdict: Play it

Atlus made this for LJN in 1989: six camp counselors at Crystal Lake defend 15 kids while hunting Jason Voorhees. Sam joined Mike, Sean and Joe, and we recorded on Friday the 12th to be safe. It is frustrating, but its reputation as one of the worst NES games is overstated.

What works

Jason is everywhere. All the counselors and Jason are live on the map, so you can run into him anywhere, like Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. The imagery isn't scary, but you are so vulnerable that it gets stressful. Joe jumped when he walked into the first house and Jason was already there.
The Jason fight. One hit takes eight bars of your health while his barely moves, so you throw rocks (the cabin floors are gravel) and dodge. It felt like Punch-Out, until he runs away "for plot reasons."
Different every time. Counselors, the day (Jason is much faster on day two) and weapons all change things, and you can rush Jason on day one with rocks.

What doesn't

Zombies and wolves. They spawn constantly, and next to Jason it felt like two different games.
The cabins. Walking and turning in the pseudo 3D rooms is awkward, notes are visible from only one angle, and the next room loads a second or two late. We split on the fix: the small rooms build tension, but side-scrolling or top-down would feel better.
Counselor management. Sean read the whole manual and still didn't grasp it, so he powered up one counselor, fought Jason until that counselor was nearly dead, then handed the knife to the next.

Worth knowing

The purple jumpsuit. Jason never wore one in the movies. An unconfirmed theory is that Atlus took it from a Japanese ad for the third film. The 2017 game later added a purple jumpsuit skin, which we took as an apology.
The reputation. Nintendo Power's 100th issue special put it sixth worst game of any system, and James Rolfe later said he quite likes it.

The bottom line

Play it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List, so the drought goes on: Bionic Commando and Blaster Master were our last two, 20-plus episodes ago. Sam called it "not as bad as people say, but not essential." Sean wanted the first survival horror game on the NES and got a "camp counselor manager simulator." Joe called it ahead of its time. Mike called it a play it because it deserves a fair shake, though "nine out of 10 gamers will get frustrated."

Written from our conversation in this episode.

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Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

Friday the 13th, it all takes place out at Crystal Lake, that pleasant little camp where happy children of all ages go to spend a fun-filled summer. But this summer will be different.

And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Joe. And I'm Sam. And you'll notice that we specifically recorded this episode on Friday the 12th. We could not take the risk. This episode is brought to you on Friday the 12th. We will not wait till the Friday the 13th to properly record this episode. I think it's just safer. What do you guys think? I'm just surprised that it almost lined up. Like, we really haven't done anything to allow this, but we almost got there. So I feel like it's a missed opportunity.

I think we should have negotiated a little bit harder with the calendar people. The calendar people. Yeah. Try and make it happen. Yeah, we already had them move around some stuff to get Castlevania 2 on Halloween. Which was also, you know, last time we recorded a special, like, video game genre that happens to be on the same day as a spooky holiday.

Things didn't work out so well for us, as I recall. So maybe it's for the best that we do it on Friday the 12th. Yeah, I could play Blacked Out that night. Friday the 12th would not be a good name for this movie series game franchise, but they did go with the aptly named Friday the 13th instead. That makes a lot more sense. It's supposed to be a little spooky. Friday the 13th as a franchise. Sean, what's the deal? You like it? You hate it? I haven't really watched any of them in maybe a decade. I saw Jason X first.

It's an interesting one to see first. Did you just finish watching Alien and you were like, oh, I should watch Jason X? No, no. It was just, you know, the one that came out when I was a kid and my dad rented it and we watched it and it was terrible. Then I watched the first one, maybe like when I was a teenager and it was okay. Like, you know, I don't really have any connection to the slasher movies of yore, but it wasn't terrible.

What about you, Sam? This is my first experience with any Friday the 13th medium. But you knew about the hockey man? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I knew about that. I knew about because I think when I was little, kids would dress up as Jason for Halloween. Um. I don't know. That's about it, though. Just this. Okay. Joe, I'm going to guess that, yeah, you're the same, right? I'm in the same camp. Haven't seen it. Obviously, I know about it. You know, I'm familiar with it. But, yeah, this is my first experience, which is probably not the best entry into the franchise. It's no worse than Jason X. Oh, okay. Well, that's good to know.

Now, see, Sam, you are like a camp guy. You're currently making a video game all about life at camp. So, I was surprised to hear that you didn't have any association with Friday the 13th because that's a camp scary movie, just like Sleepaway Camp is. Like, I feel like if you haven't seen either of those, you should start watching. I wasn't really a scary movie kid growing up. So, that's probably part of it. Or all of it. Um. Yeah. You said it's because, like, you're kind of a bitch or because you just don't really like, uh, movies about a bad thing?

A little bit of A and B. Hmm. I feel like you, I feel like in the middle of your sentence you realized that that was mean and then you, like, you, like, toned it back at the end. Like, no, no, it's a valid question. It's just one or the other.

I don't want to say anything controversial here, but I was always interested in the Friday the 13th franchise, but I just, I don't know, something about the, uh, like, the hockey mask and the brutality of it, I wasn't about that. I'm much more of, like, a scream guy where there is blood, but it's also fun and it's engaging. It's classy.

Classy murder movies. Uh, this one, not so much. So I actually saved myself a lot of time and I just read all the plots on Wikipedia one night. Like, I spent one night, not recently, this was a long time ago, just reading what happens at every single Friday the 13th. And they had me for the first two. And then things just went completely off the rails. Like, I don't even know what to say. I mean, I know you watch Jason X, but. Because I think that Jason as a, like, as the iconic entity that he is doesn't even show up until the third one.

Like, the mask doesn't, isn't really even, I think the mask. Well, he's not even in the first movie. What's the first one about? The first one, it's the mom, yeah. Oh. Yeah, I mean, you know, see, Sam, now you're a little interested. I see it there. The wheels are spinning. Uh, you know, we need to talk about the box art for this game before we start talking about the actual game itself. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the box art, if you need to pull it up as a reference or something. But there's just a lot going on here. It's a game made by LJN, so you have the LJN rainbow. Then you have Jason, like, a bloody, you know, he's a bloody mess with an axe that I think has some blood on it, too.

And then he has a rainbow background behind him. And it's like, what's the decision here? Uh, to, to, you know, is that to kidify it a little bit? To be like, oh, well, it's not that scary. Because, you know, it's a, it's a, it's still a video game, so you don't have to expect what you see in the movies. But then they use the real Jason. I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but I thought it was a weird box art. Yeah, I like it. I think, uh, I think that more horror needs to, needs to go the colorful route, you know? There's too much black, black, white, and red. I want more pinks and purples.

Yeah, I, I can't think of the last colorful horror movie I saw. What was it? It's not really a horror movie, but what was that one, uh, it was like a really unsettling movie. Midsommar. It was based on a book series. Oh, okay. It was based on a book series as, like, uh, Annihilation. Wasn't that very colorful, but it was, like, creepy and unsettling? I haven't seen it. Annihilation's great. I haven't seen it. You should go see that, too.

Sam, you had a thought? Uh, no, I just like the, the neon colors, because it's not just that they're, you know, rainbow colors, but they're really bright, and I wonder if that has anything to do with, like, you know, 80s neon. That was, like, a thing. Probably. You know? It was just the way things were designed. What do kids like? Scary movies, video games, and neon.

And in this survival horror game, you play as the six camp counselors, and the goal is to find and defeat Jason Voorhees. Uh, one thing that they didn't mention is that you kind of have to find and kill him three times to really get the job done. Uh, and hiding in a cabin or staying adrift in a canoe won't keep you safe. Jason can find you anywhere. He is always on the, uh, the game map. You are always on the game map. All the counselors are always live. Counselors. Wow, that's weird.

All of the counselors are on the game map. Everything is happening live. So the only way to survive this summer is to challenge Jason face-to-face and destroy him. That's funny that you, did you call it survival horror because you read that somewhere, or are you describing it as a survival horror game yourself? I was going to ask you as our resident survival, resident, that's funny too, as our, as our resident evil survival horror expert, I was going to ask you what you think because I don't know, I thought this game was a survival horror game.

I think, yeah, in terms of it's, the mechanics that have sort of bubbled up from whatever they were thinking, uh, I, I guess this is the closest to a survival horror game that I can see happening on the NES. It's got, uh, it's got, uh, resource management. It's got a semi-unstoppable forest trap, like, following you throughout.

Um, so yeah, I think it's got the, the bones for it. It's funny just because it's like, it's obviously being on the NES, it's not scary in the way a scary movie is where none of the imagery is going to scare you, but it does get kind of scary in the way that, like, you're so vulnerable all the time that, like, you're and you know that Jason's so powerful that, like, it can get, it gets stressful in the way that a, that a scary movie can get. So I think that that, uh, was on their side.

Yeah. That idea that Jason can be anywhere too is really cool and kind of reminds me of, uh, in Resident Evil 2 with Mr. X, right? That's like a thing in the original game, at least. I don't know if the remake did it, but. Oh, very much so. Okay, cool. That he could just pop up whenever. Joe is right. If he pops up in broad daylight, Jason, it's not really that scary and especially with his purple costume, it's a little strange. Uh, but you know, like still the idea that he is just anywhere on the map and you will just happen to run into him is a really neat idea in itself. And that's kind of where I got that survival horror idea from.

But Sean, you're right. This game is all about, you know, navigating and finding your way through the camp and getting the various weapons you need to take down Jason and to, uh, light the fireplaces and stuff like that. So, uh, you know, real quick, maybe we'll start with Sam here. What'd you guys think about navigation in this game and just like, you know, getting, getting from the, you know, point A to point B in the quest of, of what you have to do with camp counselors and everything. Did you find that intuitive where you kind of lost at what you had to do? I'm interested. Uh, I think that it's a mix. I think parts of it are fairly intuitive.

Like, you know, you go down the road and there is a path you can take. If you, if you pause to get your map up, you can see exactly where that path is going to go. And I always felt like that made sense. Like I knew where I was going and I can plan a course for a character.

Um, I think that when you're inside rooms, it's really annoying to move around, but not prohibitively so, but it, it's just like, I don't know the turning and the walking forward and backward and everything inside buildings, I thought felt really strange. Do you think that they made the right call there going to, going to that like pseudo 3d for the inside the cabins? Do you think they maybe should, I kind of feel like they should have just stuck with the side scrolling POV even in the, uh, the cabin. I, I think either that or a top down kind of view would have been a lot better because there's some things that like the notes that you have to find are not really the easiest to locate. They're only visible from like one perspective too.

Yeah. And you have to be like, even if it's in like the next room in the cabin that you're in, you have to physically walk to that next room. And then after a second or two, it'll load in. And so I, I, I don't know. I, I, I think that that could have been done a little bit better. I agree that it didn't, it didn't work great.

And it definitely could have been done better, but I still think that because it was, because it, the rooms that you go in are so small, the cabins, there's not too, you can't really get lost in there because they're small enough that I still think it was, I didn't mind it. I'll say because, because it did feel like, again, you wouldn't get lost in there, but it did feel like you were kind of fumbling around in this, in this house where as I feel like it was top down, it would feel a little too like a bare, it would feel a little too,

I don't know, empty. It'd feel a little too easy, I guess. Whereas this is like a little bit of tension building. Yeah, I'd say that the reason that they did this, like almost first person perspective was to build tension because like, you don't know what's behind you, even though it's, it's very, uh, systematically like, unless you're, once you know how the game works, you know that there really won't ever be something behind you. But, uh, I think that the initial experience, there's a, there's a bit more tension as Joe was saying from this perspective, it didn't work. Uh, and in terms of like, if it would feel better mechanically, I think the side scrolling, keeping with side scrolling or doing that top down would be better.

Uh, but I kind of get what they were trying to do. Yeah. And, and I'll, I'll be totally honest with everybody. The first time that I ran into Jason in there, I jumped. I'm not even kidding, I jumped.

Cause I knew how powerful he was and I did not expect to run into him so early. And I was like, oh my God, I got to fight him already. He was just there all of a sudden. So, so it did, it did get me one time. Eight bars of health. He takes every single time he hits you. That's insane. That's like, that's, but that's great. I got it. I don't, I don't want to get like right to the Jason section now. Cause I kind of want to build up to that, but like Joe, that is important that he's that scary, right? Like forget that the jump scare happened to you by seeing him in the room. You more, the jump scare really happened because you knew what you were up against. And I think that's important here.

It just makes all the other enemies though, feel really weird. I can understand bats in a cave and maybe like, you know, some snakes out in the camp open or something like that. But where did the zombies come into the plot here? And I just, I don't know. I know that the game might be a little more, a little boring. If the only thing you're really doing is exploring an empty camp and happened to bump into Jason, like that could actually be kind of funny. You know, it's like an empty camp and you just run into each other. You're like, it's you. So, but I think, I think the, the zombies and the fact that they just spawn all the time and the fact that you need to kill them to get new power-ups and stuff like that.

Something just felt off about that. When you compare that to the experience of running into Jason and fighting him, I, I felt like I was playing two different games. Yeah. I, I don't know what, so basically when I read the manual before playing the game, it immediately lost me. And I kind of knew what I was getting into when I saw that there would be zombies and like rabid wolves. And I, I don't know what else they would have done. It's sort of like a, they're kind of handed into a corner if they're going to make a set like a, ostensibly an action game, action horror with just the one enemy.

But that's just not what Friday the 13th is. It is otherwise grounded in reality. Uh, so it's, it's a little bit of like a, uh, tone, tonal discordance, I guess. Yeah. And you know, to lock power-ups behind them too is like a weird explanation for them. You know, it's, it makes it to this way. They do serve a purpose, you know, like it does help you to defeat zombies in this game. You can't just keep jumping over them and ignoring them. Uh, which by the way, amazing high jump by some of those counselors to get over some of these, uh, zombies. But I argue that you could have just also made the camp more of a exploration puzzle based thing with platforming.

And that's how you could find these power-ups and stuff like that, which granted they do do that sometimes in the game. It's just, I felt like they could have just continued that theme rather than also be like this, uh, this camp is also haunted other than Jason. Like it's also just, uh, the zombie apocalypse starts here now. Yeah. It felt a little ghost and goblins-y. Not in terms of difficulty with platforming and stuff, but just thematically and the way your characters jump.

Which I, I will say if we're talking about the jumping, the jumping feels pretty good. Like the jumping in this game is better than some other dedicated platformers, I think. That's true. I can agree with that. Uh, not that you ever really need it. I think there's like a, only a, there's like four instances of platforming. Yeah. In this game, but, uh, in terms of getting away from domboards, sure.

And I think that jumping is how you get access to the knife. You have to jump into the knife, I guess, if it spawns up there. But yeah. Let's talk about something that I wasn't expecting to be in this game. And that is counselor management and having six different characters that you kind of play as simultaneously as you defend 15 kids, uh, also simultaneously.

Did you guys actually think about which counselors you were using and where they were? Like, were you able to keep track of that in your head? Or were you just kind of being like, oh, well, I'll just take this person for a spin for a little. See what, see what I find. Then I'll go to somebody else. Did you, did you look up anything about that? Sean, I'm curious how you went about, uh, using the counselor. Uh, so even though I had read the entire manual, I still wasn't entirely, at the beginning, I still wasn't entirely, uh, grasping exactly how the counselor management worked.

Uh, because I would go to, uh, one of the, like, I would hear the Jason alarm because there's a Jason alarm. And I would go to the house that he was going to attack, which has another counselor in it.

And when I got there, I wasn't really sure what to do. Like, I was like, okay, maybe I need to switch to a more powerful person if that more powerful person is there. Um, but then when I was trying to switch, I, I would go to the map screen and like, I couldn't switch, but I guess because Jason was there. Uh, but at that time I had no idea. So it was hard for me to get the reasons why I was trying to switch.

And then when I tried to do it and it wasn't working the way I expected it to, I got even more confused. But on my second run through, because my first run through, everybody died pretty quickly. Uh, I, I was trying to like move people towards, uh, like have, have at least one counselor near the kids in case that happens. Um, because there's a separate Jason alarm for when he's going to come to kill your kids.

Um, but other than that, I, I, I didn't quite play the game enough to develop a more cohesive strategy. Like the, the best way that I used it for, which I actually, is there a way to change to another counselor when you're not already with that counselor? I think if it was in a, uh, a cabin, you can do that. I think you had to be in a cabin with that counselor. No, you can move to a different counselor.

Okay. Well then that would have changed the whole game for me. Cause I was just kind of using it as a, a means to, you know, I would, I would power someone up. I would fight Jason as much as I could until like that character's health was really low. And then I would go hand off my items to the next counselor and then use that person. Like before my counselor died, I'd hand off my, my items to the next counselor, my knife or whatever it was. The, uh, and then take the next counselor and to take the fight Jason the next time. And I would just continually pass things around. So I would always have like a chance of surviving an encounter with Jason.

Right. But then you're leaving all of your other counselors defendless in case, uh, Jason happens to run into them. Right. Sure. But they're also already defenseless, you know, pretty way until I get to them anyways, you know, like, I mean, the game's not exactly giving you, uh, the best advantages you need though. I think like reading the manual is something that you probably need to do for this game. It's probably something that a lot of kids would have done. But even if they didn't, it's something where after you play the game for a little bit, you're like, all right, I think I need to read the manual to understand what's going on here. The manual doesn't really explain enough though. It gives you plenty of information.

There's just a lot of complications to this game that, uh, you know, without the internet, which they didn't have for this game, I am not sure. Like, this is not the kind of stuff we're having a hard time even like breaking up into sections here. What happens in this game? Like, I feel like people who haven't played this game aren't. Quite understanding the idea other than you might bump into Jason. This is kind of Ghostbusters level of abstraction here.

It's just, it's just the way the game is. So even like that idea of sharing secrets on the playground doesn't really work for a game like this because how do you even, you know, unless you're like at the cave or you have to like be like, well, I don't know where the kids are. And it's like, well, I actually have to get in a rowboat and row over to their cabin because they're on the lake. It's like those things, I guess you can kind of explain, but some things like, you know,

some things that aren't left to chance feel like they are because they're not explained in the manual. And only now with the internet am I able to like fully understand why certain things were happening when they were happening. And I think that's like, that's cool. There's a mystery to it. But the game isn't really like, you know, it's not encouraging you to learn these things. It's just more like they're happening and now you have to deal with them. Yeah, it works for modern games because they're developed in that context, like a, like a Dark Souls or even like a playable trailer.

But yeah, I really don't know how anybody else was going to manage to put this all together in a reasonable amount of time before they just gave up on a frustration. Well, you know, too, that if like, you know, in a modern game, the counselor switching system would be explained by like you running in a story mode event, like running into another counselor and then they explain how this works to you in like some kind of in game, in story. But no, I mean, like even the examples that I used, which are known for their, like in the game being kind of sort of ambiguous about things, they, but they know that they are developed in this context of having the internet and sort of playing as a community, which wasn't so much a thing in 1989.

Right, right. And that's a good point. I think it would have been cool, though, if you could have played this game as a community, like not for NES, but imagine if this came out to computers and you could have like a LAN party where like each of you is a counselor and you're all trying to take down Jason,

you know, like everybody can actually actively freely explore and handle like different tasks. I think that'd be fun. Is that maybe the, is that the concept of the more recent Friday the 13th game? It absolutely is. And it turned out not to be that fun. Apparently people didn't like necessarily love that game. Yeah. I don't know if anybody here played it, but critics kind of were against it. So I don't think that the NES version would have been much better.

I just feel like, you know, it's probably impossible because the game has to keep track of so much. But this is the kind of game that would have been fine with like a, you know, a split screen of sorts with a multiplayer mode where you could have at least two people playing as two different counselors to divide and conquer, taking down Jason. If the whole idea is that you're supposed to be a bunch of different counselors.

Yeah. I will say that like the frustrations aside, I agree that it's frustrating and it's not easy to understand. And I think it fails in a lot of places on paper. I, if you just described this game to me, maybe better than we're describing it. But if you were to just describe this game to me, I would, I would think that I would love this game. Like, it sounds like a really cool idea and it's very ambitious.

I think that they just didn't put it together all, all right in the right ways. And like, it's just, I think it's just too, it's trying to do things that are too far ahead of its time and capability. But I, but I did appreciate that. Like there's the map screen and, and the overworld and you go into the cabins and you get a little lost and you have to manage your counselors that all have different skill sets.

I, I just, I just don't think, I just don't think they succeeded in making those the way that maybe the original vision was. It's a, it's a grand design of a game. I mean, you know, we were talking about the complications earlier that every playthrough can probably be unique for this game. I don't know that for a fact. And obviously there's probably ways to like RNG stuff, but if you're just playing this game as a regular person, I feel like every time you play this game could go a little bit differently because of the counselors you choose to be or what day you're on or the weapons you receive from the zombies or the weapons you choose to find. Uh, things are different depending on what day it is too.

And even the way like Jason attacks, like he's so much faster on day two than on day one. Uh, you know, the, the amount of things that you can do in this game while also like just trying to be like, you know what, actually this time I'm just going to go right to Jason and just try to fight him and kill him right immediately at day one with my rocks. You know, like I don't even need an ax this time or a torch. Uh, there's something interesting about that idea.

I agree with you, Joe, uh, on paper, this is a, this is a crazy game, but it's also like they did, they did make it, they didn't make it right maybe to like make everything work, but they actually did translate the game that we're talking about on paper to a video game where like everything is happening in, you know, pseudo real time. And if you go down to the cave on day one and use a specific type of weapon that you maybe wouldn't have used previously to fight, uh, Jason's mom, who's a floating head for some reason, uh, if you do that, you'll get a different reward than you would if you do it on day two, or if you do it on day three, like there's neat little touches like that,

that do matter. It's just how many people are, are playing this the whole way through to notice those things. Another piece of, uh, qualified, um, praise for this game that I would give it is that we've played a few different licensed games that have very unique play styles, like between

Ghostbusters and Jaws and Friday the 13th, I kind of consider, I think those are all LJN games, right? I'm pretty sure they're all LJN games too. So that, but now keep in mind, LJN just the publisher, uh, they, they contract different people to make these games. So it's a different developer. But they, they seem to have a, a, a, like a cohesive taste, I guess.

Um, but among those zombies and rabid dogs, notwithstanding, this seems to be the closest to the source material, um, that this game, like that, a game that they've developed or published has, has done, like being the camp counselors in a Friday the 13th game is a cool idea. Going and getting gas for the Ghostbusters car is not a cool idea. Um, Jaws was kind of okay in terms of all this stuff, but I, I did like how, like how they, like the route at which they decided they wanted to adapt the story or at least this setting. Yeah.

And, and I feel like not even just literally, I think even like in the, they succeeded in making it feel like a horror movie. Like it feels like there's this terribly dangerous threat out there and you have to slowly sneak around and, and chip away at, at its, at your enemy while trying to slowly get the tools you need to possibly have a chance to defeat him. Like, like it gives you that feeling of almost hopelessness and that like, really you need to take your time and like try and stay level headed and not to get caught around the corner by the, by the monster, by Jason. Like, I, I think it did a good job of translating that.

It'd be like, if you could go directly to Dracula in Castlevania two, Simon's quest, like that, that would be like a cool thing where it's like, yeah, you could go the whole game and try to collect all these, uh, different weapons and get experience points and level up. Or you could just try and take it down Dracula right now. You know, that's clearly something that breath of the wild wound up doing is the obvious example these days, but it is neat to see that, you know, you could run into Jason on screen one, like, I don't know what the odds are, but it could happen. Yeah. I think it's interesting that, I mean, this is a systems game when it comes down to it and we don't see a lot of those on the NES.

I always think it's cool whether it's fun to play, whether it's good or bad, how the NES handles that. Um, cause I mean, what else, there was Raid on Bungeling Bay, but what other- Yeah, there were a few more. Yeah. Uh, that I'm having trouble coming up with, but I, I have praised those games in the past, cause I, like you, I would prefer to see more of these, whether they're good or bad. At least they have, uh, an interesting mode of gameplay. Yeah. I think that the thing is about them that they're, they're thoughtful and they're very

carefully considered. Even if it's not fun, someone really thought out exactly how it was going to be played. Now, Ghostbusters was actually Activision, but I think your point about franchises still stands, Sean. Yeah. Uh, that franchises will take a risk that they wouldn't take today.

Yeah. Going back to what Sam was saying there, you know, it's weird that this game today, I'm not even, I don't even know what the reception was like back in the day, but today this is considered one of the worst NES games of all time on many lists. And, and I think it's, it's constantly criticized by YouTubers and that was probably made popular by people like the angry video game nerd who actually, uh, James Rolfe, the guy who is the angry video game nerd wound up saying later on that he actually quite likes this game.

And I think that's like the real mistake of, of this game is that too early on in the days of the internet, this was like an easy game to take a crap on. And now it's like, it's just known as this notoriously bad game that I was really surprised to play. And I don't think it's even, I don't even think it's in the bottom anything of NES games we've played. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not my favorite game and I, and we all have problems with it, but that's definitely overstated. I had no idea, um, it had that reputation until, cause like for, for games that I find out that have a reputation, I will go back and watch like the AVGNs just to see, um, what a, at least semi modern take on these is.

Uh, and I wasn't surprised because that's just how, that's just his style. But, uh, yeah, I think it was definitely overblown. Yeah. I, I, like I said, I think that there were, I think there's a lot of elements of a good game in here. I just think that they, they couldn't put it together in a way that was actually like fun. I think that they, they did miss the mark on, on that level. So I get that, but I agree with you, Mike. Like, I don't think this is even close to like the worst game. I don't, I, yeah, this wouldn't make my bottom 20. I'm probably, you know, better than that. Like, I think I'm, I'm, I'm interested in it because of the things it's doing.

Um, yeah, I do think it failed in a lot of areas, but like, I mean, I, we, we've already talked about so many games that I think are way worse than this game. So that surprises me. I think for me, it, it's just like frustrating to play this game and annoying to play this game, but all the elements of an interesting game are there. So I, I, I don't think it's a bad game. I think it's just very frustrating and annoying.

Even Nintendo Power in their 100th issue, uh, special put Friday the 13th as the sixth worst game of any system, not even just like the NES, the sixth worst game of like all time. Which is just bizarre. Wait, so Nintendo Power during, in this, uh, this issue was also ranking non-Nintendo games in this list? No, no, they was just that like, by that point the N64 had been out. So they were doing Nintendo, Game Boy, Super Nintendo.

I'm actually surprised that this, uh, this company, this company magazine would even talk about negatives in that way. They tried to make themselves seem like they weren't, uh, you know, like super biased. A lot of times they would give games like nine, nines instead of tens when you clearly knew that like they were hoping to give it that 10, but they can't give every Nintendo game a 10. It's kind of funny like that. Yeah. We, we do need to talk about Jason though. He's like the last piece here of the Friday the 13th puzzle.

Joe, you were startled by him. Do you want to go into any more depth about maybe why or how those fights went down for you? Sure. Well, so full disclosure, I had seen a long time ago. I had seen, I think the game grumps play this game.

So I didn't really remember too much about it, but I did remember that Jason's health bar is like ridiculously slow to go down while your health bar goes down like in like three hits, you're dead. So I remembered him being like this juggernaut of an enemy. So I did know, okay, well, once I get to Jason, it's going to be really hard and I got to get all my weapons and I'm like, okay, I think I got to get a torch or something. And then like, I went into the first house and there he was. And I was like, no way. Like, so it freaked me out.

But yeah, so the, the actual fight against Jason is you're in one of these, one of these rooms we talked about that are like trying to be 3d and he's in front of you and you're throwing, I guess, rocks at the beginning when you don't have any weapons, throwing rocks at him. And he kind of operates on two planes where he's far away from you and he's close to you. And then he'll move back and forth left and right across the screen. And you basically just have to throw rocks at him when he's in front of you, which is hard to do because usually when he's in front of you, he can take a swing at you, which is way more devastating to you than whatever you're going to hit him with.

So really your, your goal is just kind of last long enough, get a few hits on him until he runs away for, I have no idea why he would run away from you, but he does. For plot reasons. Yeah, for plot reasons. He runs away and then you can keep going. So it is, it is quite a, quite a scare to take on Jason.

It's quite a spook. It does, it does beg the question though of like why in the movies he doesn't just kill everybody the first time he kills anybody, you know, like why one a night? Like what's, what's the, what's the, you know, like what isn't the rush? I mean, you should just be doing it. In the first game, he was actually, that's not the first game. In the first movie, he was actually really efficient. But I guess like over time, like to the, through the four or so movies that came up before this game, he liked to play with his food for longer. That's my deep lore explanation.

The side-scrolling parts of this game, once you have weapons, reminded me a lot of Castlevania and Rygar in that respect, just the way that you fight those enemies now. And when you were fighting Jason in the cabin, that gave me like punch out vibes because of how big he is. Like, no, that's all I was going to say. It's like the dodging attacks and then going in for one. It felt very punch out. It's fun, but it's like, it's not because it's also very stressful.

As Joe mentioned that, like if you, if you manage to get hit, you're eight health bars out. And Jason is described as having 32 bars of health and correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, but I don't even think any boss in Kingdom Hearts, the series. Has 32 bars of health. Well, well, well. I mean, bars, I assume they're talking, when they say bars of health in this game, they're talking about tiny little beads on your health bar. Absolutely true. For the Kingdom Hearts, those are full health bars. I was having trouble even like, in the beginning, I was having trouble even nicking one off. So I feel like even those little beads of health have a bit more to them. So maybe it's, it's, it's closer to the Kingdom Hearts explanation.

Yeah. You got to get the knife. That's, that's what helps a little bit. Yeah. It'd be foolish to think you could take them down with a bunch of rocks. And also like, how many rocks do you have? You got a lot of rocks. That's a gravel floor in those cabins. So you just pick them up. There's not much I could find on development for this game. And I can't confirm this. And I don't have a source for it really. But apparently, Jason is got the purple jacket on in this game, which he never wore in the movies.

Because this game, as you can imagine, was made by Atlas, which is now they make Persona games. But back then, they were making games like Friday the 13th. And they're a Japanese company. And apparently, somebody found in the Japanese promotional material for Friday the 13th, the third one, whatever, that's probably just called part three or whatever.

For that one, yeah. For that one, he had in the promo material, in like one specific thing, he had a purple, like, jumpsuit on. With the, with the blue mask and everything. Who knows if it was just the lighting or if they wore it once off. But it's not found in any American promotional advertisements or anything. So it's just in this one weird Japanese ad.

And they must have just used that as inspiration to be like, this is our man. This is what Jason looks like. And it also could be said that maybe their, their artists don't really care too much about, um, research. And they saw, that was the first one they saw. And that, for all they knew, that's what Jason looked like. I mean, it might be color palette based also. Just like, hey, here's a purple guy. So that's gonna stand out a lot against these, like, you know, not, non-purple backgrounds.

True. I don't ever want to see a man in purple in broad daylight. Especially in my cabin. In my cabin. Purple jumpsuit. Unless it's Barney. No, even Barney's scarier than Jason. If you think about it. Yeah. People in mascot suits are scary. You know, like, just the idea of, like, who's under the mascot suit. Like if it were some kind of animal that's wearing, like, sleep-based clothing. That would be terrifying if it was a bear in pajamas. Keep in mind.

Now, I don't have any more on development, but sequels and spinoff section has some good stuff. Sean, when you were saying in the first Friday the 13th game, I'm sure you were referring to Friday the 13th on Commodore 64 in 1985. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Kind of just as messy of a game. Not exactly polished or anything, but people refer to it as not necessarily worse either than Friday the 13th on NES. So it seems like there's some similar themes being shared between the two games of just, like, you've got to take down Jason and, you know, explore the campgrounds and stuff like that to find what you need to take him down.

That's pretty much it for Friday the 13th until all the way in 2015, Jason is playable in Mortal Kombat X. And I think that's the kind of place a guy like Jason needs to be in a Mortal Kombat game going down against Scorpion and Sub-Zero. I wonder what his fatality was. I guess I'll look that up after this recording. It'd be cool if they had, like, a bunch of different fatalities for him based on different, like, gory kills he's done in the movies. Yeah. That'd be fun. Mortal Kombat always has the best guess, though. I think they have, like, the full Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the most recent game. I wonder how they connect him to it, because isn't everything in Mortal Kombat, like, the series, connected to this huge storyline?

It's a gigantic storyline. It's, like, multiple universes. It's unbelievable to watch, like, the cutscene movies. I listened to a podcast once where they explain exactly, like, they explain, like, who each, like, one character per podcast. I don't think Jason's gonna show up in the new Mortal Kombat movie. This is probably the closest we'll ever get to Jason in the Mortal Kombat world. Uh, maybe Jason made sense in Mortal Kombat X, though, because he was Jason X for a little bit. So, there you go.

2017. Friday the 13th. Uh, the game that Sean was talking about earlier that's kind of, kind of just the 3D version of this game, with hopefully a little more intuitiveness and explanation-based things of understanding what you're supposed to do, uh, included. But mostly, it's, like, the same game, except multiplayer is now the focus.

One person, not a computer. One real person is Jason, and everybody else are the camp counselors, and you kind of, like, do some either local or online matchmaking. Actually, I think it's only online, but you do matchmaking to figure that out. And, of course, everybody wants to be Jason, but I think it's purely random. I've always really liked the, those, uh, asymmetrical multiplayer game. So, I'd still like to try that out. Yeah, I was surprised to hear that, just right now, that it didn't, that it wasn't very well received, because I thought it sounded really cool when I first heard about it. Wasn't there another game, um, Evolve, that had the same idea? That also was critically panned.

Okay, there's, maybe there's just a balance issue with these kinds of games. Possibly, yeah. I don't think I would want to be Jason, though. Like, even if you took the NES one. There's a lot of pressure on that. Right, and made it that multiplayer experience. I feel like Jason should always be the computer, because that's scary, and it should be about humans working together to take down computers.

You know, it is funny, though, because while playing this NES game, I did have the thought that, like, it would be interesting to see it from Jason's perspective. Like, yes, he's more powerful than everyone, but he's got these six people all slowly trying to power up, and he's, like, on a time limit, like, I gotta kill these people before they get strong enough to kill me.

Like, that's kind of a cool premise. Like, I would like to see that work. Isn't that kind of like a, what is it, Dead by Daylight? I don't know, sure. I've never seen people play it, so I'm not really sure.

Maybe it's what happens in Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle, which was released in 2018. It's a horror puzzle video game. I pulled that right from Wikipedia. I don't know what could make a puzzle game a horror puzzle game. Do you, like, jump at all? Like, is there, like, something that scary in there?

Maybe it's, like, uh, what's it called? Clock Tower or something. I don't know. I didn't do my homework on this one, but if I just click these buttons right now and click images, you'll actually see that it's some chibi version of Jason. Oh. And it's not Tetris effect style, not Tetris style, um, you know, where it's not like you're playing Puyo Puyo with Jason. But it actually looks kind of cute. Oh, that kind of puzzle game. I thought, all right, I get it. No, but it's not that kind of puzzle game. It's actually the kind of puzzle game that we were thinking of, uh, originally. I see. Which is? So still, like, in normal space, but chibi.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know. I, apparently, you know, if it's on Wikipedia, you gotta talk about it. I didn't play this one because I have to pay for it, and I don't think I want to. It's a good reason. Yeah. Uh, so that's that. Um, but make no mistake, I did play Friday the 13th on the Commodore 64, and I didn't love my time with it. So I am still following up with my sequels and spinoffs. Mortal Kombat X I didn't play, though, so I have to go back and play as Jason.

One last thing on the sequels and spinoffs. It's finally, uh, worth mentioning that the Friday the 13th 2017 game eventually got the Jason purple jumpsuit skin so that you can play as the original Jason the way he was intended. That's great. Um, and so definitely, like, that's the NES inspiration coming in there, but I think that was also given as an apology for, like, the game not being everything that it promised to be at the start of its release. So never, never really, like, a good time. Yeah, not a good look. You know? Yeah. Should have just released it. But, I mean, if a purple jumpsuit skinned character doesn't make up for it, then I don't know. I don't know what will.

That's true. I mean, it's very hard to make things up to gamers. Uh, they just canceled Anthem. Uh, like, as of this recording. Oh, really? It officially canceled. And it's like, were there any gamers who were, like, waiting? I kind of forgot about Anthem. So, I guess that'll speak to that. Yeah. That, I mean, Avengers is next, right? Marvel's Avengers is just gonna be the next Anthem. So, it's always exciting. Like, what's gonna be the next Anthem? That's what people are gonna be asking themselves going forward.

We have to ask ourselves, though, what is going to be the next game on the Essential Games list? Because we are in a little bit of a drought on the Essential Games list. It, uh, Bionic Commando and Blaster Master were our last two. We haven't had anything in, like, 20 episodes. 20 plus episodes. That's a long time. Bit of a drought, but some play-its in there, for sure. Um, but we need to decide right now if Friday the 13th is going to make that list. And that list I'm talking about is the Essential Games list.

All right, we've been talking about this for a little bit, but if you just want to give me maybe, like, a sentence or two, or, you know, if you prepared something, I'm not gonna say you can't read it out loud. But I doubt any of you prepared anything for this podcast. So, Sam, why don't you go first? Well, I can't read it to myself. That wouldn't be very interesting. Also, I didn't read anything down.

But, I don't know. I think that based on what I saw online, because I did see people commenting that this is a terrible game, and that this was always found in, like, the bargain bins, and no one was able to beat it, and it was really frustrating. Like, I agree it's frustrating. I don't think this is a bad game.

I don't think it's essential, because it is very frustrating to play, and it's not super enjoyable. But I think as far as a game goes, this has a very distinct vision, and I think it's fairly focused as a concept, which is something that we don't see in a lot of games, especially one as complicated as this one. So, I'm gonna say, not as bad as people say, but not essential. All right, I think that's fair. I think that's kind of what some people need to hear. So, Sean, why don't you tell the people what they really need to hear?

Damn. See, I was just gonna say pretty much what Sam said, but now you put me on the spot, so I have to say something poignant. And that is that this game really disappointed me. I really wanted to play the first survival horror game on the NES, but all it gave me was this crappy, you know, camp counselor manager simulator, and I had to throw rocks at everything with zombies. So, no, I still, I will appreciate the vision of this game, but I will say that it is still kind of bad. Like, it's not terrible, but it's still kind of a bad game. So, it's not essential.

All right, we're waning down now in our views of the game. But I will say, Sean, before people start tweeting at NostalgiaCast, we are well aware of the game. My views are my own. Yeah, but we're also well aware of the game Sweet Home on the Famicom, which never came to the NES, which is like the very first Resident Evil game, if you will. True. That wasn't called a survival horror, though. Resident Evil coined the term. Right, right, no, no, but I'm saying Sweet Home is also now considered like survival horror. So, people are going to be like, oh, well, if Sean really wants to, it's like, no, don't worry, we know. Yeah, we'll get there, maybe. We're playing North American games. Yeah, I'll get there.

And Joe, as far as I know, is North American, so he can speak on whether North American games make it onto the Essential Games list. So, Joe, what are your thoughts? That's true, I'm qualified for that. So, I think that where this game ultimately lands for me is closer to bad than good.

But to everyone who thinks it's horrible, I might have one of the worst games on the system or whatever. I might have a controversial opinion here where I think that this game, the reason it doesn't work is because it's ahead of its time. And I don't even necessarily think that it's ahead of its time where it's like the technology to do what they wanted wasn't there. But I just think the precedent wasn't there. And they were, you know, they were trying to do all these things with these systems that no one had done before. So, they were kind of making it up as they go. And just that level of game design hadn't been done in a good way yet.

So, I think that they were like pioneering it and it didn't really come out right. But if you look at what they were setting out to do, I think it could have been really cool, like, if they had had maybe a few more years and maybe a couple of failed attempts at this, like, in the past that they could look at and say like, okay, well, this is why that didn't work, but here's how we improve. And I think it would have been really cool to have this like, hey, we're placing you in this spot with this terrifying monster that can, you know, that's way more powerful than you. Figure out a way to beat them and like do whatever it takes to stay alive.

That's a cool idea. And I think all of the elements that they tried to implement are cool. I just think that altogether, it did fail. And it's not fun in the end the way that it could have been. So, definitely not essential. Joe, I hear that part for sure, though, about being ahead of its time. It's kind of like if one of us was to be teleported back to this period of time.

You know, you take like Grand Theft Auto 3, one of the most influential video games of all time. You can't like say, okay, well, I know how that game was played. So now I'm going to make it NES style. I'm going to implement all the same systems. It's like you wouldn't know how to do that for this specific thing. So, you know, like you can always say later on that it's easier to make these things once they're like implemented. But I think Friday the 13th is laying out a lot of groundwork for stuff that hopefully we'll see improved upon as we move throughout the system.

Because I'm genuinely surprised here by this game. And I'm not going to put it on the essential games list. But it's kind of like it's a play it for me. Because I think this game deserves its fair shake from everyone just because of how the reception is online. Like, I don't think that this game deserves as much flack as it gets.

If only just because it's trying something different. So for some people, this might hit every single thing that they want from an NES game that they wouldn't have otherwise tried. And that's why I kind of feel like it's a play it. It's obviously not essential, though, because, you know, I think nine out of 10 gamers will get frustrated with the actual experience that's laid out here. And yes, it does need to be, you know, it needs to be more polished. It needs to it needs to figure out how to provide you this information.

I'm not saying hold my hand. But if the manual doesn't have everything I need to figure out how to beat a game, I think there's a problem. I would also have liked there to have been like romanceable characters just to make this more of Friday the 13th because there's no reason that these camp counselors should die unless they aren't being naughty. Yeah, it's kind of interesting to Sean that you don't have like a final girl like you have to wait till all the other counselors are killed. And then you get to like unlock the secret ending.

Yeah. Friday the 13th NES game where it's like, you know, I think the the one who was like the best girl, I think was Laura. And if you had if you had the ability to like, you know, save her for the end and then there's like a special finale. You get an achievement for that. Yeah. A little achievement. Right. NES achievement. They used to just mail those to you.

Well, I think that's all the time we have for Friday the 13th. I was going to say watch out for tomorrow, but that's Saturday the 13th. So you're fine. Today is Friday the 12th as a reminder or not because you don't have to listen to this podcast the day it comes out. But we record these to be canonically correct to the day they come out so that we can shame all the listeners that don't listen on release day. It's a really kind of a cruel thing to do, but we haven't had a meeting to get rid of that aspect of our show. Well, you were the one who was pushing for it. Sure. But doesn't mean I have criticisms of it. Okay. Yeah, that's great.

I don't know how to say our next game. Gyrus. What do you think? I would say Gyrus. G-Y-R-U-S-S. I'm going to say Gyrus. Like Long Island? Like Gyrus. I mean, I see it as Gyrus, but I'll wait until somebody corrects me. I feel like Gyrus, because like Gyro seems like a gamey thing. Like Gyromite? I can't hear this or see it without thinking of like Gyro versus Gyro. You know? Yeah, same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gyrus now seems like the correct one. It's Yyrus. Oh, Yyrus. Yeah. I know you are. You rolled the R's.

Anyway, that's the game. That's the game. This is the whole episode. That's it. This is the entire episode. You can follow us at NostalgiaCast on Twitter. Please do. We're begging you. We'll know if you didn't. We can count. I think. Otherwise, if you don't want to follow at NostalgiaCast, how about following at Esposito Film, that's me, on Twitter. And I'll talk to you real soon.

NostalgiaCast. Hey, Sam, real quick. Do you want to give us an update on the Nostalgia Game Jam? Maybe just goes by NES Jam on itch.io? I would love to. So while we were recording this podcast, we actually got one more person who joined the jam. So we're up to 12 people in the jam right now. So that's fun. Awesome. And it's going to be going from March 19th until March 28th.

I think it's just great that we're getting this kind of engagement. And I think it's important for everyone to remember that we're going to play these games and do a special episode of NostalgiaCast where we actually talk about these games and, you know, their NES influences, what we noticed about them, whether, you know, what kind of games like we would like to see made from this stuff. So I think like, you know, whether you're going to participate or not in the actual jam, this

is something to keep an eye on because you can play these games too and follow along with the episode to give us your kind of picks on which ones you appreciated as well. Yeah. And it's a week away. So there's still time to sign up and all that. Yeah. And it should be really fun. I'm going to make a game for it. So I'm excited to work on it and we'll see how it goes.

Now, once that submission deadline is closed, you can't make games ever again. That's like, that's one of the rules. Yeah. That's one of the rules when you sign up. Wait, no, no, no. That's not going to help people sign up. No, no, it's true. Absolutely not. You can, what I was actually going to say is that you can make a game whenever you want. We'll, we'll play it. Honestly, if you make an NES style game and you want us to play it, you can always tweet us at NostalgiaCast and we'll take a look at anything.

You don't have to feel like you're missing out on something here. You don't have to feel any pressure by this. This is a fun thing for us to just kind of, you know, hang out with the community. Yeah. But please, like, you know, don't wait if you, if you specifically don't want to play the, do the game jam. Like I would, I would prefer that you do it during the game jam, you know, that would be fun.

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