Chapter 5 - Friday the 13th: Jason's 8-Bit Mess...

I don't really think I have to go too deep into the Friday the 13th story, or lack thereof, so I'll just give you the gist of it: Two camp counselors are doing the nasty on a dock when they're supposed to be watching a retarded kid, kid drowns, comes back many years later in the second movie as an unstoppable evil guy, after his mom walks around saying "Kill her, Mommy" a lot in the first one. He gets his hockey mask in the third one, if memory serves. Eventually, he makes it to New York City, and most recently, a spaceship. Many stupid teens are killed each time, except usually one. The end. I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse that this game sort of incorporates only the first few movies. On one hand, those were the tolerable movies that came before the series went on far too long. On the other, a city or spaceship level really would have helped break the monotony.

As far as the game is concerned, your job is to lead 6 of the aforementioned stupid teens on a three-day crusade against Jason himself, along with a slew of lesser bad guys never before seen in a Jason movie, but in fact hired straight out of other games such as Ghosts 'N Goblins and Castlevania. In addition, you have to keep little kids from being brutally slaughtered. Don't worry though, this game would still probably get the "E" rating by today's standards, as no horrific blood or violence is actually shown. Even that might have helped this game, but no such luck. I always thought it'd be better if you got to actually play as Jason, so at least you'd be able to take out the fact that you foolishly paid for this game on a bunch of innocents, but good luck getting THAT kind of (licensed) game on a Nintendo system way back when.

The first thing you'll see is a Game Map, which can be accessed at any time with a press of the Start button. You'll be seeing this map quite a bit more during play, that is, if you want to get anywhere, as the "cabin path, forest, lake" motif starts to get repetitive even quicker than everything past the 30-minute mark in a Friday the 13th movie. It may not seem so, but there is quite a bit of strategy involved in this game. First though, I should mention that we're also introduced to our heroes; the fat goof, the athletic guy, the token black, the compassionate chick, the girl that always gets killed while naked in a shower, and the one female that makes it to the next movie.

It's probably not worth noting that Laura's and Crissy's hair colors switch for no reason when you actually pick them, but I already did, so nuts to you. Mark and Crissy are the only ones worth using, as the other 4 are slow and can't jump, and are best served as Jason bait. Now, the map takes a little getting used to, mostly because the direction you're actually moving in has nothing to do with your position on the map. You could row left for about 5 minutes, and still end up on the far right side of Crystal Lake. And Pinhead help you if you get caught in the forest. Most of the game consists of trying to protect the kids while avoiding, or eventually fighting, Jason. Of course, Jason isn't picky, as he'll also go after the other counselors, especially if they have low energy. As tempting as it is to not care, the next time you look at your map and see that you only have one guy left, oh yes, then you'll care. Or not.

Before we get to Jason, there are some other minor enemies to deal with. Most of them are Zombies who got tired of popping out of the ground to attack Sir Arthur, so they changed color and started pulling the same act in this game. The best enemies come while you're rowing, you get the one-pose jumping water things, and the gigantic evil birds. And really, what's an NES game without evil birds? At first, your only weapon is an unlimited supply of rocks, but luckily, weapons, medicine, lighters, and other fun crap appears when you kill enemies, or even out of thin air, it's all good.

Of course, none of these enemies compare to the greatest enemy of all, indeed the saving grace of this game, Jason's Mom's floating severed head.

I remember the head being in one of the movies, but never floating around and dive-bombing people. The head is the only enemy besides Jason in the game that you can fight in an overhead Punch-Out style, so I guess she counts as a boss. Beating her usually nets you a crummy weapon of some sort, unless you beat her on a certain day, then you get her sweater. And not only can you parade around the campgrounds in a dead woman's sweater, it also causes Jason to (sometimes) not attack you. Maybe I need to rethink my "E" rating.

Speaking of the overhead perspective, there's one other area of the game I didn't mention, and that's inside the cabins. The sad thing is that this type of perspective was once called "3D" by developers, and people bought it. I personally can't stand it, and sure enough, it spawned the genre of First-Person Shooters, my most reviled of all genres next to RPG's. But enough of that tangent, as the only real point of the cabins is to rescue people from Jason in them, collect weapons/items, and find useless notes. When Jason is nearing a cabin, it blinks on the map, and you have a limited time to get there to save whoever's in trouble. Sure, the kids are all happy....but did you forget about someone?

*Slow, heavy rhythmic breathing* shoot. Jason looks like he's seen better days, but he can still put you down way quicker than anything else in the game, so be afraid. You have to employ sort of a duck and attack motion while flinging your weapon at him, until he gives up and says "You win ... for now." Then when you exit the cabin, he sneaks up behind you and throws a big axe into your back.

One other thing I should note, is that this game did the "three days to complete the game, time passes, etc." way before Majora's Mask, although it's far more primitive, and all sunset/dusk accomplishes in this game is making enemies attack you more, ala Castlevania II. The only problem was that at the time Friday the 13th came out, figuring out how to make this kind of game somewhat fun to play was still about 10 years off. Can't blame them for trying to cash in on the franchise though, it's not like this was the first, or last, movie-based game that sucked @$$.

Interestingly enough, LJN released an NES game based on the Nightmare on Elm Street series of movies right after this one. Although it didn't have nearly as much to do with the movies (aside from Freddy), it was far better than this game, likely due to it being developed by Rare, and also had a far more interesting title screen. So if you need your fix of horror gaming, grab Nightmare, which is an above average platformer, as opposed to whatever the hell this game is trying to be. There are definitely some good ideas here, but the tediousness, confusion and crappy control of anyone not named Mark or Crissy makes it a real pain to play. But if we've learned nothing else, we now know that the one way to revive this tired franchise is to film a Friday the 13th movie in which Jason forces a bunch of fat 12-year old nerds to play his boring game for an hour and a half. It'd scare me, at least.

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