NESessities of Life – Friday the 13th

Genre
Platformer

Dominant Algorythm
Die/Allow Others To Die

Gameplay
From the beginning, this is a game about choice and exploration. You are presented with a map of Crystal Lake which is littered with cabins, forests, rocky caverns, a lake, and endless twisting trails to explore. There are 6 characters you can choose from (George, Mark, Paul, Laura, Debbie, and Crissy), each with their own health bar.

The implication is clear – This experience is going to actually mirror the movies accurately. You are responsible for herding a sextet of teens who are slowly going to get wasted by master of ceremonies, Jason Vorhees. Death is not something you can recover from with a 1-up, it is the end of a vital character. Losing a character means that you need to rethink your entire strategy.

That being said, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by not thinking too hard. Once you are in the actual game, getting the living shit stabbed out of you will be the main order of business. While the zombie horde is gnawing on you despite the rocks you throw at them, Jason will be stabbing people off screen (indicated by a timer counting down and kids disappearing from the roster). If you arrive in time to save someone, Jason will probably be there to stab you. Maybe he’s sick of getting stabbed himself.

Strangely though, it’s never frustrating. Perhaps it’s the richly rendered environments that make the game a pleasure.

Perhaps its the gusto with which your avatar jumps that keeps the mood light. As they say, altitude affects attitude.

Perhaps it’s the fact that you are only given one instruction at the start of the game. An instruction that has absolutely nothing to do with killing Jason.

Perhaps it is the Crystal Lake boat excursions that, despite the lack of dolphins doing flips and shit, are pretty enjoyable.

Whatever it is, LJN actually did something right for a change.

SWEETNESS
Jason murders with enough raw force to knock people right out of the frame.

When was the last time you stabbed someone so hard that it broke the 4th wall? Probably never.

WEAKNESS
If your goal is to “win”, every corner of this game embodies “weakness” and you shouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot machete. However, if your goal is to watch a group of kids get picked off by a sadistic murderer, than this is the game for you.

LESSONS LEARNED

1. If you can’t avoid the carnage, at least you can enjoy the view
2. When it is your turn to go, stand directly in front of the stab-happy hulk-zombie and take it like a man.
3. Although LJN is responsible for some weak adaptations, the volume of work they did and the scope of each game they created deserves respect.

CULTURAL RELEVANCE
The roster, limited though it may be, implies a significant part of gaming evolution – multiple protagonists. Due to the limitations on previous hardware, there was neither the need nor the ability to distinguish multiple leads, especially in the action genre. Pac-Man’s task was so simple that there would be no way to implement variety over multiple Pac-Men. Early Pac-Man sequels saw mostly cosmetic improvements until Pac-Mania brought about actual game-play changes.

There is no straight line that connects single-protagonist action games to the multi-protagonist adentures we know today. That line curves directly through the RPG genre via Dungeons and Dragons derived character classes. Such distinctions were possible to implement even on the ancient hardware with limited processing power. Combat in early RPGs was turn-based and delivered via text with character nuances manifesting in the form of variable changes in relatively simple algorythms.

These character nuances were the easiest thing to replicate in the RPG experience. The Dungeon Master uses dice as a random generator and a calculator to deal with the math involved in RPG combat. Seeing as calculators and random generators were some of the earliest applications of digital processing, the real challenge was replicating the DM’s ability to communicate a coherent story and realizing a vivid world in the players’ imaginations.

It makes sense that the earliest action adaptors of character classes were in the fantasy genre. This can be seen in games like Gauntlet, which owes a huge dept to D&D. The multiple characters fit into the typical fantasy tropes: a wizard, a warrior, an elf, and a sexy babe without much clothing. The concept of character classes might have seen their action debut in the arcades, but the concept of multiple protagonists was strictly a console brew.

Games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Friday The 13th required that the user develop their strategy based on a set roster of characters with variant skills. Players learn which characters are needed for certain situations. Those characters must be preserved while the others become punching bags to get through the grind.

The concept of multiple protagonists recently hit an apex with The World Ends With You. Instead of switching out characters during the action sequences, TWEWY employs the touch pad and the directional pad separately so that the user can have complete control over two characters simultaneously.

However, multiple protagonist gaming wasn’t the only way in which the NES allowed users to employ the powers of multiple characters dynamically. Next week, we will look at an NES classic that features a single protagonist but eschews the concept of a single skill set. It’s a big’un, but I won’t tell you the title. First person to guess correctly receives a +1 Charisma stat boost.

Jesse Koester is a film producer working in Tokyo. His work can be seen at www.iceblockfilms.com. And, yes, he does have the power to give you a +1 Charisma stat boost.

Give a hoot! Read a back entry in this series!

Nightmare On Elm Street
Fester’s Quest
Magmax
Toobin’
Castlevania
Rush’N Attack
Pipe Dream
Kirby’s Adventure
Marble Madness
Codename: Viper
Wario’s Wood
3D World Runner
Goonies 2
Punch Out!