Horror Blogs Part 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street

    Hello everyone and welcome to the first blog in my Horror Blogs series. This series will feature game reviews, thoughts, and experiences involving games of the horror genre. There are a ton of games that fall into this genre from the Atari through the Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64. There is no way I will be able to tackle them all between now and Halloween, so chances are good that next year I'll be doing this blog series again with different games. This series is not just going to be a review series. It will be a series in which I share my thoughts and experiences on the games that I am looking at. In some cases I may even bring some comparisons to a games respective movie if it has one. Speaking of games based on horror movies, the first game I will be taking a look at is based off the popular movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

****MOVIE AND GAME SPOILERS AHEAD****

    One two Freddy's coming for you.... A Nightmare on Elm Street on the Nintendo Entertainment System was unleashed in North America in October of 1990. Six years earlier, Wes Craven wowed audiences with a horror movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street. The plot of the first movie in a nutshell is that a child killer by the name of Fred Krueger gets killed by the parents of Elm Street. Despite being killed, Freddy is able to appear in the dreams of the children of Elm Street where he can do whatever he wants with them, including killing them. If Freddy kills a kid in their dream, they die in the real world in the same fashion. For example, the first teenager to die gets cut up by Freddy and thrown around. As Freddy is doing this in her dreams, the damage is being done to her in the real world. This style, for the most part, is what dominates the Nightmare on Elm Street movie franchise. The question is, how did it transfer into the game?

    That's a topic that everyone has their own opinion on, and here is mine. In the game you play as one of the teenagers on Elm Street and you're task is to search the houses, school, etc of Elm Street in search of Freddy's bones. On the top of the screen there is a sleep meter. As you play the game the meter falls and eventually you fall asleep. In the dream world the game continues as usual until you hear an 8-bit rendering of Freddy's song from the movies. When the song ends Freddy attacks. If you manage to fend him off, the game continues as normal. While the sleep meter naturally drains, you can replenish it by finding coffee, one of the things the teens in the movies continually make use of to stay awake. While in the dream world you can find a boom box to wake you up. I guess that is supposed to simulate an alarm clock or something. Not sure...

    I think it's a pretty good system that the game has as far as the transition from awake to asleep. In the movies it's so seemless that you can't even really tell when the characters slip into a dream until it is obvious they're in one. Beyond that, the game runs into a challenge. As you wander Elm Street and it's many buildings you run into a lot of well, lackluster enemies. Some of these enemies include snakes, bats, rats, and Frankenstein's monsteresque zombies. I feel like these types of enemies were overly common in older horror games, so I guess it works. In the dream world the enemies are similar, but some of them gain Freddy heads or look simply creepier. Even though they are lackluster I feel like I can give it a bit of a pass because in the movies, Freddy is literally the sole enemy so any additional enemies in the game wouldn't be the same as the movies. I mean I guess they could have had like random street thugs or something, but the typical creepy animal enemies and zombie looking guys work just fine.

    Where the game lacks the most I think is in it's music department. The sound effects of getting hit and what not are alright. It's the NES so I don't expect a whole lot, but outside of the opening screen I have no idea where they were going with the music here. If you've ever watched A Nightmare on Elm Street, you know that the music is so haunting and creepy that it can send chills down your spine. Well, the music in the game is pretty much the exact opposite. It is generally upbeat. At times it tries to be more creepy, such as during boss battles, but it sounds more like an underground level in a Batman game or something like that. Whatever it is, it does not sound like music that should be in a Nightmare on Elm Street game. There is one point where the music fits perfectly though. If you stay in the dream world too long Freddy's song will start playing. It's actually a pretty cool 8-bit rendition and while it may not have vocals, it still gives that feeling of desperation to wake up.

    I find it interesting that this game is called simply A Nightmare on Elm Street. Based on that title you would be led to think that the game is based off the first movie. In reality though I find that it has more in common with the third movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The first movie featured one main protagonist in the form of Nancy Thompson, but Dream Warriors featured a small group of teenagers that Nancy was mentoring in controlling their dreams to combat Freddy. In the NES game you can play with up to four people. Yes, four people in an NES game playing at the same time.  Another interesting note is that during Dream Warriors, Nancy's father aids in an effort to round up Freddy's remains at the town car dump. The main objective in the buildings, as I mentioned before is to round up Freddy's bones. There is also a junkyard that the player ventures into as well in the game. The difference here is that in the game you burn Freddy's remains in the school rather than bury them in the junkyard. Perhaps the most interesting note though takes place in the dream world of both the game and Dream Warriors. In Dream Warriors, the teens, despite being in Freddy's world find a way to gain dream powers. The game is the same as the teens are able to find different powers in the game. All of this pushes me in the direction of this game actually being based on the third movie as opposed to the first. Not sure why they just named it A Nightmare on Elm Street, but whatever.

    So overall I have to say that I like A Nightmare on Elm Street a lot. Is it the best horror game? No. Does it pay good homage to the movie it's named after? I think it plays more to the third movie in the series. I also think that a different, creepier music score, at least in the dream world, would have made for a much better atmosphere. I think the gameplay is pretty straight forward, the controls are responsive to the point where I never really had an issue, and the boss battles, while generally following a pattern are certainly something I could see Freddy doing. I think the sleep meter is fine and the transition from the real world to dream world and back again, are all fine. They take a few seconds, but it isn't really annoying or game breaking. Just enough time to take a deep breath is all. At the end of the day the game I think sits in that category of an alright game. It doesn't do anything spectacular for the time and it really doesn't do much wrong either.

    One final word on this game is it's developer. While LJN was the publisher, and the game is widely known as an LJN game, Rare actually developed it. This is one of several games for the Nintendo Entertainment System that Rare quietly went about making back when they're biggest claim to fame, or infamy was Battletoads.

    Thank you for reading. I know this blog was in a bit of a different style so I apologize if it wasn't what you were looking for. Don't worry though, Horror Blogs will continue and the next game that I will be taking a look at is a bit of a revisit, Clock Tower.