10 Obscure Horror Movie Video Games You May Have Forgotten About
John Squires
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4) PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE – AMIGA, ATARI ST, DOS
For whatever reason, Konami decided in 1992 to release a video game based on one of the worst movies ever made: Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. Taking a meta approach to the subject matter, the point-and-click adventure game had an admirably clever premise, which is best summed up by the description on the back of the box…
Plan 9. The critics hated it. Bela Lugosi died during it. And his double has stolen it.
Lugosi’s replacement is still bitter after 33 years from critics’ reviews dubbing his only movie “The Worst Film of All-Time”. Even though he remained faceless, he intends to bring glory to the cult classic using more footage of himself and … colorizing it. As the studio’s Private Eye you’ll search over 70 locations, find the 6 reels and screen the film, frame-by-frame, to ensure that the warped actor did not cut Bela from the flick. Using actual digitized film footage, you’ll sweat each scene, examining Plan 9 with slow motion, freeze frame, fast forward and rewind. It’s up to you to preserve its original awfulness.
Ed Wood would surely be proud of that wacky concept!
5) THE RING : TERROR’S REALM – DREAMCAST
Two years before Ringu was remade here in America as The Ring, Asmik Ace Entertainment put out this survival horror game for the Dreamcast, which was loosely based on the popular Japanese franchise. In the game, players controlled a heroine named Meg, who gets sucked into a virtual reality computer game called RING. After playing the game, Meg is told she has seven days to live (sound familiar?), and she must use those days to save the world from the deadly computer virus. The game was panned by critics and fans alike, labeled a poorly-made Resident Evil ripoff.
6) ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES – AMSTRAD CPC, MSX & SINCLAIR SPECTRUM
Horror-comedy Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, released in 1978, spawned not only a handful of sequels, but also a line of toys, a children’s cartoon, and in 1986, an 8-bit video game. In the game, you controlled a character named Wimp Plasbot, tasked with fending off three different types of killer tomatoes: walking ones, which you had to crush with a hammer; bouncing ones, which you had to crush into tomato puree; and sitting ones, which had the ability speed up time. If the time ran out before all the tomatoes on each level were killed, you would lose the game.
Another Killer Tomatoes game was released for the NES and Gameboy in 1991, though it was based on the spin-off animated series
7) BLOODWINGS : PUMPKINHEAD’S REVENGE – MS-DOS
In 1994, sequel Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings went direct-to-video, and the following year saw the release of this PC game based on the film. You played as an unseen “Keeper of the Spirits,” and your job was to appease Pumpkinhead by traveling the netherworld on a treasure hunt for various different objects. At several points in the game you were treated to clips from the movie, and then forced to answer trivia questions based on those clips. The game was perhaps most notorious for its bizarre video endings, wherein Pumpkinhead would either dance for you or flip you off. Yea. Seriously.
