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Dead: Early Horror Gaming
A General History (1993-1997)
Despite the groundbreaking commercial and critical success of Alone in the Dark, the early PC horror game is typically a traditional adventure. Even though the Infogrames classic demonstrates an alluring mixture of compelling story and quick-reflex action, most developers stuck to the gaming medium that was arguably closest to literature. This allowed them to reproduce the eerie essence of such masters of the macabre as H.P. Lovecraft. Stories were told in the old-fashioned way, with their authors relying largely on atmospheric prose, scary surroundings, and a ripping yarn to chill the gamer.
This tactic made a great deal of sense at the time. For one thing, it was the safest way to go. Adventure games were highly fashionable in the early 1990s, thanks to the enduring popularity of many Sierra On-Line series. King's Quest, Police Quest, the Laura Bow mysteries, and the irrepressible Leisure Suit Larry games were what most designers aspired to emulate in those days. And when Alone in the Dark proved that Lovecraftian monsters could be as well received as the sleazy meandering of Larry Laffer, it was only a short time before horror became an established subject of adventure gaming.
Success at the cash register wasn't the only reason why horror game creators chose to express themselves with adventures. Technology at the time was a serious limitation. With DOS 5.0, a 286, and a rudimentary VGA graphics board as the standard hardware in most PCs, there really wasn't much that artists could do to draw suitably ominous settings and threatening monsters. Most fright-filled titles in this era relied on set pieces, screens that properly depicted strange locales--yet, at the same time, they limited player interaction. Alone in the Dark and its two sequels were actually the only games during this period that allowed complete freedom of movement. Some, including memorable efforts such as The 7th Guest and Phantasmagoria, were based upon canned film sequences, while others, such as Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, were merely updated looks at the old Sierra adventure gaming formula.
 Resident Evil (1996) for the PlayStation |
It wasn't until Capcom entered the scene in 1996 with Resident Evil for the Sony PlayStation that things began to change. The Japanese console game developer picked up on many of the aspects that made Alone in the Dark so special and turned them into a new action-adventure subgenre called "survival horror." As in the Infogrames model, the player takes on the role of a lone protagonist armed with just his or her wits and some high-caliber courage against hordes of monsters. Resident Evil soon grew into a global phenomenon, so popular that it even inspired the formation of parental advisory groups calling for it to be banned due to excessive gore. Needless to say, such added attention only contributed to the game's allure, and sequels were soon on the way for the various console systems, as were computer ports of those titles.
Such unprecedented sales seemed to invigorate horror-themed gaming for all platforms, including the PC. This, plus the rapid technological advancement of computer hardware, made developers understand that they were limiting themselves by confining their efforts to variations on a decade-old adventure game template that was growing a little long in the tooth. Two games best marked this realization--Realms of the Haunting and Blood. The former was a revolutionary game that combined full-motion video, the visceral impact of first-person action, and difficult puzzles, while the latter was a Duke Nukem 3D-inspired shooter that replaced Duke's aliens with fright-film archetypes. Both made it clear that horror should no longer be restricted to adventure games, a genre that had very much become a sales ghetto by this point.
But as much as these titles seemed to be leading the ghoulish in new directions, they also marked the end of an era. By the time that Blood was released in May of 1997, gamers were beginning to experiment with 3D video cards. The high-quality, fast-moving visuals that such equipment could provide would soon make it possible to create creepy settings and creatures that would allow gamers to suspend their disbelief. That era, however, is best left for the second part of this feature, Undead: Current Horror Gaming. For now, let's delve into the games that defined this early era.
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