Memories... actually, this game was quite good for it's time - especially compared to many of the other "Movie" games!
Suprisingly - it doesn't once you actually sit down with the game and learn it's mechanics. For a movie game on the old NES system, there actually some things done fairly right!
First off - the premise. Jason is loose again! You are one of six camp councilors for the now famous Crystal Lake armed with stones - yeah - stones!. (You get to choose from a list of 6 and can switch between them). Each have their own qualities but overall - 2 are good to use and the other 4 pretty much suck. Christie and Mark are the two you want to keep alive and stick with! The idea is that Jason is trying to kill your campers who are innocent children - but smartly you decided to hide them in the cabins of the lake. There is a basic map of Crystal lake - each with different cabins spaced apart from one another. After a certain amount of time Jason "Terrorizes" each of the campers and your job is to protect them. If you do not reach the cabin in time the child dies. Meanwhile - if your campers aren't being terrorized then your subgoal is to be taking on the rest of the Voorhees family while upgrading your weapons and finding certain key items. If all the campers die you lose. You however also can die, and if all 6 of you die, you also lose. Easy right? Wrong, this game is HIGHLY difficult....
This game is a basic sidescroller until you enter a cabin. Then it turns into a 3-D sort of game where you can turn and walk through the corridors of the cabin. The trick to this game comes from playing and understanding the mechanics. Slowly but surely you will learn what you need to do. Generally - the first thing you will have to do is go to all the cabins and light the fireplaces. This will give you access to the "Flashlight" and a new weapon that will help you defeat jason. You use the "flashlight" to get to Jason's mother who gives you yet again a stronger weapon. Slowly but surely you do this while keeping track of where your children are and finding Jason and killing him will be no problem....
The game however - gets difficult. First off - there is a daily cycle to day to afternoon to night. As it gets darker there becomes more and more enemies to deal with and the cabins and cave get harder to navigate. Secondly - each time you kill Jason the game "isn't over". He actually comes back 2 more times and each time he is more pissed and can move a lot faster. The third time around he is pretty much insane as he moves like lightning and growing up I could never figure out a way to actually kill him.
So - what this game does right.
The whole gameplay is actually well done despite the bad graphics. The enemies are repetitive but feel like you are getting better at the game when you learn their patterns and the different ways you can cheat to eliminate them.
The BIGGEST thing done right though is Jason and the scare factor... This is the first game I ever played where I felt like I was being hunted and sometimes where I was actually the hunter. This game gets really scary when you have to save a child - and you know Jason is lurking around in a 3-D cabin somewhere - but you have no idea where is going to appear. Sometimes he is behind you and you have to do a 180 and the music just kicks in and it's an all out battle of reflexes. Sometimes he intercepts you outside the cabin and you have no choice but to face him - as you can't run away from Jason. THIS was the first game that ever got me on the edge of a seat - way before Resident evil. The graphics suck but this game shows that it doesn't take graphics to give a game an eerie feel.
Overall - not the GREATEST game of all time - but a good play and a really hard game. Good old school!