A retrospective look: Friday the 13th video game

Written by Frank Acosta, May 13, 2016, 10:42 p.m.

Since its initial release to the public, Friday the 13th series has accumulated over $680 million worldwide. Even more impressively, it has left a stamp in the pop culture arena. It has gained an enormous fan base and continues to recruit new fans with it’s ever so growing franchise.

We received a 2009 reboot with that hunky younger brother from Supernatural, a sequel to the reboot in 2017, we are gaining a new TV series on that channel that featured 7th Heaven, and we’re welcoming a brand new video game for the next-gen consoles. We have Josh Brewer writing out fantastic F13 articles on all the movies.

So I figured I would take a little walk down memory lane to a game that, as a child, was so frustrating and strenuous, my father still blames me for that dent in the wall that he refuses to fix to this day.

A Retrospective Look at the Friday the 13th Video Game for NES

Released in 1989, 9 years after the original film debuted, video game publisher LJN created Friday the 13th the video game. Now, a little history with LJN. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s, this company released a shit load of video games based off our childhood movies.

We’re talking about Jaws, The Karate Kid, Back to the Future 1-3, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,  Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Beetlejuice, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure… And the list goes on and on.

Now, the beauty about the human race is free will. We’re left to our own devices to decide what we want in life. So if you chose to like or, dare I even say it, love these games then by all means, to each their own. I, on the other hand, disliked these games very much. And I’ll tell you why:

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When in the hell do you see Marty dressed up like Ponyboy Curtis in the movies?

Why must you kill other fish when the biggest threat is a big white fucking shark? What the hell are these other fishes doing that warrants them dead??

Why does Beetlejuice have to fight an enemy from the previous game I mentioned in a bathtub?!

Now, I get it. I really do. Video games are not carbon copy of the films they are based out of. Same goes when you turn it around. Adapted films are not duplicates of the games you’ve played. But why the hell can we not at least have Marty dressed up in his iconic red life jacket? Why can’t something perhaps resemble something that we can recognize?

Again, I get it. Video games provide perhaps a new outlook in perspective of our favorite movies. Something maybe we haven’t seen before.

And that is all well and good. But when you stack that up with horrible real time controls, annoying looped music, hard as hell to beat enemies and repeated levels? That’s when you done fucked up. And LJN is responsible for all these sins plus more.

But I digress here and in all honesty most of these games were quite fun in the heyday. They were just so annoying at times. So any who back to the man with the plan, the man with the hockey mask, the man with the toothbrush and an even bigger hate for gingivitis than your dentist: Jason Vorhees!

You play as one of six camp counselors; three men and three women. The goal here is like every F13 flick. Survive three days and three nights but most importantly kill Jason.

Now, you have to reach a certain cabin in the beginning of the game that gives you the message that essentially starts you on a quest in search for the torch in another cabin. Then you can light the fireplace, but the developers fucked up because you don’t need the torch to light up the fireplace. Instead what you need to light up the fireplace is the lighter, and the torch serves as a powerful weapon you can use against Jason. As a 10-year-old child with no instructions, this should come as second nature. Stupid kids.

The message that appears after you light it is: “Go into one of the cabins by the lake.” Well no fucking shit. You’re playing a video game where there are like 24 cabins by the lake, why wouldn’t you go into one of them? So as you make you way to the cabin you fight a zombie after a zombie after a zombie with an unlimited supplied of knives because I believed in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, this was exactly the plot.

Every so often, the counselor’s “Jason alarm” goes off indicating that he’s near. Kinda like how my dad put a bell around the dessert stand so he knows when I’m near it during one of my sleep-walking and sleep-eating adventures. Anyways, you have a few options to choose from when this alarm goes off.

You can figure out what counselor he’s after and fight Jason as the counselor you are at the moment. You can switch to the counselor he’s stalking and fight Jason. You can look for Jason in the cabin until you find him and must fight him via Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

Or just head right outside the cabin and fight him there. All points lead to fighting him so the options are thinly sparse. If you choose to fight him outside just chuck a few rocks at him and he runs away like that street dog always bothering you and your neighbors for scraps of food. I believe it was in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives when they tried this tactic.

So eventually you must go down to the caves to battle it up with Mrs. Vorhees who is portrayed here by Medusa.

Through a barrage of ghosts and more zombies you eventually encounter Jason for one last time. Armed with a toothbrush-machete, he goes down swinging as you do you best reenactment of 1980’s workout lunges. (Fun tidbit: All those enemies are suppose to be Jason’s past victims. But instead of helping you defeat the one enemy that murdered them, they for some reason try to kill you.)

And just like the films, in the end, they don’t tell you if he’s really dead. However, in this case, he is, as there were no follow-ups to this game. So this was the game of many small indentations on the wall, screams into pillows, and my father telling an inconsolable little Frank, “Stop crying. It’s a video game, for Christ’s sake. Go rake the leaves,” So while I have many fond memories of it, looking back at it I can only say: Fuck this game. Happy Friday the 13th everyone! And we’ll see you real soon, Jason!

Have you played the Friday the 13th video game? Let us know what you thought of it in the comments.