[Playing…] Friday the 13th (1989)

Friday the 13th (Friday the 13th) is one of the most famous franchises within the horror film subgenre known as “slashers.” This saga has been (like many of its genre and era) really irregular in terms of general quality, but it is undeniable that the appearance of Jason Voorhees, huge, quiet, armed with anything (machete, axe...) and with his face covered by a hockey mask, has become as unforgettable as other horror greats.

Jason's story is quite tragic, as he was a somewhat deformed and retarded child who was bullied by his campmates and who ended up drowning him in Crystal Lake. And it is precisely there where this character usually reappears year after year to kill those unsuspecting who dare to be in the area.

A few years ago a game about this saga appeared called Friday the 13th: The Game, but this time I am going to talk about the game that appeared in 1989 for NES.

When Atlus developed the game, they tried to represent some of the situations that are part of the movies and even took secondary elements from them and gave them more importance. To some extent it achieved its purpose quite well, since we will control the workers at Camp Crystal Lake and We will have to manage to survive Jason's attacks and at the same time try to defend the group of defenseless children what's in it. In this game we will have to arm the characters, help each other and try to survive Jason's random attacks, so we are facing one of the first games that would fit the term "Survival Horror."

Just because Atlus did (in my opinion) a good job of conveying what Jason's victims feel in the movies doesn't mean it makes the game great. In fact it has more shadows than highlights, some of which could have been easily corrected.

The graphics in this game are somewhere between good and bad, so I guess we can say they're mediocre at best. The initial illustration with Jason's mask is quite good, but the general graphic section is very simple, the colors are flat and quite room for improvement (Jason dressed in lilac with the blue mask, when they could have perfectly put gray clothes and the white mask on him...).

The variety of settings is not very great (camp, forest, lake and cave) but I suppose there was little more that could be done with the Crystal Lake theme. The interiors of the houses are all the same, which makes it easier to get confused (at least they could have changed the color). The enemies aren't much (zombies, wolves, bats, crows) but you have to admit that Jason's appearances inside the houses (the sprite is big and intimidating, and can also appear with different weapons) and the sprite of Pamela Voorhees's severed head are not bad at all.

Fortunately, the music of Friday the 13th It raises the overall quality of the game a bit, as it is disturbing and sinister, so keeps us tense during the game And on top of that it changes when we face a boss.

The alarm that sounds when Jason attacks one of the protagonists or the small children at the lake cabin is extremely irritating, making it very difficult to ignore. Even if we have decided that we are not going to help whoever is in danger, the mere fact that it is ringing and seeing how much time we have left to help the victim is a constant temptation to go save them and put an end to the annoying alarm noise. So the sound section, without having excellent compositions or any boast within what Nintendo's 8-bit console could provide, seems almost perfect to me for a game of these characteristics.

The sound section and graphics are important to improve the gaming experience, but the true test of fire is in its playability and that is where Friday the 13th shows its worst face, since This game is so irregular and unintuitive that it requires a lot of time to be enjoyed., due to its strange development, which I will try to explain below.

The game itself takes place over 3 days (each with different day and night stages) and our mission is to kill Jason all 3 times. Every time we face him, when he does enough damage he will disappear, so we won't be able to kill him until we get better weapons (like the torch or the pitchfork).

When we start the game, a message appears telling us to use the torch to light the chimneys, but it's a mistake, what you have to use is the lighter and As soon as we have illuminated enough chimneys we will find the torch and the lantern (which will allow us to see hidden paths in the cave). We can also find written notes in the cabins as we progress, some have interesting clues, others do not.

So, we start the game by eliminating zombies with stones and getting better weapons (the knife, the machete), potions (to heal the characters), keys (to open the secret cabins in the cave and the forest) and the lighter (which, as I said, allows us to light the fireplaces). These objects appear more frequently if we kill enemies and jump like fools. Potions appear much more frequently in the forest (where it is also more possible to meet face to face with Jason).

If we press START we will see the map, with big houses (they have chimneys), small houses (we can change characters in them) and the 3 lake huts, where there are children.

While we play an alarm will sound. If we press START, one of the houses on the map should be flashing. It can be one of the houses where there is one of our characters or the 3 houses of the little children.

Then We can go to the house to face Jason and scare him away, or enter a small house and press START there to choose another character who is closer to the house attacked by Jason or ignore the alarm and accept that someone is going to die. If Jason kills one of our characters, we lose him along with all his items. If he goes towards the children's houses, he will kill 5 of them and leave. Since there are 15 kids, it will take three attacks to take them all out, but if that happens, we'll go to the Game Over screen. The longer it takes to help someone, the more harm they will suffer. (camp workers will lose lives and the number of children will decrease little by little).

When trying to get to the house where Jason is we will discover that The movement of our character and his location on the map is quite strange. The game is represented in 2 dimensions, but the map has several circular shapes, so if we walk in one direction for a long time, our character will be walking in circles, so despite walking to the right, he may move to the left on the map.

Es algo difícil de explicar, pero creo que la mejor manera de entenderlo es esta: Mirad el mapa, si vuestro personaje está en la parte inferior de la circunferencia, su movimiento en el juego será el mismo que en el mapa (ósea si vais a la izquierda, en el mapa se moverá a la izquierda). En el momento en el cual estáis en la parte superior de la circunferencia, su movimiento será opuesto (si vais a la izquierda en el juego, será la derecha en el mapa). Recomiendo ir pausando cada vez que vayáis a cambiar de dirección para confirmar vuestro camino hasta que os hayáis acostumbrado.

En momentos concretos veremos caminos hacia arriba o abajo que nos permitirán pasar de una parte del mapa a otra (ojo, la cueva y el bosque no tienen mapa, ahí dependéis de vosotros mismos).

Una vez llegamos a la cabaña, entraremos dentro y veremos que la vista cambia totalmente. Para navegar por dentro de la casa sin confundirnos lo mejor es que usemos derecha e izquierda para mirar alrededor, adelante para avanzar y atrás para darnos la vuelta. En una de las habitaciones aparecerá Jason y nos enfrentaremos a él en una especie de versión extraña y poco precisa de Punch-Out. Para evitar los ataques de Jason nos podemos mover a la derecha o izquierda, pero lo más efectivo es presionar la diagonal izquierda-abajo o derecha-abajo y atacarle cuando se aleje, si lo hacemos bien, Jason huirá.

Si entramos en una cabaña donde hay otro de nuestros personajes, podremos intercambiar armas entre ellos o usar las pociones para curarles. Las pociones también se activan automáticamente si nos quedamos sin vida.

Este es el proceso general del juego, pero claro, hay más cosas, como la posibilidad de encontrar una cabaña oculta en la cueva o en el bosque, y que nos enfrentaremos a la cabeza amputada de Pamela Voorhees y encontraremos nuevas armas o un suéter de lana (que nos protegerá hasta cierto punto de Jason, ya que parece que no está convencido de atacar a alguien que lleva el suéter de su madre).

Como veis, el desarrollo del juego es un tanto raro y muy poco intuitivo, además algunas de las decisiones tomadas por los desarrolladores lo hacen más complejo y frustrante de lo que debiera ser, pero una vez sabes lo que tienes que hacer, mejora bastante.

Nuestros personajes no se controlan mal mientras nos movemos por exteriores, pero cuando nos enfrentamos a Jason dentro de las casas, puede llevarnos un tiempo aprender a derrotarle, pues el personaje tiene cierto retraso a la hora de agacharse y atacar.

Si sabemos exactamente lo que hacer y lo hacemos bien, podemos completar este juego en menos de 45 minutos. Sin embargo, para llegar a tener todo ese conocimiento y habilidad, son necesarias muchas horas explorando Crystal Lake y buscando estrategias para que tanto nuestros personajes como los niños sobrevivan a los ataques aleatorios de Jason. Además, conviene aclarar que cada personaje tiene sus propios valores de velocidad, salto y fuerza para remar, de manera que hay que intentar que no maten a los mejores.

Lo que realmente dificulta el juego no es solo la enorme cantidad de vida que Jason quita a tus personajes cuando les golpea, si no el hecho de que tenemos que hacer algunas misiones concretas para poder obtener mejores armas y estas se ven interrumpidas constantemente por las alarmas de ataque de Jason, lo cual nos obliga a tomar la decisión de completar lo que estamos haciendo y dejar que mate a un personaje o tratar de salvarlo y luego continuar. Esta situación se repetirá constantemente, logrando que nos estresemos y cometamos errores tontos, que nos precipitarán a la mítica pantalla de Game Over de este juego (Tú y tus amigos estáis muertos, GAME OVER).

Así pues, no es un juego largo, pero es bastante difícil moverse por él y avanzar. Iremos mejorando muy poco a poco hasta lograr matar a Jason, que no dejará de acecharnos (a veces incluso os lo encontraréis delante de vosotros sin previo aviso), lo cual transmite bastante bien la tensión y el nerviosismo de las películas, con la excepción de que esta vez la supervivencia depende de nosotros.

Este juego ha sido considerado en más de una ocasión uno de los peores de NES, algo bastante discutible en mi opinión, pero al mismo tiempo es innegable que tiene algunos problemas importantes en su diseño (el movimiento errante de los personajes por el mapa, la navegación en las casas, la aparición aleatoria de items, Jason atacando cada 10 segundos…) que pueden llegar a hacer que el jugador medio lo deseche en menos de media hora y no lo quiera volver a jugar.

Así que solo los amantes del cine de terror (que disfrutarán de su tensión y temática) y todos aquellos que se sientan atraídos por descubrir la manera de acabar con Jason o buscar todos los secretos de Crystal Lake, puede que terminen disfrutándolo cada vez más, ya que es bastante único en desarrollo y temática.