Atari 2600 Game
Produced by: Wizard Video
Model Number: 007
Rarity: 8 Very Rare+
Year of Release: 1983
Programmer: Ed Salvo
Can you live through the night HE came home? The Boogeyman will get you if you don't watch out! Pulse-pounding paranoia screams in your skull as you run for your life! Every step may be your last as you flee from the things that go bump in the night! Feverish with fear, cold sweat clings to your flesh! How real can an electronic nightmare be? Find out!
This game is Wizard Video's second, (and final) attempt at releasing a horror game for the Atari 2600. It is numbered 007, while The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was numbered 008, but the two games were released out of order. There is little evidence that this game was actually a licensed translation of the film. It used the same music and plot, but the movie is never actually mentioned, nor is the killer ever referred to as Michael Myers. The cover of the box did have artwork that was suspiciously similar to the Halloween movie poster, but even that is uncredited. The idea behind this game is that you control a babysitter inside a large house filled with defenseless children and a rampaging maniac.
The game is played from a side view of the home. There are two floors to the house and both of them can be viewed at the same time, this kind of looks similar to the game Xenophobe. The game scrolls both left and right, and there are a total of eight screens to explore, which makes for sixteen rooms altogether (counting the two floors). The screens at the far left and far right are safe screens and the killer will never appear on them. Your main objective is to seek out the children wandering the house and lead them to these safe screens. Your secondary objective is to seek out the knife and use it to stab the killer, which gains you a few points and makes him flee from the current screen.
Do you remember playing Berzerk (or Frenzy)? Remember how Evil Otto would always appear soon after you entered a screen, and then move towards you? Well that is exactly how this game works as well, except that the time delay seems a bit more random. Sometimes the killer appears instantly, and other times he waits for several seconds before showing up. Whenever the killer does show up you are treated to a very decent rendition of the "Halloween" theme song, except that you never get to hear too much of it because you have to run away to avoid having your head chopped off.
Allowing the killer to touch either you or one of the children is cause for immediate decapitation of the touched character. Once killed, your babysitter character runs off the screen headless with blood spurting from her neck. You reappear on the next screen with one life subtracted from your total. The children are simply decapitated where they stand, and don't do any of the headless chicken antics that the heroine of the game engages in. My theory as to why the lead character runs away after being killed is that it is a programming shortcut to get her to the next room, but I don't have the source code, so we will probably never know.
The killer is usually very easy to avoid. The easiest method I have found to run past him is to move to the bottom of the screen and wait for him to get close and then run up and past him once he closes in. If you can do this right then he will rarely be able to catch you. This maneuver is a little more difficult to pull off if you are leading one of the children, in that case I recommend running the opposite way instead.
Scoring
675 Points are awarded for each child led to one of the safe rooms.
325 Points are awarded for every time you manage to stab the killer.
This game is really fun and features some really good music, but it is almost too easy. Atari games are famous for being really difficult, and you shouldn't be able to pick up a new title and be good at it almost instantly. It only took me one play to get this game down pat. After another dozen plays I found that it had become boring, simply because it was just too easy.
Wizard Video sold many copies of this game without labels when they were liquidating their inventory. They simply wrote the name on the cartridge with a black magic marker. The one with the real label is more valuable even though the unlabeled one seems to be slightly more uncommon. The art on the cartridge was identical to the art on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
This game is extremely valuable due to its rarity. Expect to pay over $100 for a copy of this, without the box or manual.