Hello, its blogging time again and its Halloween again and for this blog entry today, i decided to take a look at the very first video game to have blood in it. Blood of course is a common inclusion and sight in all horror games for obvious reasons, However the first game to have it, might surprise you. That game in question is...Freeway For the Atari 2600.
Yeah, Freeway is the very first video game with blood in it. Well...Sort of, Created by David Crane and released by Activision in 1981, Freeway is a very simple action game. You and either a second player or the computer control a chicken with the goal of getting it across a 10 lane highway within a 2 minute time limit without getting hit by the cars and truck on the road. If you get hit, you get knocked back, delaying your progress. Each time you successfully get the chicken across you get a point, with the idea of getting as many points as possible before the time runs out, the first player with the most points wins. you can also toggle whether the chicken gets knocked back or starts back at the curb using the difficulty switches, as well as change the amount of traffic using the game select switch, each based on real life freeways across the US, such as Lake Shore Drive in Chicago at 3 AM, Bayshore Freeway in San Francisco at midnight, and Long Island Expressway in New York at 3AM. They also vary the speed of the vehicles as well. The games very simple, but it works.
"But Ryan," I hear you say, "There's no blood anyware!" and you are correct, there is indeed no blood in this game. So why do I consider this the first video game with blood in it? Well thats because, the blood wasn't in the final version of the game.
Allow me to explain further, As previously mentioned, the game was designed by David Crane, one of the four Co-Founders of Activision and one of their main programers.
Crane came up with the idea for the game one day while visting the 1981 Summer CES show in Chcago and saw someone trying to cross the Lake Shore Drive Expressway.
He took the idea and inspired by the arcade game Space Race, came up with a game called Bloody Human Freeway. It was essentially the same game as the final version only you were a man rather than a chicken and, you guessed it, rather than getting knocked back, you turn into a pile of blood for a few seconds.
However, as you can imagine, Activision didn't think that having a game with blood was a good idea, so Activision's CEO Jim Levy suggested to change the characters in the game into a chicken as he could market it with someone wearing a chicken suit at the convention center and that it would fit a theme of the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke, however the plans never went though, but kept the chickens in the game anyway.
It would not be until, 2 years later in 1983, when 2 games with blood would be released: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, based on the influential slasher films released in 1974 and 1978 respectively. They were released by Wizzard Video, A home video distribution company that diversified into video games. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the first released in March, followed by Halloween (appropriately enough) 7 months later in October.
In Texas Chainsaw Massacre,The player takes on the role of the movie's chainsaw-wielding villain, Leatherface, and attempts to murder trespassers while avoiding obstacles such as fences, wheelchairs, and cow skulls. The player controls the murderer with the objective to chase and kill victims. Each victim slain gives the player 1,000 points. The player receives additional fuel at every 5,000 points (5 victims). You lose a life when the chainsaw runs out of gas. with the game ending when the last tank of gas is consumed. The game certanly has some glitches and leatherface gets stuck constantly. It does have an amusing game over sequence though, where letherfaces gets kicked in the rear by a girl! its also hard to consider the corpses actually having blood since it just looks like the sprites inverted with two red trapezoids.
Halloween's a little more polished, and does follow the source material a little more closely. You play as teenage babysitter Laurie Strode (Or The Babysitter as she's refered to as in the manual) and the goal is to save as many children from the knife-wielding psychotic murderer Michael Myers. The player obtains points in two ways: by rescuing children and taking them to "safe rooms" located at both ends of each floor of the house, and by stabbing the killer with the knife (if it can be located). The player advances a level either by rescuing five children or stabbing the killer twice. The killer gets faster with each level increase, and the game continues until all of the player's three lives are lost. Each time Michael near the films theme plays, which is quite often, so it kind of outstays its welcome a little. Also for some reason (Presumably just due to the 2600's TIA video chip limitations), the sprites don't quite resemble the characters from the film. For Example: Micheal doesn't wear his iconic white mask, and Laurie's sprite wears a green sweater and red skirt, but in the film, she wore a light blue shirt and flair blue jeans. The game does have visible blood though, and quite nicely animated as well. When Laurie is killed, her head disappears and is replaced by blood pulsating from the neck as she runs around exaggeratedly, and when Micheal gets to one of the kids, they actually will squirt blood.