Hi Charles, Well, I think the reason you are having troubles defining what is and is not a Halloween game per say is because as a genre it is rather broad just like the horror genre itself is rather broad. Horror can contain elements of science fiction, fantasy, and often has neither of those.
To give you an example in the 50's when the movie industry was making horror movies the Hammer Films, for instance, concentrated on movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, etc. So as it happens your typical movie goer thought of Halloween in terms of witches, gools, ghosts, mummies, and vampires. However, in time the horror genre would be greatly expanded over the coming decades. In the 60's George Ramiro would create one of the greatest zombie movies of all time, "Night of the Living Dead," which would end up having many sequels as well as many knock-offs. However, there is nothing specifically Halloween about a bunch of zombies walking around eating people. However, it just is a part of the Halloween culture now. That said, I think the biggest change was in 1978 when they released the movie Halloween, and it ended up setting a president for many slasher films in that style. The Friday the 13th series, Child's Play series, Nightmare on Elm Street series, Scream series, etc all have the original Halloween movie to thank for starting the slasher movie genre. I guess what I am getting at is when you and your family sit down during the week of Halloween most of what American Movie Classics or Turner Classic Movies will be airing probably will be a mixture of science fiction classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Blob, War of the Worlds, some horror classics like Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein, or an endless stream of slasher's like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and other movies. Most of them have as much to do with Halloween as the Easter Bunny has to do with Christmas, but these days anything that is remotely horror related gets lined up on the movie channels Halloween line up. So in terms of games we could say there is an equally large collection of games that cross over into many other different genres. Sure, Shades of Doom is primarily considered a science fiction game, but the sounds and the music gives it a horror type atmosphere too. Swamp is more or less a science fiction, but as it does involve zombies and has a Night of the Living Dead type feel to it we might consider that also to be horror. While in general I might consider Sarah and the Witchcraft and Wizardry to be more or less fantasy the ghosts, witchcraft, and various other creatures might make it suitable as a Halloween game to. So unless you can come up with some pretty specific criteria what is and is not what is to be considered a Halloween game I think the three games I mentioned fit right into the holiday season. Cheers! On 10/5/13, Charles Rivard <[email protected]> wrote: > It's hard for me to define what is a Halloween game specifically. But I > would not classify any game with ghosts or monsters in it as a Halloween > game. I would not think that the Harry Potter series as dealing with > Halloween, even though there were scenes dealing with it. > > The Haunted House table in ESP Pinball Classic would certainly qualify, > though. > > --- > Shepherds are the best beasts, but Labs are a close second. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
