Happy Friday the 13th! Destroy Jason ... if you can!

by Christopher Grant { Apr 13th 2007 at 4:56PM }

In 1988, something terrible happened. We're not talking about lakeside sleepover camp mass murders (they shouldn't have been partially clothed and frolicking anyways), but a far worse fate ... Friday the 13th (the game). On this anniversary of the popular horror series' namesake, we thought it fit to reminisce about LJN's craptacular licensed NES game. We managed to dig up:

The Angry Nintendo Nerd's retrospective on Friday the 13th (warning: NSFW!)
This remix of the "Panic at Crystal Lake" track
And a review at ToxicUniverse, which succinctly explains: "The game is 'challenging' in the sense that it is nearly impossible to fulfill any of the objectives it gives you, but unchallenging as it gives you no incentive to attempt them."

Got any other Friday the 13th game links to share with the class? Stick them in the comments and we'll periodically update throughout the day ... if we can!

Tags: fridaythe13th, NES

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

pete @ Apr 13th 2007 5:04PM

i'member playing it on the nes and walking through the forest and outta nowhere jason came up and killed your ass. i do remember playing at night and he come up this music would play and i got scurred!!

Todd @ Apr 13th 2007 5:09PM

I used to enjoy playing this NES game.

Dracula Jones @ Apr 13th 2007 5:14PM

I got this game for my, I guess, 8th birthday. I hated it, but I played it a lot anyway. That seems to be true of most of my NES games... Bayou Billy... Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle... Operation Wolf...

It's also the only game my fiancee claims to have ever beaten. I think she's a damned liar.

Booxatron @ Apr 13th 2007 5:14PM

Yay for Friday the 13th! It is my TWENTYFIRST birthday today :)

comtar @ Apr 13th 2007 5:20PM

I thought Jason only killed you after ignoring obvious sounds that someone else was in the room and had sex with your girlfriend for the first time.

I think it was that "Chi chi chi ka ka ka" sound track that made him so angry in the first place.

waLLy @ Apr 13th 2007 5:16PM

wow. Talk about a repressed memory.

I got this game when I was eight. Scared the bajeezus out of me. I had forgotten all about it until just now.

Thanks for the nostalgia. I need my blankey now.

superbagman @ Apr 13th 2007 5:31PM

I've actually beat this game before. My sister gave it to me as a gag christmas gift in 1998 and me and a couple of friends stayed up all night to get through it. After how insanely difficult it is, the ending is terribly unsatisfying. If I recall correctly it just uses the "cut scene" from the intro with the knife going into the mask again...I think.

pete @ Apr 13th 2007 5:32PM

oh man operation wolf. that fucking game drove crazy. but i still played it. crazy it did!!!!!11one!. oh man its all coming back to me. 'member cool spot, on genesis, that was a fun game. oh man to be young again!

pete @ Apr 13th 2007 5:38PM

oh and happy birthday booxatron, someone getting drunk tonight. hope you get laid:)

peace

Norm @ Apr 13th 2007 6:04PM

Back in my day, we played Friday the 13th on NES and LIKED IT!

(really, we did.)

Xenikos @ Apr 13th 2007 6:19PM

Yeah, I had this game and enjoyed it....but then again, I also owned Mighty Bomb Jack.

wait in the car @ Apr 13th 2007 6:31PM

I remember seeing all sorts of cool screenshots for this game around when it came out... Jason's mother's floating head, Jason being fought by a pitchfork wielding teen....

Yeah, I never got to do any of that.

My experience with the game consisted of me running around aimlessly throwing rocks like an idiot. Then I'd enter a house, run into Jason, and get my ass handed to me.

Good times!!

rubaiyat @ Apr 15th 2007 5:52AM

This game sucked...the completely arbitrary weapon gathering, the race to save the kiddies on the lake, the meaningless 8 counselors...

Mike @ Apr 13th 2007 7:13PM

"I used to enjoy playing this NES game."

So did I. It's pretty pathetic to have become a jaded gamer in the freakin' NES era.

SuicideNInja @ Apr 13th 2007 7:35PM

Whatever, the Friday the 13th for the Commodore 64 "pwned". It was much better than the NES game, and Jason was just a skinny non-hockey-mask-havin' white-guy in a black suit! But you wielded knives, axes, swords, pitch forks...etc...

Oh, the 16 colors of gore...it was too much to bear!

exit stencil @ Apr 13th 2007 7:45PM

that game was the bane of the 8th year of my life.

DeluxE @ Apr 13th 2007 8:33PM

I can't sit back and watch people half assedly bash this classic game! Of course it didn't have the production values of many of its contemporaries, but let's be realistic - this was an LJN game! But in terms of pure design, it was amazing. Really. Multiple weapons, characters, (with unique attributes), day to night transitions, (which actually affected the gameplay), optional side quests, (destroy the floating disembodied head of Jason's mother!), outdoor/indoor exploration, the rowboat to the kid's cabins at the center of camp Crystal Lake, the creeeepy music, and best of all the shocking surprise Jason attacks! This was one of the first true survival horror games, complete with many features which would later define the genre, including weapon and health conservation, complex map navigation, and real scares that made my blood go cold on more than one occasion.
Sure it was tough, but anyone who could get through Ninja Gaiden or Blaster Master could make it through the three days of terror Jason unleashed. A few years ago I went back to it to see if it was all I remembered it to be, and could not stop playing until I'd beaten it again. Ahead of its time.

DeluxE @ Apr 13th 2007 8:39PM

Oh and SuicideNInja,
I remember the C64 game too! Great in different ways, but I'd still take the NES version any day!

refinedsugar @ Apr 13th 2007 8:42PM

lol ... F13 THE GAME ... lol, great stuff! Don't have a link, but there was a flash parody done by a guy awhile back involving the game, characters watching porno ... then dieing ... duke nukem shows up ...

DEEZNUTZ @ Apr 14th 2007 12:06AM

Damn now that were talking old school, sup with KID ICARUS??? Man I hate to admit I loved that game.

Xuicoatl @ Apr 14th 2007 6:09PM

I played this game and beated it, only killed jason's mother once, but it was indeed hard, but couldn't make a perfect game, always lost someone...
and what when you enter a cabin where you know Jason is... and you see the kids and maybe Jason is just behind you? and when you are walking and zombies start dissapearing? Jason's coming! and if you beat him in the lagoon cabin and left the cabin fast, he appears again in the lake and take a lot of your life...