SURVIVAL HORROR: ANCESTRY AND EVOLUTION

by george daniel lea 

Let's...take a step back, before we plunge headlong into the abyss.
 
Survival Horror doesn't necessarily...survive (a ha) in its classic condition much beyond the advent of Half Life, System Shock 2 et al. The zeitgeist-shifting phenomena of the latter day BioShock (very much a bastard descendent of the latter) in many respects marked the tombstone of the sub-genre, the science fiction Ayn Rand parody drawing on many of its techniques and subjects, but utilising them in ways that felt new and refreshing.
 
BioShock, Eternal Darkness, Amnesia: The Dark Descent (amongst others) all stand as evidence of evolutionary outgrowth in the horror genre, beyond the assumptions and constraints of Survival Horror (which was beyond ailing at this point). The genre had begun to effloresce in response to the deaths of the old guard; the nigh Alzheimic decline of Resident Evil and Silent Hill allowing younger, more vibrant and experimental forms to take their places.

 
Yet... each and every one bears some familial resemblance to the franchises that have gone before, just as those iconic of Survival Horror itself bore certain traces of titles and traditions that occurred long before it was ever coined.
 
Survival Horror, despite its easy categorisation and resultant condification, never existed in a vacuum: before Resident Evil allowed the sub-genre to crystallise and christened it with what is almost certainly a bit of poorly translated doggerel from one of its loading screens (“Enter the Survival Horror!”), others attempted to spark revolutions of horrific material in video games, with varying degrees of success:
 
In order to understand how horror in video games evolved (to the condition of Survival Horror and beyond), it's important to gage how the market itself has shifted and elaborated over time:
 
Before Survival Horror, which arguably had its heyday in the early era of the original Sony Playstation, the market was geared almost exclusively towards younger audiences (with one or two notable exceptions). Horror in video games was therefore a fairly taboo subject, that mainstream media outlets were only too happy to tar as the scapegoat du jour in the wake of any violence or atrocity they felt inclined to capitalise on. This, despite the fact that horror has been a part of video games almost since their inception (certainly since the earliest home consoles started making the rounds).
 
Here in the UK and Europe, early, widely available systems such as the Sinclair Spectrum boasted adaptations of popular horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and The Evil Dead, most of which were far too crude to elicit anything approaching the ethos of the films, but which moral crusaders were only too happy to dog-pile as evidence of the inherently corrupting nature of video games themselves.
 
The late 1980s/early 1990s was particularly guilty of this phenomena: as video games gained more traction, as they became culturally entrenched, certain forms of media and conservative demographics decided that they were as much of the Devil as VHS tapes or certain forms of TV. As video games were still regarded primarily as the remit of children at this point, that paranoia wasn't particularly difficult to market to culture at large: there was a point in the early 1990s when it was a rare day that some tabloid rag didn't boast some ill-researched, ignorant and wholly hyperbolic screed against some new apparent societal ill that could be attributed to the then-infant medium, blaming video games for everything from declining academic standards to escalating adolescent violence. Most TV channels (all four of them, at the time) also found video games more a fitting bogeyman than a subject for rational discussion, airing self-proclaimed “documentaries” that harped on every potential concern the culture evinced regarding the new medium.
 
The inclusion of horrific subjects in what was, ostensibly and primarily, a children's medium, only served to stoke those fires, many parents expressing concern for their children's psychological and physical wellbeing, given how interested in video games they were.
 
This made horror an increasingly hard sell for creators and distributors, especially in the wake of phenomena such as the “Video Nasty” scare, Mary Whitehouse's moral crusade (powerful enough to sway politicians and influence law, here in the UK), which often resulted in products being pulled from the market and/or banned outright.
 
Nevertheless, there were rare, rare examples of horror to be found, certain elements of which still resonate through the early days of Survival Horror and beyond:
 
Whilst it's far from fondly remembered (the game itself being a poorly programmed, often contradictory son of a bitch), the early ZX Spectrum and C64 adaptation of Friday 13th boasted some interestingly creepy elements, including a randomised Jason Vorhees who would stalk both the player and NPCs, turning up at particular intervals to scare the living daylights out of them. Whilst immeasurably crude by present day standards, it was so rare to enounter material like this back then, that it was a genuinely shocking moment when the player entered a cabin only to find the masked, machete-wielding homonculus stood before them. Likewise, the nature of the game was such that Jason seemed like an active entity, killing camp-members whether the player is present or not, thus enhancing the sense of something predatory and unseen stalking the digitised Camp Crystal Lake. 

​Several entries in the Survival Horror canon evince a similar dynamic, from the “B” scenarios of Resident Evil 2 (alternative versions of the main game that took the player through subtly different routes and puzzles, all the while stalked by a silent, seemingly immortal behemoth known only as “Mr. X”) to Resident Evil 3's Nemesis, the concept of an unseen stalker is one that recurs throughout horror video gaming, and that still holds enormous sway within independent titles:
 
Slender epitomises the very concept, as the entire game is precisely that: a wander through dark and ominous environments, operating all the while on a knife-edge of tension, knowing that the eponymous suited and be-tentacled Slenderman can turn up at any time. Whilst the presentation is obviously far more sophisticated, the basic dynamic hasn't changed much at all.
 
Likewise, multiple earlier, console and computer titles ran with the same dynamic:
 
The nigh legendary Clock Tower, for example, was never released in Western markets, owing to its existence on the SNES (or Famicom, as it's known in Japan), said markets for that console almost exclusively geared towards younger audiences.
 
Clock Tower is a full on barrage of paranoid horror, featuring everything from serial killers to occult rituals, from ghosts to elaborate and grizzly murder scenes (supremely shocking in the 16 bit era). Nor was the game in any way shy about its intention to scare or disturb; whilst extremely difficult to play these days (the controls are extremely slow and sluggish, the player character Jennifer moving at a snail's pace through every environment), it is a worthwhile experience due to the pervasive atmosphere of threat and distress it cultivates: placing the player in the role of a young orphan girl proved a stroke of supreme genius, as it renders us defenceless. Unlike latter day Survival Horror titles (which have a tendency to place players in the roles of armed and trained bad-asses of one stripe or another), Clock Tower reduces the player to utter confusion and desperation: Jennifer has no defence against the situations and atrocities she encounters other than to run, which the game makes an exercise in panic via use of an extremely sparse and distressing soundtrack, as well as a system that links Jennifer's life to her emotional state: rather than featuring a standard energy bar or life points, all the player has is a portrait of Jennifer in the lower left-hand side of the screen. Said portrait is surprisingly animated, providing clues as to what might be achieved or attempted in any given room via its facial expressions. Framing the portrait is a block of solid colour, which fades from blue to red, depending on Jennifer's emotional state and her remaining energy. Run too long, or get too scared, and it will fade to the point that she collapses, becoming easy prey for whatever's stalking her. The only means of replenishing it is by finding a safe space to hide and allow her to recover herself. 

​This dynamic places the player in a constant state of tension, focused intently on every aspect of the game, from its minimalist auditory elements to its subtle visual cues, for some sign as to when situations of horror might occur. Compounding that sense of seat-edge engagement is the random nature of the game; uniquely for its era, the game boasted a certain unpredictability, in that the mansion in which most of it occurs is restructured every time the game restarts. This makes the game almost impossible to map out without simply exploring it for oneself, as corridors that previously led to one set of rooms in pevious play throughs won't necessarily a second time around. Likewise, the game features numerous horror set pieces that only occur if the player has fulfilled certain criteria: walk through a darkened, dismal corridor at one point, and you'll hear a scream from outside. Neglect to look out of the window, and you won't see one of your friends plunging through one of the upper-storey windows in an adjacent wing of the house. This means that you may encounter her corpse (not to mention her murderer) in numerous other set pieces later in the game. Some of the game's horror elements simply don't occur every time they are triggered: enter the den area at one point, and the TV will flicker on of its own accord, displaying static-smeared, spectral faces that hiss and chatter at Jennifer, distressing her until she leaves or suffers one of her collapses. However, enter the room another time, and nothing will happen. This level of uncertainty is insanely sophisticated for the era, and one that Survival Horror and other, later derivatives of the genre wouldn't come to utilise to any meaningful degree until much, much later in their evolutions. 

​Then, of course, we have the “Scissor Man” (or Bobby, to give him his proper name). The Scissor Man us a uniquely terrifying entity; the creature that stalks both Jennifer and her companions through the mansion, and who is often the focal point for most of the horror set pieces: A distressingly infantile grotesque, a hunched, lurching figure, hideously disfigured and bearing a large pair of shears, which are the principle instruments of his various atrocities. Like much within the game, he is largely random and can turn up almost anywhere. Where Jennifer first encounters him largely depends on how the player conducts themselves in any given playthrough: sometimes, it will be during one the many cut scenes in which we witness what has become of Jennifer's friends (a personal favourite involves walking past a bathroom, from which a strange, dripping, squelching sound can be heard. If Jennifer takes notice, the game's soundtrack kicks in, suggesting the horror to come. Inside, the bathroom is misty, as though someone has just run a very hot bath. If Jennifer peels back the curtains of the bath tub, she may, MAY find the butchered and strung up corpse of one of her companions, the Scissor Man erupting from the water and pursuing her with his shears. Or she may not; it largely depends on the game's own moods and vicissitudes). Alternatively, she may randomly run into the Scissor Man in one of the corridors or stairwells, his presence always signified by the rusted, grating snip, snip, snip of his shears.
 
The sophistication of Clock Tower as an example of early Survival Horror can't be overstated: despite it having no release in western markets, its influence upon titles such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill is pronounced, not to mention the later Playstation adaptation of the game and its sequel.
 
The game also experienced something of a renaissance with the advent of video sharing sites such as YouTube: thanks to the predominance of video game culture and journalism on those platforms, games that many of us who operate within western markets might not be aware of have become subjects of discussion and fascination, Clock Tower not least amongst them. For many of us, our first experience of the game came long, long after we'd had our fill of the likes of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, far beyond the point at which Survival Horror itself had reached a point of saturation. It therefore became an exercise in historical retrospection to explore the game and play it for the first time.
 
Despite its archaic and extremely slow controls, its oblique interface and frustratingly vulnerable protagonist, the raw atmosphere and tension of the game has proven more than enough to make it semi-legendary, a distinguished entry in the canon of horror video gaming's history the like of which is still referenced and emulated to this day, particularly in independent markets.
 
For the most part, horror in video games before the advent of the 32-bit era (in which video games began to cater more towards young adults) were relegated to very particular platforms: the home computers such as the Commodore Amiga and Sinclair Spectrum, as opposed to the consoles (such as the SNES and Megadrive), owing to the ethos and intentions of the brands that dominated the latter, which the former largely weren't restricted by. As home computers were far more than simple video game consoles (often marketing themselves as multi media platforms), there wasn't as much popular scrutiny or restriction concerning the content they were allowed to portray. As such, the Amiga in particular maintained a fairly dedicated horror sub-genre until the day of its premature dissolution. 

​Most people who owned the console recall the aforementioned Dark Seed, which emphasises a very different species of horror to the likes of Clock Tower: whereas the latter preoccupies itself with escalating tension and horror set pieces, the former is a work of slow-burning dread and disturbance, largely communicated through imagery more than anything else. H.R. Giger's paintings and designs become the basis for a luridly distressing, alien other-world in which everything from the familiar and material has its own, disturbing, bio-mechanical equivalent.
 
The game stands like many on the Amiga as a grand experiment: at this point in horror video games -and video gaming in general-, certain tropes and traditions had yet to crystallise, meaning that the designers were largely flying blind, not to mention operating within severe technological limitations. Darkseed is therefore extremely sincere in its intentions to disturb, having little to no humorous or satirical moments, its every screen rife with subtle visual cues and details which are designed to draw the player's eye, to make them wonder what will happen if they touch this or manipulate that.
 
Whilst extremely crude (not to mention nigh impossibe to play without a walkthrough) in comparison to what present day efforts have to offer, Darkseed's legacy still resonates rather powerfully: the notion of an alternative, slightly skewed reality which nevertheless bears some resemblance and relationship to the familiar can be found everywhere from the seminal Soul Reaver to Metroid Prime: Echoes, the manner of its implementation here extremely effective and luridly distressing.
 
One of the factors that makes the game so unusual is that, rarely for any form of video game, let alone horror titles, it has a set time limit: if the game is not completed within so many of the game's days, then an embryonic creature that has been surgically implanted in the protagonist's body grows to term and spectacularly erupts from his mouth. This can be forestalled by conducting certain actions within game (taking showers, popping pain killers etc), but not indefinitely. The factor of time makes the game almost impossible to complete without some sort of guide, as not only is there the constant threat of the gestating parasite, but certain events only occur if the player is at particular places at particular times: miss one of them, and the game becomes impossible to complete, leading to dead ends down the line and an inevitable wait for the creature to be born. 

​This is a fantastically tense mechanic, and one that very, very few video games of the present era take advantage of, despite the fact that it keeps the player constantly guessing and wondering where they should be, what they need to be doing, how long before the fantastically graphic “game over” animation plays and they lurch away from the screen in sheer terror.
 
Whilst perhaps somewhat difficult to appreciate for present day audiences, I have particularly vivid memories of Darkseed in particular, as it was my earliest encounter with horror in video games, the first time I began to realise how powerful and potent the medium can be when it comes to such material (arguably even moreso than traditional mediums, which tend towards the passive over the active and involved).
 
Despite being far too young to understand a great deal of the game's mechanics (a fairly clunky “point and click” system that hadn't yet experienced the refinements of Monkey Island's seminal SCUMM Engine), I recall obsessing over the game for hours on end, my child's imagination having no concept of the game's technological limitations, therefore projecting all manner of absurdities and monstrosities in every environment.
 
Arguably even more significant was the superlative Alien Breed, a title originally designed to be a direct adaptation of the culturally prominent Aliens film franchise, but which lost the license late in its development cycle, resulting in a game that is essentially an emulation of the franchise's second film in all but name (even the eponymous xenormorph is only marginally redesigned to avoid infringing copyright). 

​Again, one that present day audiences may look at and wonder how on Earth anyone could have possibly found it terrifying (barring a fantastically atmospheric and moody opening sequence, the game is largely just a top-down, run and gun affair, with skittering alien sprites whose animations might seem more comical now than horrifying), but one that we did, having very little to directly compare it to, and which is essentially the early-1990s equivalent of the latter day science fiction horror, first person shooters such as Doom or Alien: Isolation.
 
Like many of the graphically limited games of the Amiga, Alien Breed utilises a limited sound palette to enhance its sense of dread and isolation: throughout the game thrums a perpetual, resonant beat, redolent of a heartbeat or the throb of an imminent migraine. This serves to subtly unsettle the player from the off, in a manner that they might not even be able to define or identify, but which leaves their nerves frayed and their bodies tense, ready for the inevitable eruption of alien invaders from nearby bulkheads or automatic doors.
 
Unlike Darkseed, which still maintains a little allure, largely owing to the consistently distressing nature of Giger's artwork, Alien Breed is more of a historical curio than an experience I would recommend to any present day video gamer: thanks to the evolution of horror in video gaming, it has lost almost every inch of its power, and now stands principly as an example of the genre's roots.

​That said, playing games such as Alien: Isolation or even more recent iterations in the Doom franchise will provide plenty of examples of Alien Breed's influence, particularly regarding sound design, in which similar tricks and techniques are still used to this day to evoke sensations of uncertainty and disturbance in the player.
 
Interestingly, after the premature death of the Amiga and the general domination of the Japanese consoles in the Western video game market, horror temporarily died a death in video gaming, the only exceptions being certain titles on the slightly more adult-oriented Sega systems (the likes of Splatterhouse, Wings of Wor, Ground Zero Texas and a handful of similar titles the only examples that spring immediately to mind).
 
That said, any number of video games and various genres incorporated horrific elements and paid direct reference to prominent images and concepts in horror cinema and literature of the era:
 
The Super Nintendo's seminal Super Metroid (one of the most beloved titles on the system) is directly inspired by the Alien franchise and, surprisingly, for a Nintendo title, borrows any number of images, set-pieces and techniques from that film to suffuse its science fiction stylings with a jolt of horror. In the opening sequence, a minimalist, powerfully ominous set of chords plays, the camera panning over the butchered bodies of scientists in a futristic lab. Punctuating the music are familiar chitters and chirrups, the source of which only becomes apparent when the camera pans out to reveal the game's title: the eponymous alien entity, which sits at the heart of the carnage in a glass container, pulsating and squealing in a distressingly alien fashion. 

Later, the game removes itself from similar, action adventure fare via an extremely slow, atmospheric build, the planet Zebes -which constitutes the principle setting- grim, tempestuous, riven by rain and lightning, its subterranean caverns seemingly abandoned, save for alien insects that swarm and multiply throughout.
 
The first few moments of the game recreate the foreboding ethos of the original Alien, after the crew set down on the surface of LV-426: the silence and apparent abandonment of the place is creepy enough, a fact which is enhanced when the player happens across a techno-organic monitoring system which shines a whirring, threatening light upon Samus.
 
Returning to previous sectors, the player finds the previously abandoned corridors now infested with dangerous and hostile creatures, the music changed to a more dynamic, immediate state whilst the rooms themselves are now differently lit and coloured so as to emphasise the new state of play.
 
The game is littered with such examples, from slow-building moments of horror in which statues slowly crumble away to reveal bio-engineered, highly H.R. Giger-esque monstrosities to moments of what ostensibly appear to be occult horror, in which rings of blue flame presage the manifestation of an extra-dimensional entity that wouldn't be out of place in a H.P. Lovecraft novel. 

These moments, rare as they are on the system, all have echoes in later Survival Horror games, the techniques that are used to inspire dread and tension in the player recreated in three dimensions, and, in that regard, in arguably less sophisticated manner, as the designers and programmers of Super Metroid et al were operating under far more stringent constraints of technology (not to mention in a market that tended to shy away from such subjects).
 
Like all genres of fiction, media et al, Survival Horror does not exist monolithically; the application is one that exists largely for the sake of marketing convenience as opposed to anything unique, innate or idiosyncratic to the games that comprise it: look back less than half a decade, and you'll find precisely the same tropes and techniques being used to place players in states of dread or anxiety, long before the sub-genre ever crystallised around the Resident Evil and Silent Hill franchises in the early days of the 32-bit era.
 
Next time, we'll take a look at another short-lived sub-genre of video games that occurred somewhat concurrently with Survival Horror itself, and was originally heralded as a new quantum leap in video gaming that would change the way both they and cinema were made forever.
 
The ill-fated, studio-burying grand miscalculation that was: FMV video gaming.
 
Until then, my lovelies. 

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