NES Games I Beat #53: Friday the 13^th

                Friday the 13^th, based loosely on the series of movies by the same name, is an interesting game indeed. Developed by Atlus and released by LJN in 1989 (around the time of the seventh movie) the game has been critically panned by such internet famous reviewers like AVGN and defended by a lot of reviewers like the LJN Defender and MichaelBtheGameGenie. So who’s right? How bad is this game?

                The odd part is this is actually one of a select few NES games I was exposed to as a kid and back then my brother had bought it probably because it was cheap and based on a big name horror title. When I used to watch him play games, I was often very lost but enamored and engaged because the games were just cool to watch. I vividly remember one time he handed me the controller and I got lost in the confusing “3D” cabin sections and wrote the game off as being pretty bad after that. Seeing the AVGN video years later confirmed my ignorant thoughts.

                Before I look into the deeper intricacies of how to play this game, let’s look at the aesthetic nature of it. The graphics are pretty solid with a creepy vibe to them and their diverse in location like in the forest, cabin, or cave. The music, especially inside the cabin, sets an unnerving tone as well. This can be billed as one of the first survival horror games and with Jason lurking around any corner, there’s some genuine jump scares in the cabin or on the trails if he decides to show up there. You never know quite where he’s going to be unless you map out his pattern and that’s unsettling, to say the least. The color palette is often diverse and the day to night mechanic is very subtle and sound which is a very nice touch on Atlus’s part. Though, it really only becomes confusing in the gameplay.

                To be fair though, Friday the 13^th is a very obtuse game. The manual tends to shed a bit of light on how the game works but it’s still a bit too cryptic given all the obscure secrets that need to be performed in order to stand a decent chance of winning. The objective is actually rather simple, kill Jason 3 times, one on each day. What comes with this is the mechanic of Jason hitting cabins, killing one of your 6 playable characters, or killing the kids you trying to protect at the center of the lake. The characters are each diverse in the sense that some like Mike and Chrissy are faster than others or have a better jump while others like Paul are sort of useless and slow. Aside from these two characters and Laura, most other are just used to fetch items or to be sent in as cannon fodder to weaken Jason.    As I mentioned before, Jason moves around the map in a counter clockwise fashion and stops at each cabin in his path. He can deviate to the cave and lake sections of the map and will if there are a decent amount of people stationed in cabins there. If he hits a cabin with a counselor inside, the Jason alarm will go off to let you know. It’s a common criticism that there’s never enough time to make it to that cabin given the size of the map but that’s not entirely true as long as you know how to navigate the map. See, given that this is a sidescrolling game, often the direction you’re headed on the map won’t line up with the direction you’re going due to perspective changes. This is an annoying quirk to adjust to but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not too bad. Plus given the fact you can bring up the map at almost any point with start will give you a good idea of where you are. Also, if you make it to any small cabin and hit start you can change to any of the other counselors which basically means you switch to the one who is in the building with Jason and fend him off for a bit.  

                So once you’re able to answer the call, you’ll notice Jason is hard to hurt and his life meter goes down super slowly with most weapons. You’ll have to dodge with down right or down left and as long as you can figure out the pattern, you can manage to hit him with your weapon when he backs off. Hit him about 7 times with any weapon and he’ll retreat… for now. If he strikes on the lake, the number of children will decrease until you can make him retreat. It’s a bit of a pain though given that if a counselor dies here, Jason remains, killing kids until you can stop him. If all the kids or counselors die, it’s game over.

                The first day isn’t so bad as Jason is slow enough to consistently dodge and the zombies on the trail are pretty slow. All the character’s default weapons are a rock with an arc that is pretty bad unless you duck which makes it hit a lot better. At this point it’s three hits to kill the zombies. The first point of business is to take a character and get them three items, a lighter, a knife, and a key. Lighters are needed to make the other items appear and can be found after killing a few enemies. There’s a direction at the beginning of the game stating that you need to light fire places with it in all the big cabins but the one time I ever did that all it gave me was a useless flashlight which I’ll talk more about in a moment. The knife appears in much the same way as other objects like the potions and keys, by jumping around. However, the keys and potions have fixed locations whereas the knife appears everywhere. Once you have these, there’s a large cabin at the top of the lake road that has a note. It tells you to go into the woods which are right next to this cabin. At this point head right until you find an upward path and take it twice to find a secret cabin. The key unlocks the door and within is a note that tells you fire will damge Jason the most, in reference to the best weapon in the game, the torch, which takes a full peg of Jason’s life during battle. Now if you backtrack to the cabin from earlier where the first note was found you’ll find a torch. You can repeat this as many times as you’re able to squeeze in between answering to Jason’s rampage but the main goal is to get the two main counselors Mark and Chrissy equipped with the torch. At this point it’s a game of cat and mouse as you track down Jason and lower his life bar to a reasonable level. If his life is less than 7 pegs, he won’t retreat and at this point you want a torch bearer to be fighting him to make it easier on yourself. I recommend getting his health down with the other counselors at this point as if one of them dies it’s very much less of an impact on you winning than if Mark or Chrissy dies. Once you kill him, the second day begins and all the surviving counselors have their life replenished to full.

                Day two is the toughest of the days because Jason’s speed is increased at certain points during the cabin battles. The random nature of this speed up and slow down is hard to tackle but can be handled with enough skill. The enemies also speed up and drop less lighters so get equipped with knives the first day to avoid needless wasting of time. There’s one very important task today other than to kill Jason again, obtain Jason’s mom’s sweater. Inside the cave on the left side of the map rests a confusing set of catacombs to navigate. If you have a key, there’s a few sets of blocks which are right of the start that differ from the others and if you find these twice, you can enter her chamber. Generally a player could also use a flashlight to light up the entrances here but that takes way too much time to light the fire places on the first day that is needed to obtain torches. Once here, you can engaged in battle with Jason’s mom’s decapitated head and if you can dodge her attacks while laying down the attacks needed, you’ll defeat her and obtain her sweater which gives you a higher defense and halves damage taken by Jason which is nearly critical to defeating him. It cannot be transferred via the pass function either so make sure it’s Mark or Chrissy who slays her. It is optional, but it’s such a helpful item that it’s almost nonnegotiable if you want to stand a chance. If you made it this far, it’s likely Jason has holed himself up at the kids’ cabins again so confront him there and be ready with a lot of potions. It’s definitely a lot easier if you use the sweater bearer but if you don’t want to risk it, the other torch holder can go and kill Jason as on the third day you’ll only need one. It’s actually preferable to fight Jason on the trails so if he hasn’t attacked the lake yet, bait him with a throw away counselor or even a good one and get him to attack a cabin. If you exit the cabin at this point, he should be there on the trail and fighting him in side view is a lot simpler as you can just mash the attack button and follow him if he attempts to flee. You will have to jump his axes if you don’t have a lot of potions but it’s a hell of a lot easier than in the cabin.

                If you make it to day three, the only thing left is to kill Jason for good. It’s preferable to have both Mark and Chrissy at this point but during my run Chrissy had died so it’s not absolutely necessary as long as you have another lower tier counselor on standby. The only hurdle to this day is that Jason is relentlessly fast in the cabins so if he hits up the lake, it’s going to be hard to take him down. During my playthrough he did so and I managed to get in the 7 hits I needed, but only with Mark because he’s the fastest and was the most well defended with the sweater and the potions I had saved up. The single most important key to victory is to lure Jason using the trail kill technique discussed in day two. Don’t bother fighting him in the cabins. If you lure him to you, get him on the trail, and spam the attack button with Mark, as long as you have ample potions and the sweater, you barely even have to move until when and if Jason attempts to retreat. If you survive this, you’ve beaten the game!

                I know that was basically a walkthrough but that clears up a lot of the issues with the game and it’s confusing segments. If you couldn’t tell, there are a lot of obscure secrets and tricks here that help tremendously when actually trying to finish this one.  In this regard, it’s a lot like Simon’s Quest, but whereas that game it is absolutely necessary to figure out its bullshit, here it’s mostly optional stuff that serves to make your quest to defeating Jason a bit easier. It’s a game where once you figure out how things work the most efficiently, you’ll have fun just playing it and experiencing it’s unique world and gameplay.

                Bottom line, it’s a lot of fun when you know how. For one of the very first survival horror games, it’s not bad and I actually quite enjoyed my experience once I got better at it and practiced it a bit. It’s got its annoying and challenging parts but it’s certainly worth a look in the modern day of the internet where it’s not only cheap but also where there’s guides a plenty on the nature of how to defeat it. I’ll give it a 7.4/10. It’s a rather enjoyable and unique experience but definitely a challenging one if you don’t know what you’re doing.           

FireGuts tips Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcq9YGG6vVA&feature=iv&src_vid=AEDHYgITKqE&annotation_id=annotation_2731303593

LJN Defender Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEDHYgITKqE

MichaelBtheGameGenie Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCMMc48agfU