If you fall into the group of gamers who never owned or even played an OG NES, I truly take pity upon you. Even though the library was overflowing with licensed knock offs of the same six or so games, the fact that you had to blow into the cartridges half of the time to get them to work (yes, this damages the cartridges as we now know) or would occasionally end up with a flickering pixelated screen, there was really something magical about the system. Sadly, most of the games from then don’t hold up well against newer, “better” games. Retrotainment Games is one of the few developers who have decided now was the perfect time to release a new game for the long dead system and essentially drops the mic, because HAUNTED: Halloween ’86: (The Curse of Possum Hollow) succeeds at not just being a great throwback game, but also runs to full NES specifications (and is available on cartridge).

The game is a sequel to Haunted: Halloween ’85, which follows young Donny and Tami on Halloween as they get into some supernatural shenanigans. The game opens with a few old school styled 8-bit cut scenes (i.e. some still images with words narrating the action) that are my biggest, yet insignificant complaint. The text is downright ugly; I’m not sure if it’s just too big for the area they allotted for it or merely a poor font choice, but I found it hard to read and simply quit trying to after just a few frames. Additionally, when starting a new game you’ll sit through this each and every time, and much like the impatient me at seven years old, I sat there mashing the button trying to jump into the game as quickly as possible.

Our young heroes have a rather deep toy box when it comes to their movesets, more so than any other NES game that I can recall. There’s the standard attack, a number of specials, rolls, and jump attacks, among others (with each hero having their own specific moves, which feel the same yet are different enough to add some variety) that can be used to deal with the undead menace plaguing the town. These attacks are pulled off with relative ease and most offer up satisfying results, with the specials only requiring a short series of directional moves prior to the attack button. The weakest link is the standard attack, which lacks any real umpf in the power department. My initial playthroughs had me crouching just out of reach and punching the zombies in their decrepit junk, which is a tactic that takes forever. Much like any zombie game in the history of zombie games, you’ll want to aim for the head for success. Over time you’ll quickly learn which attack works best against which type of enemy, as some are completely immune to specific attacks.

The amount of options available to you early into the game will be decided by the difficulty you choose, with easy, normal, and hard being the options available to you off the rip; the easy setting is the same as normal except that it offers all of the moves from the get go. Having sampled each of the settings, this appears to be the primary difference outside of the number of enemies thrown at you at any given time.

Remember that handy HUD option that 99% of games offer as a tool to let the player know where they land with their current health, score, and lives? This game replaces this completely with the character’s skin tone reflecting their current health, with a few shades of green in place prior to death. Each character has their own respective health, which is retained between levels. To add longevity to each of your limited lives, you can swap between characters on the fly. While I found the mechanic useful, once you learn to make the most of it, death becomes a bit of a joke, taking at least seven enemy attacks to kill your duo. Once you get your bearings straight, most of the standard enemies will be nothing but mild distractions, most of which are easily evaded if combat isn’t your thing. The exception is the boss encounters, which are varied and task the player with breaking down their patterns and determining which attack(s) will work prior to dying.

Death is fairly forgiving in this title, with a higher than average life count given on each run and checkpoints being activated upon each level transition. I was a bit disappointed there are no continues, leaving the password option as your only method available to skip past the opening chapters. Sadly, the game fails to provide any of these passwords during normal gameplay, so I am unsure how they are unlocked/earned. Since we are talking about a game that can be played on the original system, I am not scoring off for this, but feel like a save feature would have been a nice touch.

The overall presentation is amazing when comparing the game to similar offerings from the NES era, even going as far to include one of the solid blue screens that would often be the first thing you’d see when loading a dusty cartridge into the old school system. The same love and care was clearly used on the remainder of the package, with each and every tiny detail working in tandem to deliver an experience that is both familiar and new. Sure, you’ve worked your way left to right using mild platforming mechanics time and time again, but the shot of adrenaline you get when you make a flawless run through a never ending stream of zombies, all while uppercutting each of their heads off without missing a beat was often missing from most NES games. The music, while forgettable, does help paint a stunning picture fueled by nostalgia that truly made me forget on multiple occasions that I was playing a new release, opposed to something from my childhood.

HAUNTED: Halloween ’86: (The Curse of Possum Hollow) succeeds at not just being an amazing example of how a throwback game should be made, but works on all fronts to deliver a strange feeling of nostalgia while being brand new, redefining what a retro title should be. Don’t let the primitive visuals fool you, this is a game that isn’t to be missed, whether you’re a retro fan or otherwise.

9 out of 10

Pros

• Retro Done Right
• Wealth of Attack Options
• Satisfying Gameplay

Cons

• The Story Presentation Could Use Some Polish

HAUNTED: Halloween ’86: (The Curse of Possum Hollow) was developed and published by Retrotainment Games. It launched on the NES in 2016, PC in 2017, as well as X1 on August 24th, 2018. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of HAUNTED: Halloween ’86: (The Curse of Possum Hollow), check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.