'Halloween' Video Game's Controversy, Explained

Halloween may be one of the most iconic horror franchises of all-time, but there is one part of the franchise's history that is lesser known. Four years after the release of John Carpenter's Jamie Lee Curtis-starring horror flick Halloween kickstarted a 13-film franchise, Michael Myers was welcomed into viewers' homes in the form of the Halloween video game, a horror video game for the Atari 2600 that quickly became shrouded in controversy before disappearing altogether.

Released in 1983 by Wizard Video and regarded as "one of the first actual R-rated horror movies licensed as a video game," the Halloween video game essentially places the player in the middle of the fictional Haddonfield, Illinois Babysitter Murders. The player plays as the babysitter, who must rescue kids from the home before the killer can get them. According to Rogue Cinema, in order to get the children to follow you, the player had to hit the fire button. After leading a child to one of the safe zones, the player would then be given a number of points before they went on to attempt another rescue. In order to reach the next level, the player had to rescue five children. If the babysitter was not successful in rescuing the children and was instead attacked by the killer, she would be decapitated. As her headless body ran away from the killer, blood pulsated from her neck.

While the game, programmed by Tim Martin, never referred to any characters by their name – the masked figure wielding the knife is never referred to as Michael Myers and the babysitter is never called Laurie – the game's cover featured the film's theatrical poster and the franchise's iconic theme music was used when the killer appeared. The game also used jack-o-lanterns to signify the number of the lives the player had left, a nod to the jack-o-lantern seen on the movie's poster and at the beginning of each of the films.

Although the game's violence is mild in comparison to the video games of today, at the time, the game was viewed by many as being too graphic, so much so that many game retailers refused to carry the game. Those retailers that did often kept the game behind the counter and only sold it on a request only basis. Combined with the outcry over the violence depicted in the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game, released that same year, Wizard Video Games was driven to bankruptcy.

The Halloween game went on to all but disappear. As Wizard Video Games began liquidating its merchandise, some copies of the Halloween video game were shipped and sold without a label. Others were shipped and sold with a white sticker with "Halloween" hand-written on it, per IGN. The issues resulted in even more stores refusing to carry the game.

The Halloween game for the Atari 2600 has remained the only official game ever based on the Halloween franchise, though several other major video games have since gone on to feature Michael Myers. Call of Duty: Ghosts, which released a DLC called Onslaught, and Dead By Daylight, per Screen Rant, both allowed players to play as The Shape, for example.