You and Your Friends Are Dead: An Unofficial Analysis of LJN's Friday the 13th

by Joel Couture

A confusing campground. Weak characters. Invisible items and weapons. Confounding play. And a purple and teal Jason?

This was Friday the 13th on the NES, a game frequently panned for being clumsy, incomprehensible, and far too hard.

And almost every modern horror game owes it a debt, whether they know it or not.

The NES Friday the 13th broke new ground in horror, establishing the use of confusion and nebulous rules to create a compelling mystery. It created pressure and despair through its clever use of hidden items, keeping players from becoming too powerful. It also created a powerful stalker in the form of Jason, using his power and shocking appearances to pave the way for the relentless monsters that would haunt our playthroughs of Amnesia, Resident Evil 3, Clock Tower, and more.

Despite its hated reputation, Friday the 13th established trends back in 1989 that would continue to shape horror to the present. It would also ask questions few other horror games would dare. Should horror be pleasant, or should it crush us with fear and hopelessness? Can we make lives truly matter in the disposable existence of a video game?


Featuring interviews with journalists and game developers of various disciplines, "YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD. – An Unofficial Analysis of LJN's Friday the 13th" is an attempt to break down the various horror elements of the game and how they make Friday the 13th into a misunderstood masterpiece, and one of the most important entries in the genre.

Genres: Video Games

140 pages, ebook

Published March 1, 2019

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been waiting forever for SOMEBODY to give the much-maligned NES "Friday the 13th" video game its proper regards. The author does a pretty good job of explaining why the seemingly universally decried LJN title is actually way ahead of its time as an influence on what would become the survival-horror genre and he definitely digs deep into the lore of the game itself (which is no small feat, considering how confusing and counter-intuitive the game design and layout feels at times.) You kinda wish the author would've cast a few more feelers out there and talked to some people who were actually involved with the game's design and marketing, but hey, it's his book, not mine. I guess you could say the author get a *little* redundant in his explanations of the game's mechanics, but then again, that's no biggie. As far as literary "Friday the 13th on the Nintendo Entertainment System apologia" goes, this is probably the finest treatise in its defense we'll ever get to read.

[Kirbo (S28037) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked how the author went on a ramble about the characters, only to realize he was probably looking into it too much and LJN probably didn't have some masterpiece of a backstory for every character in the game.