Well hello their ghouls and ghosts! It is I! The Gravekeeper to frighten you with even more terrible games for the Halloween season! Along with more cheap scare tactics than a bad Sam Raimi rip-off movBOO! HAHAHA! Got you! Anyway, this time our line-up of horrors is provided exclusively from our good friends at Atari, men and women who know what horror is all about (ever own a Jaguar?). So get ready kiddies, it’s time to go back into the depths of my crypt, and marvel at pixels so frighteBOO! HAHA! You’re an easy one!

The first game to be unearthed from its tomb is Dark Chambers. This game does live up to its name in that it is quite dark (not that hopeless dark like Haunted House though) and does contain many a chamber…MANY a chamber. I ask that you now remove all small children from the room, and keep in mind that if at any time things should get too intense, repeat to yourself “It’s only a shitty rehash article so the site could have more Halloween content”.

DON'T FAINT!

In this game you take the part of a man. You see, this is no ordinary man however. I’m pretty sure it is in Indian, because of the hair-piece which may in fact be a head-dress. Besides, what is scarier than an Indian with a gun? This game explores a deeper horror than darkness, running from monsters, and endless rooms…it dives into the hatred of the Native-American, and if put into a situation where there was no law…the fact that he would go around shooting every damn thing. Unless you had something that shined really bright that would catch his eye, not unlike a raccoon…you would be shit out of luck. Or maybe if you had the flu, then you could finish off this red-skin and his whole family. After all for all of their advances in growing crops and hunting, they were too damn lazy to develop decent immune systems. As you stood there, laughing at your flu-bug invading his system, he would grow far too weak to finish sending off his smoke-signals to his tribesmen.

GIVE 'EM HELL RED-MAN!

Well this is basically Haunted House, except without the cool or suspense. I do not know why you are in these Chambers, though there is a wizard-type character right at the beginning of he game. Is this more than just Indian-blasts-the-Undead? Is there an underlying theme? Is this a cleverly masked KKK vs. The Injuns supergame that “The Man” held down because he doesn’t want people to see Native Americans in a role of power? Probably not, it probably isn’t even a fucking Indian, but a 2,000 word minimum isn’t going to fill up by itself is it? You run around shooting various skeletons, but after you shoot the skeleton, something odd happens. The skeleton turns into a human. I shit you not. It goes from white bones to white skin and a snazzy overcoat immediately. It’s like a reverse Ghosts N’ Goblins…only thankfully you don’t have to listen to that same damn theme play throughout all of htis game. So what do you do with this newly created man? You fucking shoot him dead to because he’s a white asshole and he shouldn’t have took your damn land in the first place even though it was kind of your fault for making bad business decisions. So go on, SHOOT HIM INDIAN! Shoot him before he rubs in your face the fact that you gave up all you had for a string and several glittery rocks. Shoot him before he builds another upper-middle class home on top of one of your burial grounds. Or maybe just knee-cap him…a dead white man means one less customer at your casino.

I found this game to be simply devilish. I can not imagine what I would do if put in a similar position as the Redman in this game. Wandering about, taking jabs in the dark, trying to enter tight areas while having no idea where they lead, I’m just no good at it. For those very same reasons, I’m not much of a hit with the ladies. However, that tale is more depressing and suicide-inducing than haunting, so we press on!

Better hide those brownies, tubby.

As scary as that was boys and ghouls, we are going to travel back to the mid-80’s…which was a scary enough time in itself. I know ALL of you reading this were born then, so you remember the movie Gremlins. As a child that film nearly made me shit my pants from fear, actually it did make me shit my pants one time but I had deeply repressed that humiliating memory until just now…fuck. The concept of these green creatures running about, tearing shit up, sending old ladies out of roof-tops…it was heavy shit. The movie was great, and the Atari game of the same name was surprisingly decent, and SCARRRRRRRYYYYY!!!! The game is divided into two parts, the first of which has you trying to keep the critters from falling to the ground below, where you just happen to have a number of delicious cheeseburgers laying about. Cheeseburgers in the yard? This was the mid-80’s after all, and nobody gave a damn about their health back then. Cheeseburgers in the yard was not uncommon at all in any neighborhood.

Hamburgers in the grass, GREMLINS ON YO ASS!

After that we move on to the second portion of the game. In this bone-chilling mode of play, you must shoot the Gremlins that you allowed to hatch earlier. You left the cheeseburgers, you fucked up, you dropped the ball! Now your nine is the only way to right the wrongs. This is relatively easy, as the Gremlins move quite slow for a number of levels before presenting a true challenge. Just for fun though, let the Gremlin ram into you one time. Despite the fact that he is moving at roughly the speed of the one very elderly cashier at Wal-Mart they just employed to avoid a age-discrimation suit…his walking into you will send you flying off screen…for the sake of making scary let us say it sends you flying into a DEN OF VIPERS! Beware playing this game alone, and certainly not in the dark! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

Well readers, you survived to the end! Here’s to hoping that you are not horribly killed immediately after you get up, as the curse of this article is known to do. As always, it has been a pleasure. I hate to leave you on such a GRAVE circumstance, but I must be going. I have many things to do to prepare for the Halloween season…such as…yeah I guess I don’t have too much to do. WhateBOO!