Atari Haunted House

I was late to the Atari craze.  Its popularity was already declining when my parents broke down and bought me one, likely because it was finally affordable.

I didn't have a whole lot of cartridges; again, that affordability thing.  After all, if memory serves, cartridges still cost about $30 in 1983.  So, often, I would borrow cartridges from friends.

I distinctly remember borrowing this Atari cartridge from a friend in high school in the Fall of that year.  I thought a cartridge called "Haunted House" would certainly augment and enhance my Halloween experience.  It did to varying degrees of success.  I wandered around the blocky maze that stood in for a house, usually in the dark, encountering digitized creatures that required some suspension of belief to see them for what they were supposed to be and never did win.  I think I only had it for a week or two and the day soon came when I had to return it.  I recently rediscovered it at an estate sale.  

This particular cartridge is actually the Sears Tele-Games version, but it's the same as an Atari.  Sears, as was their wont, would license products and slap their name on it.

I had actually already found this game quite a while back, but this one had its original box and instructions, something that probably would have helped me the first time around with the game as I had no clue what the goal was.

To summarize, the narrative is, when an elderly hermit in the town of Spirit Bay dies in his secluded mansion, the legend of a broken magic urn hidden in pieces throughout the mansion arises.  Its now up to you to find all the pieces and assemble the urn without falling prey to ghosts, spiders and bats.  Along the way, you'll need to find the key to the various room as well as a magic scepter that can ward off the evil spirits. You have 9 lives to complete the mission.

I'm not sure why they chose an image of what appears to be an orb weaver spider for a tarantula.

Atari Haunted House is considered by some to be one of the earliest Survival Horror games, a subgenre of horror videos games that focus on finding items and puzzle solving over battling monsters.

If you care to watch, here's a full run through of the game. Apparently, it only takes 7 minutes if you know what you're doing.

Maybe this season, I'll pop this game into my Atari 2600+ and relive the experience.