Five (Kinda) Obscure Retro Horror Games to Play This Halloween
If you’re looking for spooky games that are a bit off the beaten path, retro gaming has you covered with some eerie hidden gems. While these games might not be household names, they each offer a unique spin on horror perfect for dark and stormy nights. Here are five obscure, creepy games from the past to add to your spooky lineup:
1. Ghoul School (NES, 1992)
In Ghoul School, you play as Spike O’Hara, a high school senior who stumbles upon a possessed glowing skull that turns his school’s inhabitants into a nightmare of ghouls, demons, and monsters. Your mission is to rescue the head cheerleader while navigating hallways full of evil, ranging from skeletons to slimy eyeballs to appendage-tossing zombies. The game’s minimalist backgrounds and unusual enemy designs create a haunting atmosphere, with each classroom becoming a mini-labyrinth of scares and surprises. Ghoul School may be rough around the edges (and yes, at times a bit repetitive), but it captures that creepy school-at-night vibe with a mix of kitschy humor and horror.
2. Uninvited (Apple IIGS, 1986)
Uninvited is a point-and-click adventure game that puts players in a deserted mansion, where they must uncover its sinister secrets. Players explore eerie rooms filled with spectral enemies, haunting puzzles, and cryptic messages that reveal the house’s dark history. The game’s haunting pixel art, limited colors, and atmospheric sound effects heighten the tension as you face perils like cursed dolls and malevolent spirits. While later ports toned down the graphic content, Uninvited retains its unnerving aura, making it a forgotten treasure for fans of atmospheric horror.
3. Frankenstein’s Monster (Atari 2600, 1983)
Frankenstein’s Monster for the Atari 2600 is a hidden gem of classic horror that adds a surprising dose of suspense and strategy to the mix. In this game, you play as a nameless hero whose goal is to prevent the infamous monster from coming to life. Players must collect bricks from the three-leveled dungeon and bring them to the top level of the screen in order to build a wall around the creature’s body. But with every second that passes, Frankenstein’s monster inches closer to waking up, raising the stakes and keeping players on edge.
What sets Frankenstein’s Monster apart is its unique gameplay loop: as you collect bricks, you’ll dodge bats, spiders, and eerie hazards that lurk in the dungeon. It’s an engaging twist for a game of its time, where each layer of brick you place slows the creature’s revival. But beware—if you’re too slow, the monster will come to life, and you’ll be greeted with an unsettling, color-flashing animation of the monster’s escape as he comes for you. With its creepy atmosphere, tense countdown, and strategic approach to platforming, Frankenstein’s Monster offers a classic horror experience that’s surprisingly complex for an Atari game.
4. Clock Tower (Super Famicom, 1995)
Though widely recognized in Japan, Clock Tower remains lesser-known in other regions. This early survival horror game centers on Jennifer Simpson, a young orphan girl who must escape an evil mansion while pursued by the homicidal Scissorman. The game’s point-and-click mechanics, slow-burn suspense, and creepy, minimalist soundtrack make every moment tense. Each room in the mansion holds clues to the backstory or offers hiding spots to evade Scissorman. With multiple endings depending on your actions, Clock Tower is one of the first games to capture the feeling of a horror movie, and is worth tracking down.
5. Monster Party (NES, 1989)
Monster Party starts innocently but quickly becomes one of the NES’s strangest horror games. You play as Mark, a boy with a baseball bat who teams up with a winged alien named Bert to fight monsters in a dreamlike, yet nightmarish world. At first, it looks like a colorful platformer, but then the game veers into freakish horror, with backgrounds that include bloody skeletons, dripping walls, and unsettling monsters. Each boss battle is strange and memorable, from a pumpkin-headed specter to an onion ring-firing tempura dish. Despite its quirky look, Monster Party surprises players with its surreal blend of cute and creepy.
