It’s finally that time of the year again. The time to chip away at that backlog of horror games as Spooky Month is upon us! Or perhaps just add to that backlog as, just like last year, I’m about to recommend three horror games I think everyone should check out. Unlike last year however, these horror games might be a bit harder to play. And sadly not in the “They are so scary, it’s difficult to even play them!” kind of way…

The three horror games I’m going to talk about in the coming weeks are pretty difficult to play nowadays. Well, at least if you want to play them legally. You see, these three games aren’t available through normal means like simply downloading them from an online store or something. _{One of them technically is but we’ll talk about why I’m not counting that later.} So, in order to play these games nowadays, you’ll most likely have to do what I did and emulate them.

Up until a few years ago I was honestly pretty against emulation in all it’s forms. I saw it as a way to steal games and play them for free and that’s it. However, after looking in to it some more and watching some videos talking about the topic, I realized just how little harm most emulation does and how different it is from pirating a game. Most of the time, like in the case of playing old games that are completely out of circulation, emulation is a great way of preserving games and allowing people to play games from an older generation that aren’t available anymore. This is especially great for horror games! A genre full of often times niche experiences that aren’t appreciated at the time of release and as such aren’t well preserved through remasters or ports. Hell, even the more popular horror series are rarely preserved all that well!

Even an iconic series like Resident Evil hasn’t been great about preserving its original games. It wasn’t until very recently that you could legally play the original versions of Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3 despite how ground breaking those games are. This is the series that birthed the term “Survival Horror”! Thankfully, the games have recently released on GOG, a game service similar to Steam run by the developers of the Witcher and Cyberpunk, and can now be played very easily on PC for a super reasonable price! But that only happened this year. Before then, the closest you could get to buying these games through legal means was via the PS3’s digital store front. You can play the original Resident Evil 1 on PS5 actually, but only Resident Evil 1. 2 and 3 haven’t been added to the service yet for whatever reason… And the PS3 store front was already a little clunky back in the day but is basically unusable in the year 2024! It still functions but it feels like the whole thing is held together by string and some hopes and dreams.

Taking all that in to consideration, there is basically no chance for a smaller horror game to show up on something modern if it was this hard for a legendary series like Resident Evil to do it. And I imagine some people are thinking that series like Resident Evil don’t need to put out their old games anymore, mainly because each of those old games now have modern remakes! And that is simply not the case.

A remake cannot replace the original, no matter how good that remake is. I think the remake of the original Resident Evil is honestly perfect. It is peak survival horror. However, I firmly believe that the original version should still be available. Not only do original versions often give a lot of great context to the remakes, showing just how much they’ve improved or how much games have advanced in that time, there are often things that remakes can’t capture about the original versions. For example, the original version of Resident Evil on the PS1 has an iconic script and voice performances! Granted it’s iconic for how laughable it is, but still! It’s a beloved aspect of that game, so much so that mods exist to bring said voice lines to the remake! Beyond that, a lot can be lost when it comes to the simple feel and atmosphere of horror remakes. I can promise you that will be the case of the Silent Hill 2 remake coming out in a few days. _{And yes, I do plan on reviewing that game just not in the coming weeks!}

All of this and more is why emulation and game preservation is so important. And why you shouldn’t feel bad about emulating the games I’m going to be talking about this month. The only real legal way to play most of these games would be to buy a second hand copy of them for literally hundreds of dollars. Something no one should have to do just to play a game. And while it can be difficult to set up an emulator I do still recommend it. I’m really happy I finally sat down and did it, especially now that I have a Steam Deck, as I can now play so many games I completely missed out on. While it may not technically be legal, it’s hard to argue that you’re stealing or harming a game’s sales when there is literally no other way to get these games besides buying them second hand and even then it’s not like the original developers are getting that money! What I’m trying to say is, don’t feel bad about using an emulator just to experience these games. I don’t think even the original developers would want you spending hundreds of dollars on their games.

Getting a bit more back on track, the games I’ll be talking about this month come from the PS2 era! An era a lot of people, myself included, are saying we need to go back to when it comes to how we’re developing modern games now but that’s a topic for another time! I wanted to talk about these three games since they can be rather niche and probably won’t be seeing a port or remake anytime soon. Well besides maybe one but we’ll talk about that when we get to it.

This post is mostly just to hype up the month and the season of spookiness as it’s one of my favorite times of the year! As someone who loves horror and getting more people into horror, I will take just about any excuse to shove some horror game recommendations into people’s faces!

Despite these games being somewhat niche and not getting as much attention as Silent Hill or Resident Evil, I think they are games everyone should try out! Especially if you’re like me and love to play older games to see how genres and the industry has evolved! And to see how much better some old games are compared to modern ones…

That being said, there’s a pretty decent chance you may have heard of the first game we’re talking about this month! We’ll be starting things off next week by talking about one of my favorites, Fatal Frame 2!

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Excited for Spooky Month? Do you feel like remakes replace the original versions? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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