Humpday Gaming: Hellraiser PC
The Hellraiser series held a special place in my movie-watching childhood. I recall the first two films in the series being incredible works in the horror genre. As a kid I watched them back to back many times over. Yes, I was a child and watching R rated films. Welcome to the 80′s when children weren’t treated like delicate porcelain dolls and being a good parent consisted of doing the least amount of work possible. At least in my case, anyway, but I’m not complaining one bit. So to get back on track, I liked Hellraiser…and I liked videogames. So just imagine the jumping up and down and the cry of victory I brought up from deep down within me when I was flipping through a videogame magazine and spotted this:
GONNA PISS
Holy fucking shit! Those were my exact words, I believe. Very loudly I might add. I think this marked the first time my mother heard me curse, there on aisle 6 of the Food Lion we always went to. A Hellraiser game…it pretty much was my sole reason to exist for those next few months. Mind you this was before the internet, when you had no clue when something was being released other than by magazine or word of mouth. Months went by and nothing else that even so much as mentioned this game. No reviews, no previews, not even that ad again. It was like waiting for a Christmas that never came. A really horribly disturbing Christmas.
It was no less than EIGHT fucking years before I found out what the deal was. It turns out the company making the game was pushing the limits of the NES…and this would be some super NES cart that would run 16 bit graphics. Such technology was costing so much in production, that the cart would have to sell for upwards of $80 – $100. Thus the idea was scrapped and all that remained of my childhood dream was a title screen and a few (admittedly) bad character models. Oh yeah, it was going to be a FPS also. A Hellraiser FPS on the NES…yes we all missed out on pretty much the greatest, possibly most important game of all time. Because as far as I know it would have been completely impossible. Or completely horrible. Probably Horrible but you gotta admit these fuckers had balls.
Oh well. It was okay, I was older then, and took the disappointment in stride. After all, I had THIS motherfucker to look forward to:
WHOOOOOAAAAAAAAAA
This was it, this was going to be the BIG MAN shit. No messing around like with that NES bastard cart, this was going to be THE Hellraiser experience and would change my perceptions of PC gaming (as in I would actually like it). This was the mid-90′s also, so the internet was slightly a bit more helpful and I was able to keep up semi-decently with the development process.
This is the point in time where I would review this Godsend of the gaming world…if the fucking thing existed. Yes, for better or worse, this got shit-canned also. Apparently due in most part to the engine the company was using (which they got from the same flea market I got 7 Dreamcast games for $2.50 from the sound of it). It was incredibly slow to the point of making the game unbearable. You know what sucks though? Just how much of this fucker they got done. Over 95% of the art was done, 7 or 8 levels laid out, etc.
Poop in my mouth.
It may not look impressive now, but in 1994 this...still wasn't that impressive. Whatever, it's Hellraiser
This was even harder than with the NES game, because there is so much from this bitch laying around the internet. It’s like when you break up with someone, and they purposefully leave some of their shit that they don’t really want around your place. They have no intentions of getting it back, and they just leave it there so in your day to day life you’ll stumble upon a piece of it and then sink down into a depression and cry over what could have been. I’m not saying I’ve cried over this game, I am much too detached from my emotions and stopped going to therapy after the 4th time because the lady wanted to talk about sex just too much.
So yeah, you can find a really detailed plot out there, audio samples, screenshots, maps, and so forth. The hopes and dreams of my youth however…those are the biggest piece of vaporware of all.
