John Carpenter Returns To Halloween In The Perfect Way

Boss Team Games—the studio behind the recent Evil Dead game—is currently developing two video games based on the OG slasher franchise. The studio put out a press release stating that the games will let players “relive moments from the film and play as classic characters from one of the most iconic and important horror films of all time.”

The studio also revealed that one of the games is being developed in Unreal Engine 5 with direct input from Carpenter himself. According to the release, John Carpenter is “intimately involved” with the Halloween game’s creation and hopes to “scare you silly” with the finished product.

Not much else is known about these upcoming games. The release suggests the Halloween games will stick to the 1978 John Carpenter original, at least initially. It’s entirely possible that Boss Team will release DLC incorporating elements from the sequels further down the road.

Right now, the biggest news regarding the games though is Carpenter’s willing involvement. While John Carpenter has sporadically returned to the Halloween franchise over the years, it’s never been with much enthusiasm. As mentioned above, Carpenter is a blunt man, and has repeatedly made it known he’s willing to put his name on anything if the money’s good.

This project, however, is different. Given John Carpenter’s love of the medium, it’s actually surprising that it took him this long to work on a Halloween video game. Even without Carpenter’s involvement, Michael Myers has been suspiciously absent from the world of electronic gaming. 

The original Halloween was adapted into a video game for the Atari 2600 in 1983, but so far, that’s been it. An oddity of early gaming, Halloween has you playing as a nameless babysitter tasked with saving children from a knife-wielding assailant. Ironically, the game is somehow gorier than the movie it’s based on.

John Carpenter’s Halloween is a notoriously gore-free movie relying on genuine scares over blood and guts. Meanwhile, if the killer catches you in the video game, your head disappears—presumably lopped off—and a fountain of red pixels spew from your neck. It’s not very graphic considering Atari’s primitive capabilities, but it was enough that almost no retailer would stock the game. The few that did kept it hidden behind the counter, available by request only.

Michael Myers’ only other foray into the digital realm came a few years ago when “The Shape” was added to the survival horror game Dead By Daylight. As cool as it is to play as Myers stalking teens in the asymmetrical multiplayer, at the end of the day, it’s still just a guest appearance in someone else’s game. Luckily, this pair of Halloween games from Boss Team Games and John Carpenter will finally give Michael his time to shine.

Neither project has a release date yet, but with John Carpenter involved, we’re sure Halloween fans are more than happy to wait. Particularly if it means that someday soon, they’ll be able to take control of The Shape himself while swinging around that iconic butcher’s knife.

Carpenter has been upfront about his love of gaming for years. He once claimed that he wanted to live out his golden years doing nothing but eating Popsicles, watching sports, and playing Xbox. Throw in some recreational substance abuse, and you have John Carpenter’s evolution from the creator of Halloween to a high school dropout living in his mom’s basement.

All joking aside, the man directed some of the greatest horror movies of all time. The Thing alone earned him the right to do whatever he wants with his remaining years. For John Carpenter, the video game medium may be the only way he can enjoy Halloween again.

Source: IGN