It's the Halloween season, and everyone's got monsters on their mind. Many great beasts and villains have been built up in the horror genre over the past few hundred years, and in the past century, a mix of classic and new fan favorites have come about thanks to the rise of cinema. From Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees to the Ring series' Sadako, there are almost too many horror icons to count. Fortunately for fans of the genre, horror properties tend to play nice with each other, leading to many of these creatures showing up together.
Horror crossovers have appeared in movies, comics, and video games. Dead by Daylight is the most recent example of horror icon action, but there are other ways to portray these monsters collaborating and fighting it out. A great avenue for this is the fighting game genre, which routinely collects plenty of different characters in one place and has them trade blows with each other. A crossover fighting game featuring horror movie monsters would be many fans’ dream, and ought to be approached at some point by a trusted developer.
Horror Crossover Fighters Exist Already
Part of the appeal of a horror movie fighting game is that it's already been proven to work. A surprising number of fighting games already exist that use either the typical archetypes found in classic horror movies, or feature some horror movie icons in the flesh. Mortal Kombat X comes to mind, with Jason Voorhees, Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface, an Alien, and a Predator having made it into the game as DLC. This already makes NetherRealm Studios a strong contender for both being able to make this crossover game happen and make it fun.
That's far from the only instance of horror movie crossover games, however. Setting aside horror-themed games like Darkstalkers and Killer Instinct that collect a variety of classic monsters, there are also the Terrordrome games. The first one is a free fan game titled Terrordrome: Rise of the Boogeymen. It consists entirely of licensed horror movie characters, including A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Child’s Play’s Chucky, Phantasm’s Tall Man, The Evil Dead’s Ash, and two versions of Jason Voorhees. Its commercial follow-up, Terrordrome: Reign Of The Legends, largely errs on the side of public domain characters and close copies of horror icons, but the effect is similar. These well-made fighting games prove that a horror crossover game can be done right.
What A Horror Crossover Fighting Game Would Entail
The ideal horror movie fighting game would include a slice of characters both relevant and obscure from throughout horror’s history. If at all possible, it would be great to have Jason Voorhees as the face of the game, especially considering the number of cosmetics he could bring representing his many iterations. Even if Jason ends up too difficult to add, there would still be plenty of other big icons to work with, including Freddy Krueger and Halloween’s Michael Myers. Classic horror symbols like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein's monster would practically have reserved spots in this roster. At any rate, the result should just have whatever characters the game’s publisher can get the right for.
The powerhouse American fighting game duo of WB Games and NetherRealm feels like the obvious choice for this title’s developer, and they would do it justice. NetherRealm holds a lot of respect for the horror genre in its gory Mortal Kombat franchise, and WB Games can pull on a lot of strings to make crossovers happen. There aren't a lot of other major developers around to take on this monumental project, although other fighting game developers like Capcom, Arc System Works, and their affiliates could make something impressive out of it. Hopefully, one day the right people will start talking, and horror fans will be able to enjoy a true horror crossover fighter experience.