Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street is one of the most famous slasher franchises in history. The original movie has been terrorizing audience's dreams since 1984, and its villain, Freddy Krueger, is one of the most popular horror movie antagonists (and Halloween costumes) of all time.
But despite the enduring popularity of the movie, which spawned seven sequels as well as an ill-fated 2010 reboot, the beloved character hasn’t appeared in a video game – outside of promotional browser minigames or cameos in other titles – since DOS and NES releases all the way back in 1989. Given how popular Freddy Krueger was as an unlockable Mortal Kombat character, a video game adaptation of the films is surely long overdue.
A Brief History of the Springwood Slasher’s Silver Screen Slaughter Spree
The back story established in the original A Nightmare On Elm Street is that Freddy Krueger is dead, the child killer murdered by Springwood’s enraged townsfolk after escaping prosecution for his heinous crimes on a technicality. In the years since this brutal vigilante justice was dispensed, the angry mob's own children have grown up unaware of their parents’ deeds, until Freddy reappears to wreak his revenge upon the teenagers from inside their nightmares.
This ingenious premise enabled filmmaker Wes Craven, and the directors of a slew of sequels, to shock audiences with surreal and disturbing dream imagery, as well as some imaginative (and occasionally downright ludicrous) kills, unconstrained by the usual reality-based conventions of the slasher genre. Robert Englund delivered a memorable portrayal of the gleefully sadistic monster, earning himself the chance to reprise the role on no fewer than seven occasions.
However, the scriptwriters’ creative freedom was perhaps the franchise’s ultimate downfall. By the sixth film, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, the character had transformed from terrifying horror powerhouse into a likeable comedy character who winked at the audience and seemed more interested in wisecracks than slaughter.
A brief hiatus followed, until Wes Craven himself returned to resurrect his character and the franchise with 1994’s Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. This movie laid the foundations for Craven’s subsequent Scream blockbusters by constructing a fiendish, fourth wall breaking meta-narrative to unleash Freddy upon the original movie’s actors, who all returned to play themselves. Despite positive reviews, the movie was a commercial flop, and Freddy spent almost a decade in the slasher movie wilderness.
However, like all great slasher movie villains, Freddy is never really dead. In 2003 he returned to battle hockey-masked behemoth Jason Vorhees in the long-awaited Freddy Vs Jason, which became the highest-grossing movie in either franchise. It also served as a fitting send-off for Robert Englund, as it was his final appearance in the legendary fedora, although he did return to voice the character for Mortal Kombat.
The most recent outing for Freddy was less successful, however. 2010’s remake of the original movie was panned by critics, and makes it hard to imagine another reboot of A Nightmare On Elm Street being greenlit by cautious movie executives. As such, fans may have seen the last of the Springwood Slasher on the silver screen, at least for the time being.
Why Now is the Perfect Time for a Freddy Krueger Video Game
Despite his most recent cinematic setback, the claw-fingered creep has made a number of successful appearances in recent video games. As well as his cameo in Mortal Kombat, Freddy Krueger has also featured in Behaviour Interactive’s Dead By Daylight, as well as an unofficial appearance in Windows fighting game Terrordrome: Rise of the Boogeymen. He continues to prove popular amongst gamers whenever he graces them with his nightmarish presence, and now would be the perfect time to grant the jumper-wearing sadist his own video game outing.
There are other reasons to believe that a Freddy Krueger title would be a hit. The slasher movie genre is enjoying a renaissance by returning to the classic formula after a long period of self-parodies and soulless remakes, with the latest Halloween movies proving a huge commercial success.
The simple format of these films – scary killer stalks a group of hapless youngsters, picking them off one by one in increasingly gruesome ways – also lends itself perfectly to video games. This structure can work either in single player adventures, such as when the terrifying Mr. X relentlessly pursues the player in Resident Evil 2, or in an asymmetrical multiplayer game like Illfonic’s Friday the 13th: The Game, where one player controls the killer and the others attempt to outwit or escape them.
The sheer appeal of Freddy himself should also not be underestimated. The character is one of the most recognizable villains in movie history, sitting atop the horror mountain alongside the likes of Halloween’s Michael Myers and Friday the 13th’s Jason Vorhees. Other horror franchises have capitalized on this sort of star power in recent years, with titles like Alien: Isolation praised for faithfully recapturing the look and behavior of the original movie’s otherworldly antagonist. Just like the xenomorph, Freddy undoubtedly occupies the top tier of movie monsters.
Given how infrequently Freddy has appeared in video games, there would also be a large amount of anticipation and hype around such an adaptation. Slasher fans have had to wait over thirty years since his last vehicle, when he appeared twice in the same year in two separate A Nightmare On Elm Street titles in 1989, on DOS and NES respectively. Although both games were praised for their innovation, with the NES title being one of the only games on that system to offer four-player support, neither are remembered as classics.
A modern A Nightmare On Elm Street video game adaptation seems to be a glaring absence from the canon of horror movie tie-ins. Still, Freddy Krueger’s successful recent cameos, as well as the slasher genre’s movie resurgence, suggest that fans may not have to wait much longer before Wes Craven’s favorite son returns to haunt their consoles as well as their dreams.