RetroRealms Game Series Kicking Off With Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead
Two horror icons are coming to consoles, and they’re bringing more than just movie nostalgia with them. Boss Team Games is an indie video game developer that makes games out of popular IPs; they’re behind the recent Evil Dead: The Game and Cobra Kai: Card Fighter. Now, Boss Team Games has joined with WayForward Technologies to launch a series called RetroRealms in which they’ll release video games in retro 16-bit format playable on consoles and PC. Their first offerings are Halloween, where players can slash through Haddonfield as Michael Myers, and Ash vs. Evil Dead, where Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams battles through Deadites and various other demonic creatures called forth by the Necronomicon.
The games will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and on PC via Steam; the release date is October 18, 2024. Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead can be purchased individually in digital format for $24.99 upon their release, or you can pre-order them together as a physical bundle for $99.99. Pre-orders come with DLC characters Laurie Strode for Halloween and Kelly Maxwell for Ash vs. Evil Dead, as well as a Michael Myers plush, coins, pins, trading cards, a digital download of the soundtrack, and more. You can see the trailer below to get a feel for what the games will be like:
I love this idea, although I would rather have a physical bundle that doesn’t cost $100 and doesn’t come with a bunch of swag I’ll never use, all of which is based on Halloween and not Ash vs. Evil Dead. Regardless, it’s cool to see retro gaming get this kind of treatment, and these two properties are the perfect ones to do it with. Halloween looks like fun, and I like the twist that you play as Michael Myers, not one of the teenagers trying to survive his rampage. Slasher movies tend to be about the kills, at least after the first installment (which is typically the best), so why not lean into that with video games based on them? I’m not sure how this will work with Halloween, but it should be fun to find out; maybe Michael’s targets get tougher to kill as he goes along, or you have to catch a particular babysitter who’s running away while other potential victims get in the way. If Laurie Strode is the DLC playable character, maybe that’s when she takes down Michael for good, or at least until the next sequel.
Ash vs. Evil Dead looks even better. I love the Evil Dead movies (the real ones with Ash), and Ash vs. Evil Dead, the sequel series that aired on Starz, was excellent as well, entirely worthy of the films that spawned it. (Gary from Nerdrotic calls it the best legacy sequel of all, and I don’t blame him, although I’m not sure I like it better than Cobra Kai.) There have been several Evil Dead games over the years – I greatly enjoyed Fistful of Boomstick – but a retro one that looks like it could’ve been a Genesis game fits right in with the aesthetic and themes of Ash vs. Evil Dead, with Ash a relic of a bygone era who finds that he’s the only one who can stop the forces of evil looking to swallow an unprepared modern world. It’s easier to envision Ash vs. Evil Dead as a traditional side-scrolling action game than Halloween, as Ash is very much the hero of the story, and Deadites are likely more of a challenge to kill than small-town teenagers. But that could be one of the draws: the games are different to that degree, and buying the bundle offers two experiences to keep gamers from getting bored.
I’m also intrigued by this notion of crossing over characters from Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead. I don’t know how that would work, and it’s described in vague terms on the website and in the trailer, so I guess nobody outside of Boss Team Games will know until they play. But I think this is a great idea, and I’m glad the games are coming to PlayStation 4 so I can try them out as well.
Let us know what you think of Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead from RetroRealms in the comments!
