Wes Chicken's A Nightmare On Elm Street is one of the most famous slasher franchises in history. The original motion-picture show 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.

Merely despite the enduring popularity of the film, which spawned seven sequels as well as an ill-blighted 2010 reboot, the honey character hasn't appeared in a video game – exterior of promotional browser minigames or cameos in other titles – since DOS and NES releases all the way back in 1989. Given how pop Freddy Krueger was as an unlockable Mortal Kombat grapheme, a video game adaptation of the films is surely long overdue.

A Cursory History of the Springwood Slasher's Silver Screen Slaughter Spree

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The dorsum story established in the original A Nightmare On Elm Street is that Freddy Krueger is expressionless, 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 take grown up unaware of their parents' deeds, until Freddy reappears to wreak his revenge upon the teenagers from within 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, likewise 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' artistic freedom was perhaps the franchise's ultimate downfall. By the sixth pic, Freddy's Dead: The Terminal Nightmare, the character had transformed from terrifying horror powerhouse into a likeable one-act character who winked at the audition and seemed more than interested in wisecracks than slaughter.

A brief hiatus followed, until Wes Chicken himself returned to resurrect his character and the franchise with 1994's Wes Chicken'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 moving-picture show's actors, who all returned to play themselves. Despite positive reviews, the motion picture was a commercial flop, and Freddy spent almost a decade in the slasher movie wilderness.

Still, similar 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 moving-picture show in either franchise. It also served as a plumbing fixtures send-off for Robert Englund, every bit it was his final appearance in the legendary fedora, although he did return to vocalisation the character for Mortal Kombat.

The well-nigh recent outing for Freddy was less successful, still. 2010's remake of the original film was panned by critics, and makes it hard to imagine another reboot of A Nightmare On Elm Street existence 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

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Despite his nearly recent cinematic setback, the claw-fingered pitter-patter has fabricated a number of successful appearances in recent video games. Every bit 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 fourth dimension to grant the jumper-wearing sadist his ain video game outing.

In that location are other reasons to believe that a Freddy Krueger championship would be a striking. The slasher motion-picture show genre is enjoying a renaissance by returning to the archetype formula afterwards 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 ane by one in increasingly gruesome means – also lends itself perfectly to video games. This structure can work either in single player adventures, such equally when the terrifying Mr. 10 relentlessly pursues the role 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 non be underestimated. The character is one of the most recognizable villains in moving-picture show history, sitting atop the horror mount alongside the likes of Halloween'due south 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 Conflicting: Isolation praised for faithfully recapturing the look and behavior of the original moving-picture show's otherworldly antagonist. Merely like the xenomorph, Freddy undoubtedly occupies the tiptop tier of picture monsters.

Given how infrequently Freddy has appeared in video games, there would as well exist a large amount of anticipation and hype around such an adaptation. Slasher fans accept had to wait over thirty years since his last vehicle, when he appeared twice in the same twelvemonth 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 beingness ane of the only games on that system to offer iv-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 catechism of horror movie tie-ins. Even so, Freddy Krueger's successful contempo cameos, as well as the slasher genre's moving-picture show resurgence, suggest that fans may not have to wait much longer before Wes Craven'southward favorite son returns to haunt their consoles as well as their dreams.

MORE: viii of the Scariest Slasher Movies of the Last Decade