by Can Tran

Created on: December 14, 2008   Last Updated: May 11, 2012

The genre of survival horror originated from the release of the PC game series called "Alone in the Dark." I remember the first time I had seen the game. While the graphics were that great, it was considered to be "the bomb" during that time. The game play was very creepy. I was about eleven years old when I saw my uncle first play the game. It was a game that combined the genres of action, adventure, and horror. This game was all about surviving the night.

Unlike your typical shooters, you did not have unlimited ammo in Alone in the Dark. You had to conserve your ammunition and health. That meant you could not go wasting your ammunition needlessly. Also, this game was not about running around and shooting zombies and monsters. That was not the point of survival horror. Though, killing monsters was an important factor. It taught me not to rely on brute force all the time. The purpose of survival horror is to survive while solving puzzles and killing enemies in the way to uncover the truth about events that transpired beforehand.

I would think of a survival horror game as an interactive horror movie. In a horror movie, the characters have to try to survive the night or through a long ordeal. The characters would be normal everyday people, police officers, government agents, or trained army soldiers. In most cases, the characters were either everyday people and/or police officers.

But the first survival horror games were limited to surviving against zombies while solving puzzles in order to progress through the game.  While Alone in the Dark can be considered as the father of survival horror, "Resident Evil" could be considered the mother of survival horror. When the game first came out, it seemed as if Alone in the Dark went through a transformation. It would be through Resident Evil that the new genre of survival horror would be coined.

Resident Evil had the same concept as Alone in the Dark. Players had to investigate an old mansion, while solving puzzles and fighting against the undead.

Unlike Alone in the Dark, it was not caused by supernatural forces. Everything was caused by an outbreak of a virus created by the Umbrella Corporation. This one was scarier and creepier than Alone in the Dark. Asides from your regular zombies, there were zombie dogs, mutated plants, mutated spiders, amphibious creatures called Hunters, a mutated shark, mutated bees, and a large humanoid monster called a Tyrant. Upon Resident Evil's success, it would become

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