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Years ago a little game by the name of "Alone in the Dark" was made for the pc. it had polygonal characters that spent the entire game trying to not be eaten by various creatures. it was received well enough but basically was just a blip on the radar.

Then along came the playstation, and on it was a game known as Resident Evil, or Biohazard in japan. it had some very bad live action scenes in it that are still ridiculed to this day and some lines of dialogue that are even worse.

Whoever translated this game definitely did not speak english as a first language.

One little bit that was incorrectly translated was a message that came up on the screen near the beginning of the game, it was supposed to read, "now you must survive the horror" instead it ended up reading "now you enter the survival horror" thus the term "survival horror" was coined and it hasn't gone away since then.

Resident Evil is the most famous Survival horror. it has spawned a dozen or more games and two movies, with a third one in the works. Most of the time you have limited ammo, and health and are fighting enemies that can't seem to be killed. In Resident evil a lot of the scares come from "BOO!" moments, for example a zombie dog bursts out from under a step and starts chasing you.

Another game that started on the playstation is Silent Hill. This game had its scary enemies, some of which are almost invincible. but silent hill was scarier and darker than Resident evil. While Resident Evil would scare you, Silent hill would just creep you right out in fact one of the scariest things in the original game (a ghost baby that walks around giggling) is also one of the creepiest things in the game. the sequels continued this trend with silent hill 2 having its fair share of pants wetting moments.

Newer games such as Eternal Darkness began another form of survival horror in which yopur own sanity is tested. As the game progresses your character starts to go mad and hallucinate, and the game lets it happen, so ther emight be bugs crawling on your screen or the volume might be turned down and you can't stop it.

Call of Cthuhlu is a first person survival horror. you could argue that almost all FPS's are also survival horror games but this one is definitely. throughout most of the game you aren't even armed, but you are chased by very armed individuals. Like Eternal Darkness your sanity is also your worst enemy as you ee more horrifying things you start to lose your grip on reality.

Survival Horror started with a humble idea and a lot of bad translation, but now it is a full fledged video game genre that has earned respect and rewards. In this authors opinion the best way to get scared is with a good survival horror game. i find them to be more frightening than a book or movie. if you like horro try out a survival horror game, you will likely be pleasantly surprised.

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