Celebrate Halloween with … Halloween, imagined as a 1990s side-scroller

Fresh from announcing an Unreal Engine-powered adaptation of the 1978 slasher classic Halloween, Boss Team Games is following that up with two side-scrolling 16-bit-style beat-em-ups based on grindhouse classics, kicking off a new platform it calls RetroRealms.

Michael Myers, the big bad from Halloween, is also involved in RetroRealms’ debut, as is Ash Williams from the Evil Dead franchise (specifically the Ash vs. Evil Dead series that aired on Starz from 2015 to 2018). The two games are imagined as 1990s arcade throwbacks, and they launch on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X on Oct. 13.

Both games are M-rated, packed with the kind of pixelated blood and gore that would have driven a Senate select committee nuts if they’d actually been put in an arcade cabinet. They’re available separately, too, for $24.99 each. A disc edition comprising both games will be available for $49.99.

While players don’t have to buy both, Boss Team clearly wants them to, and says that having both games will unlock new content and features in both games.

Boss Team didn’t say what else is on the horizon for RetroRealms, but this is a publisher that has specialized in licensed content. They delivered 2022’s Unreal 4-powered Evil Dead: The Game (developed by Saber Interactive), and though its reviews came in middling, mostly citing a lack of polish, that probably still beat expectations considering the material in hand and the need to make a buck off it.

On Monday, Boss Team announced (through IGN) that it had two Halloween games in development. Evidently the RetroRealms adaptation was the second; the first is, like Evil Dead: The Game, a triple-A adaptation of the seminal slasher flick. It promises to recreate key moments from the film and let fans “play as classic characters from one of the most iconic and important horror films of all time.”

Director John Carpenter is involved in the development of the Halloween adaptation. It does not yet have a launch date or window.

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