There was a time in the world of video games where nearly every movie that came out, had to have a video game based on it. Often times this would happen with things that couldn’t perceivably even have a game attached to it whether it be the “Alvin & the Chipmunks” movies or “Up” from Pixar. Even “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” got a PC adventure game back in the 80s. Things have improved over time in terms of passionate developers tackling things they love. So, it’s our hope that we’re about to time warp again to a place where “The Rocky Horror Show“ is getting the retro style platformer game it could’ve had if it were made today.
FreakZone games has been developing a side-scrolling video game based on the cult classic musical and it’s currently out now for $9.99. The makers of the game are also notable for having crafted the Angry Video Game Nerd Adventure titles over the last several years. If you’re familiar with those projects, then that shouldn’t be a surprising fact given how closely this new title looks and seems to play like those games.
In the brief trailer for The Rocky Horrow Show Video Game we see the faux 8-bit graphical style alongside the kind of flourishes and detail that wouldn’t have quite worked back on the consoles of the era. A chip tune version of “Time Warp” plays in the background as we see Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott jumping, avoiding obstacles, picking up objects and encountering other characters from the musical. Which, speaking of musical, the trailer and webpage for the project specifically state that the game is based on the musical. This is also presumably why it’s not called “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” video game, because the stage show and film, while almost the same, have several differences.
The description for the game seems to make it keep in line with some of the other titles from FreakZone in that it’s a challenging platformer with “tricky traps and challenges but with infinite retries.” Hopefully it’s not too difficult in that sense; one of the criticisms of their Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures was how intentionally hard the games were. In the developer’s effort to recreate the difficulty of old school games they exaggerated it. Hopefully that doesn’t happen here given the potential for fun in seeing the story playout in this format. Infinite continues only mean so much if the game is too hard to get through. And we need to see all the 8-bit Frank-N-Furter we can get.
[Editor’s note: ITS SO CUTE AND SO MUCH FUN. If you are at all a fan of RHPS, you will love it. I played for about two hours yesterday.]
The game is currently out on Steam, Switch, PlayStation consoles and Xbox so you can dive into it right now if you want. Or, in other words, if you really want to play it you won’t have to be waiting with too much antici…
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