Like the films, the plot in Friday the 13th the game is a simple one. Protect your fellow counselors and the fifteen children staying at Camp Crystal Lake, for three days and three nights from killer Jason Voorhees. To begin a new day you must defeat Jason that previous night. Repeat this process two nights and finish Jason off for good on the third to beat the game.

You start by selecting one of the six counselors. If one happens to be killed you’ll get to choose another and repeat until all are dead. Protecting the kids and your fellow counselors are the games only priorities. Each counselor is slightly different in the same four abilities. Some run fast some slow, some jump high some not so much and some row faster then others. The fourth ability is throwing weapons which is how counselors attack. You’ll start with the fairly useless rock, but can upgrade to knives, which should appear in front of you out of thin air about three minutes into the game. The machete, the axe, and the torch are also useable weapons.

Moving through the outside areas of Crystal Lake is done in 2D side scrolling fashion. Inside cabins you move in an almost first person view, pressing up to walk forward, left twice to turn around. It really doesn’t work well at all, especially with turning corners. Paths separate the camp and lead you from one area to the next. You’ll see them sprawling upward or downward on the screen. Some lead you into optional spots like the forests and the cave. The latter holds an optional battle with the rotting head of the deceased Mrs.Voorhees, one of the games few secrets.

Within the first two minutes of play, a frantic beeping will begin. It is very annoying. Pressing start will display the camp map. You must make it to the flashing \ beeping green cabin within the displayed sixty seconds or Jason will kill one of his hostages. Sometimes it’s a single counselor, other times five of the children. Each minute you don’t show, he’ll kill another. If all parish, he’ll move on to another cabin and repeat. If everyone dies, it’s game over.

Hearing only two or three music tracks doesn’t help the game at all and neither does battling the same exact zombie like characters over and over again. They are supposedly Jason’s undead victims. Whatever they are they all look identical. Crows, wolves,and bats are thrown into some areas when day turns to night but mostly, it’s all zombies. The game does have some nice parallax scrolling backgrounds and the indoor cabins music is pretty creepy. Friday the 13th’s biggest problem is the games pacing, it’s terrible. Right from the start it feels like you’re at the end going to fight the final boss. And that’s really all there is to do. Make it to Jason in time and battle Jason off. I suppose you could light the seven fireplaces in the cabins around the camp but for what? The Flashlight!? By the time you get it Jason will have already killed half the camp. Maybe if he only attacked at night so you could actually walk around normally and not in constant panic mode, it would have changed the overall experience for the better. As it is, it feels like the perfect quarter munching arcade game only, released on home console.