SHLOCK HORROR

What’s the oldest horror game that can still make you jump today, or send that acidic tingle of unease up your spine? Dogs bursting through the windows in the original Resident Evil spring to mind, while the PC faithful may point to another glass-breaking moment – the first monster you encounter in the original Alone in the Dark. The last notable horror game before that, Sweet Home on the NES, probably finds itself just on the wrong side of the 1990s to maintain much impact today.

But in that overlooked period between 1989 and 1992, a British studio in the quiet town of Sutton Coldfield made some serious horror headway. Adventure Soft, founded by father-son team Mike and Simon Woodroffe, rebranded itself as Horror Soft, and over the course of three years released four first-person horror games that culminated in the beautifully gruesome Waxworks.

These games straddled a technological leap in PC gaming, introducing new