Alas, poor Horror High

I got into role playing when I was much younger (as I assume most people do), although I never played any formal system until much later. My best friend, Joe, and I played a very informal game that had no real rules. We would just present situations for the other person to figure out and imagine the consequences.

Joe and I had spent a lot of time talking about what sort of video game we would design ourselves. We wanted to create something more open and "choose your own adventure" style.

At some point it just naturally evolved into playing out the type of story without the limitations of a strict game system.

Joe created a game called "Horror High." The premise was that aliens had taken over the school and abducted everyone while you were in the bathroom. You had to figure out how to survive a situation with these green, laser toting, amoeba-like creatures roaming the halls. Along the way sharpened pencils and straws with spit wads are the weapons that come to your aid. There was plenty of mystery involved in finding your way through the maze-like school; "natural" barriers like fallen lockers, pools of acid and locked doors had to be circumnavigated. Eventually I found my way to the space ship that had crashed through the school bell tower on top of the gymnasium, and battled the "Aliens" reminiscent boss to free the school.

Of all of the games we played, this was the longest running and the only one that reached completion. I think it was largely inspired by the NES game "Maniac Mansion." It was probably the most fun I'd had playing any sort of game growing up, and yet there were no formal rules to the game. All we needed was Joe's pencil drawing of the school with all of the relevant information written on the sides, a list of the items I'd acquired while exploring the school and, most importantly, an uninhibited imagination.

Ah, those were the days. Unfortunately, our Spanish teacher caught Joe showing off the game to a classmate, promptly confiscated it and threw it away. In later years, when we made our abortive attempts at programming video games, we tried and failed to resurrect it. Programming always proved to be to tedious and limiting for any fruitful achievement.

So long "Horror High." I'll never forget you.