October 25, 2011
Editor's Note: In honor of
From Screen To Theme's Spooky Spectacular Week,
all articles from October 25-October 31 will
feature something spooky! We hope you enjoy!
Gamer Tuesday Halloween
Special: The Nightmare Before Christmas in
Gaming Retrospective
HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERY BOOOOODY!
This week is the perfect time to scare up some
good, wholesome Disney fun, either by dressing
up as your favorite Disney character or watching
your favorite spooky Disney story. One of the
most beloved of all is Tim Burton's The
Nightmare Before Christmas. Released in 1993
under Disney's Touchstone Pictures banner, the
film tells a morbidly wicked story of Jack
Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloween Town.
He has successfully completed yet another
Halloween, but while all the ghouls and
creatures celebrate this momentous occasion,
Jack begins to feel empty. Even if Halloween is
what he does best, in true Disney character
fashion, he yearns for more. While walking
through the forest, he stumbles upon various
doors, one of them a door shaped in the form of
a Christmas Tree. He opens it and is sent to
Christmas town, where he is delighted by all the
color and joy of this peculiar season. He loves
it so much, he wants to bring Christmas to
Halloween Town, and the end results are quite
dreary.

The stunning stop motion
animation combined with the haunting music and
chilling sense of humor turned the film into a
fantastic cult classic. As the years went on,
however, the fans grew larger in size. Slowly,
but surely, they embraced the macabre fun of
Burton's imagination, and what was once
considered to be one of Disney's 'B' movies
became a beloved classic. Disney even
re-released it several times as a 3D film and
under the Walt Disney Pictures banner.
Disneyland is the host of the Haunted Mansion
Holiday, which turns the classic Haunted Mansion
ride into a Nightmare Before Christmas
attraction from October till December. There are
even meet and greets with Jack Skellington and
Sally!

With the blooming success of the
film and its presence in nearly all aspects of
the Disney fandom, The Nightmare Before
Christmas eventually yielded a couple of
video game adaptations. One of the earliest
attempts at creating a digital version of The
Nightmare Before Christmas was actually a
small element in a rather epic Disney video
game. In 2002, Japanese developer Square Enix
teamed up with Disney Interactive and released
Kingdom Hearts, a massive crossover role playing
game where Disney's classic worlds and
characters collide with the epic storytelling
and gameplay of Square's Final Fantasy series.
The game starred a young boy named Sora as he
ventures alongside Donald Duck and Goofy in
search of his friends throughout various worlds.
One of these happened to be the most surprising
of them all: Halloween Town.

Based upon the movie and
featuring an original story, Halloween Town
features the appearance of Jack, Sally, Dr.
Finkelstein, The Mayor of Halloween Town, Shock,
Lock and Barrel and, of course, Oogie Boogie as
the main antagonist. Oogie is one of the many
Disney villains that are trying to destroy the
Disney worlds by drowning them in darkness. When
Sora, Donald, and Goofy visit this world, they
are transformed into denizens of Halloween Town.
Sora becomes a vampire, Donald into a mummy, and
Goofy into Frankenstein's monster. Kingdom
Hearts' grandiose visual fidelity allowed the
world to look and feel like the original film,
making it one of the most memorable worlds in
the whole game. You could travel down the same
curvy hill Jack frequents to, ride on Shock,
Lock and Barrel's walking tub, and escape Oogie
Boogie's gambling death machine. Even the
Keyblade Sora receives after completing this
world is based on the movie!

Despite being just one world in
one game, Halloween Town re-introduced The
Nightmare Before Christmas to many players
who had grown up with the film, or helped them
discover it for the first time in some cases. By
2002, the film was already gaining the great
popularity it is experiencing today, and it is
likely that the success of both Kingdom Hearts
and the film inspired another famous Japanese
company to create their own take on The
Nightmare Before Christmas. That company
happened to be none other than Capcom.

If you are a regular Gamer
Tuesday reader then you know how important
Capcom was in the history of Disney gaming.
Their partnership with Disney gave us some of
the most creative and wonderful games ever
created. By the beginning of the year 2000,
however, that partnership had slowed down,
seeing only a few Disney games for the systems
of that era. In 2005, Capcom would once again
take what they have learned from developing
their own titles and place it upon a famous
Disney franchise. The game would be The
Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge.

Released for the PlayStation 2
and Xbox, Oogie's Revenge acts as a direct
sequel to the feature film as Jack is once again
butting heads with the bug monster. Jack has
just completed yet another Halloween, but is
still hoping to find better, more frightful
treats. In the process, he acquires a Soul
Rubber, a piece of cloth that allows Jack to
transform into any form, including the Pumpkin
King form. Lock, Shock and Barrel bring back
Oogie Boogie to life and takes over Halloween
Town. Gameplay wise, Oogie's Revnge is
reminiscent of Capcom's own Devil May Cry
series. But while that series is known for its
brutal difficulty, Oogie's Revenge has been
created with a young audience in mind. There are
several levels based on the other Holiday doors
seen in the original film.

That same year, another The
Nightmare Before Christmas video game was
released, this time for the Game Boy Advance and
titled The Pumpkin King, developed by TOSE.
While Oogie's Revenge served as a direct sequel
to the film, The Pumpkin King acts as a prequel.
The story details how Jack first met Oogie
Boogie and soon became the Pumpkin King of
Halloween Town. Oogie Boogie has created a new
holiday called 'Bug Day,' but the citizens of
Halloween Town are focused on Halloween. Oogie
is so mad that he sends his henchmen to kidnap
Jack, but instead bring back Sally! Now, Jack
must try and get Sally back and be home in time
for the Halloween festivities! The Pumpkin King
is a 2D adventure/platforming title where Jack
uses several guns as his main method of defense.

By the end of 2005, Kingdom
Hearts had become a very popular video game
franchise. In 2004, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of
Memories was released for the Game Boy Advance.
The game stars Sora once again as he enters a
mysterious castle called Castle Oblivion and
relives the best moments of his previous
adventure. Problem is, the further he explores
the castle, the more memories he loses. One of
Sora's (and the fans') most vivid memories lies
in Halloween Town, which has been recreated in
Chain of Memories. Jack and the gang return once
more, but due to Sora's memories being
manipulated, his vision of Halloween Town is one
that is very different from the first adventure.
Chain of Memories was re-made was a 3D game for
the PlayStation 2. It also included Halloween
Town.

Chain of Memories was announced
alongside the franchise's true direct sequel,
Kingdom Hearts 2, also for the PlayStation 2.
When the game was released, The Nightmare
Before Christmas was already popular in the
Disney fandom, so a return to Halloween Town was
not only anticipated but expected. Sora and the
gang do return to Halloween Town, but this time,
get also get to visit Christmas Town! They get
to meet Santa Claus and experience a brand new
storyline different from the feature film. In
the extended edition of Kingdom Hearts 2, called
Final Mix and only released in Japan, Sora,
Donald and Goofy don creepy Christmas costumes
when visiting Christmas Town.

In all of the video game
adaptations of The Nightmare Before
Christmas, lots of importance was placed
upon how the game looked and sounded. After all,
the feature film has been praised for its unique
attention to detail and haunting music. The
Kingdom Hearts games remained the most loyal to
the movie's aesthetics, but the Capcom and TOSE
games didn't stray that far behind. Great effort
has been put in preserving the vocal
performances of the original film. While not all
of the original voice actors returned to voice
their original characters, the sound-alikes
heard throughout the various video games do a
really good job of keeping the charm and wit
these characters present.

Such is the film's legacy that
its few video game appearances have been solid
to great representations of its twisted
imagination. Whether as a full-fludged video
game or just a small segment of an even bigger
Disney video game, The Nightmare Before
Christmas would captivate gamers in the same
way it captured movie goers in 1993 and beyond.
Halloween isn't complete without paying Jack and
his friends a visit, and these games allow you
to do just that.
