20 years of Silent Hill
What made me a Fan and why am I still in this hell hole.
In the midst of the soon Silent Hill 2 Remake out into the jungle of hate we call Gaming fans, it just makes me linger in my humble beginnings of what made me a fan of this well-known and loved franchised that was created back in the '90s by a group of weirdos and creative people that eventually called themselves "Silent Hill team" from a little company called KONAMI.
We all know their backstory, how they came up with the idea, and how the first project came out in 1999, but we all have different personal experiences in how we bumped into this beautiful and dark title.
So I am going to start with the only one I know who fell deeply in love with this spooky story.
ME.
Back in 1999, I did not have internet, I did not have anything like GamePro on the TV. I barely had on my hands any gaming magazine and this was when I was roughly in Middle School, I didn't have a lot of spending money back then and if I did I probably threw it on my anime stuff and maybe gathered enough to get a ticket on the local Anime Convention that my friends and I tried to get in to. To be perfectly frank I wasn't even interested in video games back then, it wasn't my thing really... but what I was more enamored with was scary and spooky stories.
Throughout my life I enjoyed horror movies and shows, the feeling of being scared and even the rush of it was something I enjoyed a lot. I loved horror books as well so any type of media that was thrown to me with ghosts, zombies, and dark backgrounds was always well received by me.
After middle school and into high school my horizons opened up to more types of people, someone talked about this game about a man looking for his daughter in a haunted town full of monsters, and it instantly caught my attention. I got to see the trailer for such a game and I was very interested in it, but for me, it was rather hard to get games back then. My only link for it in my family was a cousin of mine who had a PS1 that one more cracked than anything, her brother got her a big gallery of games, and every time we had the chance to play one on our monthly sleepovers we did... but sadly Fatal Frame was the main one we grabbed because WE LOVED GHOSTS.
She did have Silent Hill 1 in her collection, and we played it for some time... but I lacked the skills to play that game ( I LACK A LOT OF GAMING SKILLS STILL TO THIS DAY), by this time... it was already an old game, I missed the 2nd entree and the 3rd. I did not know anything about anything that was going on but the artwork and the casual bump of articles in the magazines that I had a hold on.
As time passed, my brother wanted an Xbox (the first Xbox) and one day on a flea market I had some spare money for myself and saw Silent Hill 4 The Room.
By this time I was more into video games and I had the internet and everything to it ( it was still the wild times) so I said " Well it's gonna be the only chance I am going to have to play this thing". Bought it and brought it home. During this time I had a lot of free time after classes also my family was mostly out working and my brother studied in the evenings so most of my day was just me by myself. And that was how I got to play this weird dark adventure.
Silent Hill 4 The Room is 20 years old now, and I was around that age back then. As I started this dark adventure of frustration and visual madness I concluded that THIS IS A GREAT GAME, HOW DID I NOT PLAY ANY OF THIS BEFORE??? The lore, the visual, the ambient... the monsters, the ghosts, and the story was OH SO PERFECT. At least for me, at this time I did not meddle in gaming forums, the most I had was GameFaqs and it was when I got stuck on game stages. I fell in love with Henry Townsend and his ordeal. That was my door opening for everything else, the little notes and stories behind the characters and how they added some Easter eggs about Silent Hill 2 around it and other things about the games made me want to know more, so in my spare time I started wandering around pages with info and every time I bumped with something about it I got it just to make myself an idea.
The Next one I had my hands on was Silent Hill 2 but for the computer. A friend burned a CD with it and gave it to me and I was again in love with the series... but let me not fool you NEVER I could finish that game, for one reason or another, always stuck in certain places... also that copy of the game was pretty bad and it kept crashing on the 3rd CD.
Later I got my hands on a PS2 and that was when I got Silent Hill 3. I PLAYED THE LIVING HELL OUT OF THAT ONE. Finished it in every way possible and had my costumes and modes and all that great game. Also have to mention was when I had sadly my dark times and found out that I had cancer... thus I spent a lot of time in bed with time on my hands, so I played that game even more.
Silent Hill was a big part of my trying to cope with what was going on, I got a PSP and a friend of mine gave me Silent Hill Origins, another one that I played till my fingers went numb.
It's been years, I even got it when I had my PS3 that awful remaster they brought out as the Silent Hill HD collection. It was hard for me to play anything on that thing, I tried hard to play it again but there was something lost in the feeling of those games ( besides the voice acting that was just strange).
I watched the movie and loved it when it came out as well.
My inner fangirl has always been deeply into Silent Hill, it just created a strange gateway into a dark corner that I enjoyed poking it from time to time. I guess the deeply created stories and such made me more involved in it. I did turn into that fan that related ANYTHING spooky with Silent Hill, but it was also the factor that there was a lot of inspiration taken from so many other media that made it what it was.
When Silent Hill Homecoming came I was excited to play it. I did not play it right away or even bought it at all... By this time Blockbuster was still around and I had the option to rent it and see how the game felt, most of the time I did not even think it and just bought it but in my brain, I thought... maybe let us just test it.
I was so lucky to do this because I have never felt so frustrated in my life. The vibe and look were good, the monsters and the story... well...
I remember sitting in my TV room with my PS3 controller watching how terrible the game play was, I was in awe at how bad it felt... how HARD it was, even I thought well maybe I need to lower the difficulty BUT IT WAS IN EASY. I got stuck right after a couple of hours of game play, what was worse was that I just spent a good penny for this awful game and I still had 4 days to try and finish it... but I hardly did any kind of advancement and I ended up returning it a day earlier. I even recall asking if I could get my money back cause that thing was unplayable, of course, they denied it.
My trust was broken at this point, and my life went on...
With Downpour... I had a bit more of hope. I never did think it was a terrible game as everyone talks about it. I also did the same and rented it, again I had a lot of glitches and this time I just flat-out returned it that day and told them HEY I CAN'T PLAY THIS. They checked the thing and said yeah it came out flaky ... gave me my money back and went on with my life.
I recalled they said "Oh we patched it", by this time... I bought it on a second hand and that's when I did play it, and it was a lot better than what I expected. It was a dumb little game, but fun as hell and it was rather enjoyable, it almost reminded me of SH4, it was out of the norm and the soundtrack was fun... there are still some songs that I have to this day stuck on my playlist.
THE PRESENT.
It's been... almost 20 years since I put my feet on the waters of Silent Hill and for 10 years of them we were mostly in the darkness of anything new.
The last one that I thought was unnerving. Horrible and heartbreaking was P.T.
I played this at my boyfriend's (now husband) home one evening, he got it for me as a surprise and I was ready for it. Not to mention we had a hard time finishing that little mind fuck of a demo. That only stayed as that, a Demo that got canceled.
After that... there was NOTHING.
For years we waited patiently for ANYTHING, every E3 ( now non-existent) till most of us just moved on with our lives.
I felt like most of us fans had fond memories of what Silent Hill did for us in the forming years, some of us moved on others just stayed there waiting, and others made their own thing, which has been a beautiful way to contribute to what this franchise came to be.
A lot of hate was formed as well and a lot of crazies for certain. But most of us just remembered the good times we had being spooked by the monsters that hid in the dark corners. The darkness in the hearts of men and also... the fascination that came from a cult and its rituals, which was what I loved.
Then came 2022 with the surprising revelation of several projects coming with the Silent Hill Brand. I was very excited about the new concepts and projects that they announced. A new movie even is in the midst of it all and I hope it's a good one. I got to play the little game they did called " Short message" which was so fun to play, the vibe and the feeling were there again, made me feel that same vibe once more.
For the next couple of weeks, I will have (hopefully) SH2 Remake, that personally am very excited to see...
I try to keep myself away from the toxicity of the fandom that has become of the Silent Hill Community because I feel (as we mentioned before) that if I listen to all the hate I may miss out on something so good and so fun that I will regret it once more, and now that I have some time to play it. People love to hate, and that hate makes things not better... but worse for the industry, I did try my best back then to experience what Silent Hill was all about.
One of the factors that I tell about why I stopped streaming was the fact that I had a lot of hate for how I did things, I did not enjoy my gameplay... I felt that people wanted me failing and when I did they were not shy about telling me HOW BAD I was doing... Games are made to be entertainment, something fun, something to disconnect from reality. And I want to keep it that way. I do wanna make a reaction to this, my first reaction would be awesome for me to share... but beyond that, I feel that I have to let myself walk to lonely road by myself...
I just wanted to share my little experience with these games and how they helped me overcome some rough times in life. Not everyone had this type of experience, I just wonder sometimes how haters become these ugly goblins that end up just hating anything remotely new. Advancing and Evolving is inevitable. Innovation and Progress as well. Not everyone is open to it for sure but why hate everything? I always try to give the benefit of the doubt and hope for the best even when people scream till their face turns blue that it's not what THEY wanted.
Let's be fair, if you don't want to play or experience the new thing... just keep doing what you love. If playing old-school games is your thing, just keep doing it! It is what makes you happy. I get excited about new things, innovation, and progress. Nostalgia is a big thing that is unstoppable and they will market it like there is no tomorrow. I go from time to time to my old games and yeah the feeling is different, they hit differently indeed.
But I am making this longer than it should.
To end this I would like to say that... Everyone has the right to be happy with whatever they enjoy, we are here to have a fun time and we are not here for a long time...
If y'all wanna spend the rest of your life hating and telling everyone how BAD their decisions and tastes are, well... as long as it makes you happy, go on and keep going.
Unless of course...
It doesn't.
Thank you for reading this little rant I did about one of my older passions that made a big part for my inspiration and art.
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