How To Beat "Friday the 13th" for the NES

People are always coming up to me, "Mark, Mark, please, tell me how you're able to beat 'Friday the 13th' on Nintendo so frequently and fearlessly—it seems so impossible!" So here I've written up a detailed guide to winning this challenging but infinitely rewarding game.

I've never been particularly good at video games; even as a kid they confused me. My timing is poor, my reflexes slow, and my ability to locate hidden treasure, weapons, or bright shiny hearts, nearly nonexistent. At a young age I made the unconscious decision to become the master of just one game, devoting the majority of my video game playing time to one title, "Friday the 13th," by LJN, widely regarded as one of the five best games made for the Nintendo Entertainment System (one of the three best, depending on which publication you're reading). I feel confident that while there may be a few individuals out there who can match my skills at "Friday the 13th," there are none who can top them.

And there is no reason that you too, with enough concentration and years of practice, cannot become as adept at this game as I have. Here's a basic strategy I've put together over the years, one that frequently helps me beat Jason that important third time, and usually while retaining all of my counselors and endangered children.

The first thing I’d recommend, but which isn’t strictly necessary, is watching one of your favorite Friday the 13^th movies before playing. This will provide you with inspiration and possibly some suggestions for defeating Jason. *Spotting his weaknesses in the film can help you in your video game battle against him.

As you know, the game is divided into three days and nights, and you must defeat Jason, knocking his energy bar down to zero, three times, one for each day. When you’re not rushing to the children’s or other counselors’ aid, here's a list of things you'll want to try and accomplish on Day One:

1. Starting with Crissy and Mark, easily your best counselors, fight zombies and search for vitamins, which will certainly prove beneficial later on. Killing enough zombies will eventually get you a machete.

2. Once you have the machete—and it should be Mark or Crissy who’s obtained it, as I said above—go to the cave and defeat Mrs. Voorhees’ severed head (if you don’t know how to get to Mrs. V’s secret lair, then this guide is too advanced for you; please seek out a guide for beginners). If you beat her with the knife, good for you, you just get a machete—but if you come to the fight with a machete already in hand, you’ll be rewarded with an axe. Now switch to your other best player (Mark or Crissy) and fight zombies and ward off Jason; you should be able to get another machete by the end of Day One.

3. Optional – find the torch. You can presumably do this by lighting all the fireplaces in the seven larger cabins, but I’ve always found it’s pretty random whether spending all this time lighting fireplaces actually reveals a torch or not. Sometimes it does, most of the time it doesn’t, and is just frustrating. The torch is awesome but not necessary for defeating Jason.

If you’ve played Day One correctly, Jason will be temporarily defeated, you’ll still have all your children and counselors, and you should have an axe. If you didn’t spend most of the rest of your time just goofing around in the woods, you’ll probably have a machete too.

On to Day Two. Now listen, once you have an axe and a machete, one for Crissy, one for Mark, use Laura; she’s your third best counselor. Kill some zombies, maybe find her a machete.

But right away, when Day Two starts up, take your axe-wielding counselor and head to the cave, beat Mrs. V for the second time, and pick up the sweater. This will come in handy when facing Jason for the rest of the game, as it significantly lessens the amount of damage he can do to you.

Now, Jason’s a bit faster on Day Two, but you should still be able to fend him off in the cabins. When you get to Day Three, your best option is, when possible, to fight him outside of the cabins. But let’s slow down for a moment, we’re not there just yet.

Whoever is wearing the sweater is, for all intents and purposes, your lead counselor. Stick kinda near the lake and take out zombies in order to pick up more vitamins. If your axe-carying, sweater-wearing counselor should happen to die during Day Two, I’d say turn the game off and start again. If you don’t, it’s a serious uphill battle.

Does Jason attack the children more frequently on Day Two? I’ll leave that for you to decide, but it certainly seems that way to me. You want to make sure you can get over to those three cabins by the lake while you still have at least thirty seconds left on your Dead Child Buzzer, because after that, every five seconds that go by, Jason offs a kid. True, you can beat the game with multiple child casualties and still “win,” but then, what does that say about your skills as head counselor? Why even bother signing up to head up a summer camp in the first place if you’re not even able to protect the kids? Personally, I consider any victory in which one or more child dies to be pretty much null and void. If you lose any of the kids, my advice is to turn off the game and start again.

If you’ve done everything correctly, if you’re using Mark and Crissy the most, with occasional assists from Laura, who really isn’t all that bad, then Day Two should pass relatively quickly.

Day Three, in comparison, is a lightning bolt of speed and fury, that is over and done almost as soon as it’s begun.

Day Three can be pretty stressful, depending on your condition and state of mind going into it. I’d recommend pausing the game and getting yourself something to drink. And maybe a bowl of cereal, with or without milk. Try to avoid cereals with a low sugar content; these won’t help you much at all. Butterscotch candies are also good for replenishing your energy and sharpening your mind before going into Day Three.

Just like in Day Two, you’ll want to head on over to the cave with your axe to take a third crack at Mrs. V. She’s a lot tougher this time around. Hopefully fighting her the last couple days has helped tighten up your reflexes and you can dodge her swooping attacks. Once you beat her on the third day, you’ll be given the pitchfork, easily the best, and raddest-looking, weapon in the game.

Fighting Jason outside of the cabin is more or less a necessity in Day Three. You can try and take him outside during Day Two (I frequently do), but it’s a bit risky when he’s got most or all of his energy, and when you’re lacking a pitchfork. On Day Three, fighting him in the cabin is a real bastard of a time. He attacks so quickly, he’s virtually impossible to dodge. If you have to fight him in a cabin, hopefully you’ll be using the axe or the pitchfork (or the torch, if you spent the time it took trying to get it, and were lucky enough to receive it), and you can simply hit him with it as much as possible till he lets you go; don’t even bother trying to dodge his attacks, ‘cause it won’t happen.

It’s not fun to lose a counselor, but if you find the children are being attacked and your sweater-wearing counselor is too far away to get there in time, send someone closer to the lake. You can sacrifice Paul, Debbie, or George without hurting your chances of beating the game. Send one of them to the cabins by the lake, let them take their best shot, and it’ll give you time to get one of your worthwhile characters over there.

OK, so how bout Jason’s attacking one of your counselors, not one of your leaders, and it’s Day Three, and he’s hard as shit to defeat inside a cabin? Hurry over to that cabin, go inside, and switch to the counselor under attack and get them out of the cabin; run them down the road to the nearest small cabin, then pause the game and switch back to your lead counselor, who is now alone in the cabin with Jason. Press down once and you’ll be at the exit to the cabin. Hopefully Jason doesn’t appear right there. If he does, you have no choice but to take him on inside the cabin (as you would, of course, have to do if he requested a fight in one of the children’s cabins by the lake, where you’re not allowed the option of tricking him into going outside).

But if he doesn’t appear, then exit the cabin, and fire off the pitchfork as many times as you possibly can. Jason will be hitting you, but you’ll also be wearing his mother’s sweater and you’ll be stocked up on vitamins. If you can hit him enough times with the pitchfork, you could potentially defeat him the first time you face Jason outside of a cabin.

If you lose your lead counselor, the one with the sweater and the pitchfork, I’d probably recommend turning off the game and starting again. It’s possible to beat the game still, especially if you’ve got another counselor armed with an axe or torch, but it isn’t easy.

Few people are able to consistently beat this masterful game. ** So if you find that the above plan works for you, don’t be alarmed if you start hearing from friends and relatives you didn’t know you had—people will likely start inviting themselves over, ostensibly to watch a movie, play skee ball at the local arcade, or just get high on paint fumes, but you’ll soon find that what they’re really after is a comfortable seat in your living room, with a good view of the TV, upon which will be displayed your triumph defeat of NES Jason.

* This may not actually be true.

** This definitely is not true.