/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7319584
Outside of technicalities on when the genre became a genre, one can debate which was the first game that could be categorized that way.

However, since the boundaries of sub-genres are prone to opinion, that is also prone to opinion.
Personally I like to think there has to be enough survival gameplay mechanics, and that those survival mechanics are a center piece of the game's gameplay. This is why House Of The Dead isn't a survival horror, because there is basically no survival gameplay mechanics.

Under that idea, I personally wouldn't call games like Hugo's House of Horror survival horror either, and the first game that I've found in my studies centered on survival gameplay mechanics, and with plenty of different survival mechanics, AND with a horror theme, is Zombi which was released on Amstra CPC in 1986 (re-released in other platforms on colour later on).

Basically, anything older just doesn't have enough survival mechanics to warrant the title, simply because the mechanics are too simple; and again, if you include those games as "survival horror" you might as well include House Of The Dead because they have just about as much survival mechanics. So, I think it's a fair line.