My very first experience with these games was Splatter House 3 on the Sega Genesis. My memory of it was kind of hazy; I remembered getting lost in a house and punching a lot of weird shit.
After recently replaying it, I can say that it's exactly the same, only worse. The key difference being that I'm of the mind now that I should be able to figure out how the house works, and that there isn't any reason for someone of comparable intelligence to get lost in this fucking house. It feels more like a joke than anything. I can still at this point tell you very little about this game. I can't tell if enemies really respawn or not. I don't know. I don't know what rooms I've been in, ever. I assume sometimes when I've gone through six empty rooms that that means I'm covering the same ground again, but no, don't be fooled by that type of naive logic. Enemies will spawn where and when they want to.
I very clearly remember this advertisement in some now-obscure gaming magazine I had picked up. At the time I didn't know what 'non-linear game play' meant, and after playing it I could only assume it meant "You will always be fucking lost, but that's okay, just punch more shit". One thing I did enjoy about this game though, is that you can pick up lots of weapons: strange pieces of wood or cinder blocks, etc. Bashing enemies with them is fun, but my real joy comes from what happens if you drop them. If for any reason you lose the object you're holding a skull will come from the wall and pick it up and carry it away to another room. Sometimes you're lucky enough to grab your object back before the ghostly skull manages to, quite literally, sink his teeth into it, but more often than not you fall just a little short. I found myself getting a great kick out of this. I'd lose my object then have a goal for myself-- find the fucking room where the skull faces (who you can't kill, by the way) were hiding my shit. Even right now I find my mind racing with what they were planning on doing with my whoop-ass objects.
And despite all of that, the game is actually really easy. I know, right? There's a time limit per-floor, and even though I'm constantly lost I always managed to make it to the boss before the time limit was up (kind of), and progress to the next level. Sure, my wife got killed because I ran out of time in the boss fight, and my son was also viciously slaughtered, but it's all in good fun. I'm told the time limit only affect 'things that happen' and doesn't make you actually lose the game.
Good call.
After my run-in with Splatter House 3, I didn't hear of any of them for many, many years. It's funny to think that even as a child after playing 3 I was so uninterested in where it came from that I didn't even assume 1 or 2 existed. Splatter House re-entered my life via the Wii Virtual Console when a (sadly) old friend purchased it. It was the Turbo Grafx-16 version and it was awful. For as bad as 3 is, this is just so much worse. It's only redeeming quality in my eyes is that I love hitting things randomly with planks of wood and watching them explode on the back of the screen. Oh, and guy with chainsaw hands is pretty cool.
I beat this game too, despite it all. I think I just love beating awful games to say that I have, but this felt different. Maybe it's a mix of the fact it's pretty easy and appeals to my love of horror, or something else, but whatever it is, this game managed to pull me all the way through it. So kudos to it and a lost wasted weekend.
After that, I swore off Splattering Houses. I wasn't interested in 2 at all. There was nothing it could do to save this in my eyes.
Randomly one day while running through my arcade box I stumbled on a game called "Splatter House - Wanpaku Graffiti". I was so taken aback that a Splatter House game existed for the NES that I couldn't help myself but take a look. Right from the beginning the game is interesting. It starts with a pretty girl kneeling by a grave crying as lightning crashes in the background. A second later the grave opens up and a man in a hockey mask bearing a striking resemblance to a masked killer we all love (which I have neglected to mention until this point) emerges. The girl looks all kinds of happy, but sadly the grave next to our Jason wanna-be opens up revealing a floating pumpkin! Scary! It picks her up and flies away with her. The presumably heartbroken man (Rick) starts after her and the game begins.
This game is good in a way and for reasons that I just can't describe correctly. For starters, it's much better platformer than the other games in this series by far. But where this game really shines for me is it's abundant horror-culture references, and that's even excusing the obvious Friday the 13th one. For example, the first 'boss' you fight in this game is a vampire who, literally, dances Thriller right in front of you. I am dead serious.
Look at it. Look at it. I couldn't make that shit up; I'm not clever enough. Every second of this game is brought to a new level of enjoyment for these references alone. It pays respects to Aliens, The Excorsist, The Fly, Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, House on Haunted Hill, Jaws, and a fuck ton more than I don't even remember. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm just having some fan-boygasm because this game is referencing awesome things. Well, while you may not be completely off-base, this game really is a lot of fun from start to finish. I am forced to strongly recommend it, especially if you only play one Splatter House game.
It actually has a really clever ending too. I really enjoyed this game from front to back. It's more than a novelty.
1 comment:
I want this game D:
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