Originally published at AxeWound.net

Hay guys this game rules and you can kick a zombie in the crotch

Chances are good that, even if you spent an unhealthy amount of time playing video games as a child, you didn’t hear about Splatterhouse when it was originally released in North American arcades in 1991. While the Splatterhouse series is relatively well known and respected among gaming hyper-geeks today, mostly on the strength of its two Genesis sequels, the original installment never garnered much attention and was extremely scarce in arcades across the country. This is especially surprising because of its exceedingly high level of gore, which was almost guaranteed to put any game under tons of scrutiny from gamers and game haters alike, especially in the early 90s.

It’s possible that the arcade game was so rare because arcade owners actually found it too violent (remember, this was before Mortal Kombat’s spatters and spines helped to prove the equation blood + guts = $$$), and either never ordered it for their arcades or quickly sacked it after parental protests. Still, despite Splatterhouse’s obscurity on these shores, Namco’s U.S. branch apparently believed in the game enough to release a home version. Unfortunately, they released it on the most obscure, commercially unsuccessful home console of the age: the TurboGrafx-16.

Perhaps because only total game nerds and rich kids owned the TurboGrafx-16 (exciting Reader Interactivity portion of review: guess which one I qualified as!), Splatterhouse’s home release also came and went relatively unnoticed, despite the gore. It was toned down a bit from the arcade version, but it still retains, among other things, the ability to splat monsters against walls with 2x4s.

The TG-16 version doesn’t have quite as many corpse-littered floors, blood, or recognizably human body parts as the arcade version (due as much to the limitations of the system as to censorship), but there’s still plenty of goop, vomit, and background artwork that looks just enough like internal organs to induce queasiness.

As you may have guessed from the screenshots, Splatterhouse includes several homages to popular horror films. According to the game’s storyline, Rick (the guy in the snazzy blue jumpsuit) and his girlfriend Jessica, two parapsychology majors at the local (and probably unaccredited) college, decide to visit a condemned mansion that once belonged to the famed parapsychologist, Dr. West, in order to fulfill the requirements of a school project. This Dr. West was rumored to have performed countless bizarre experiments on animals and humans, with chilling results.

Predictably, Rick and Jessica’s field trip goes horribly wrong. They’re attacked by monsters, Rick is knocked senseless, and later awakens to find that Jessica is missing. He resolves to find her. Thus begins the game.

If you’re reading this zine, you likely know much, much more about horror movies than I do, and probably already know that Dr. West is also the name of the doctor in the Re-Animator movies, who enjoyed conducting similar ungodly experiments.

Other references include an unusual boss in the form of a possessed room that hurls its contents (which unfortunately include a lot of sharp and heavy things like knives, a big painting, and a chandelier) at you piece by piece; this is reminiscent of…well, a lot of horror movies featuring evil or mischievous spirits, such as Poltergeist, Evil Dead, and countless others.

Finally, in a pretty obvious reference, the Stage 3 boss looks a lot like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface. This guy, though, manages to outdo ol’ Bubba by carrying around not one, but two perpetually running chainsaws. In fact, he doesn’t even have to carry them around, because they’re fused to his hands. (Wait, is that another Evil Dead reference?) He also looks a hell of a lot cooler than Leatherface did in his only video game appearance to date.

I’m sure there are more references packed into the game, but that should cover all of the most obvious ones.

What? You think I’m forgetting something?

Well, actually, no, I’m not. You see, that mask that Rick’s wearing isn’t a hockey mask. It’s actually the Terror Mask, an “ancient Aztec ritual mask” that Rick found attached to his face after he awoke, and it contains many supernatural and spooky powers. The resemblance to a certain horror movie icon is entirely coincidental.

Still don’t buy it? Yeah, I didn’t either. Apparently, neither did Namco’s localization team and/or lawyers: they recolored Rick’s mask red and added a few extra jagged lines in the North American version to reduce the risk of lawsuits. This is an example of a fairly common phenomenon in game localization, known as M. Bison syndrome.

Even though Splatterhouse is essentially a side-scrolling beat ‘em up in the vein of Final Fight (except with only a single plane of movement, more decaying monsters, and fewer characters named after rock n’ roll icons and legendary wrestlers), it’s aged better than most games of that ilk due to its unique setting, top-notch music, cool and well-rendered enemies, and…yeah, the gore doesn’t hurt. The difficulty level is nowhere near as high as I remember it seeming as a kid, although that phenomenon is not isolated to Splatterhouse; I’ve had a few similar experiences in replaying old games that have served to demonstrate just how uncoordinated I was back then. Rick moves a little sluggishly sometimes (particularly while jumping), but the controls are responsive overall, and still hold up better than those of many games that enjoyed significantly more popularity.

Splatterhouse can’t be considered very innovative in terms of gameplay, but the game’s creators did make some design decisions that demonstrated the desire to progress beyond the “walk right, punch things, repeat” mantra that defined most Final Fight clones. For example, although the game consists of seven mostly linear stages, Stages 4 and 5 include several opportunities to choose between branching paths. You’ll end up facing the same boss monster at the end, but there are at least three different ways to get to it, most with unique enemies that aren’t found anywhere else in the game.

MINOR SPOILER WARNING: In another notable decision, the ending for Splatterhouse is bittersweet at best, which was rare for games of the time. Most game developers had only recently graduated to giving the player something other than a plain congratulations screen—which they had finally perfected after several failed attempts—and didn’t often go far beyond a simple happily-ever-after resolution. Splatterhouse, though, gives you some foreshadowing about two-thirds of the way through the game that things might not turn out perfectly for Rick and Jessica.

This scene scared the hell out of me as a kid. Much more than the game’s final boss, a 200-foot tall corpse who pops out of the ground and claws at Rick with his rotting limbs. Although that might sound frightening (and although the fight is accompanied by some truly righteous music), to me he always just looked like he was made out of a mountain of mozzarella.

Nintendo gave the TurboGrafx-16 version of Splatterhouse a second chance at recognition when they released it for the Wii’s Virtual Console last year. If you’re looking for a game that offers brainless, bloody fun with a great atmosphere and a few interesting quirks, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Oh yeah. That scary guy with the two chainsaws and a bag over his head? Guess what his official name is.

No, go on, guess.

All right, fine: His name is “Biggy Man.”

No, seriously.

*cough*

oh guys also you can kick a fetus in the head

lol take that jerry fall well

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References:

Splatterhouse’s entry at Wikipedia – Assorted facts.
Splatterhouse page at KLOV.com – Arcade game screenshot, backstory and Terror Mask info.
West Mansion: The Splatterhouse Homepage – Exhaustive source for obscure trivia, little-known secrets, and everything else you could want to know about the Splatterhouse series.

Tags: blood & guts, pc engine, turbografx 16, video games

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.