Spooooooky Games

Guy in a Mask

The Splatterhouse series originally started off as an arcade game before being ported to the TurboGraphx-16.  Two sequels were released on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), and a final fourth game for Xbox360 and PS3.  Looking at screenshots for the various entries in the franchise, it's easy to see where the IP draws its inspiration from...namely a plethora of slasher flicks that came out during the 80s and 90s.  The series protagonist, Rick, starts off looking like Jason Voorhees; right down to the white hockey mask and imposing stature.  If there is one film franchise that influenced Splatterhouse the most though, it would have to be "Evil Dead".  I'll elaborate on that a bit in a moment, but for now lets look at Splatterhouse in more detail.

The first two Splatterhouse games are 2D side-scrolling action titles distilled down to rawest form of gameplay.  The player can walk, jump, crouch, punch, and kick, as well as use weapons found in the environment (such as 2x4s, meat cleavers, shotguns and simple throwing implements).  In the original arcade game it's also possible to get an axe though, somewhat counterintuitively, this is the only time such a weapon appears in the entire series.  The levels themselves are set in and around a large mansion; quite literally a house of horrors.  The first game begins with Rick and his girlfriend, Jennifer, taking refuge from a storm inside a seemingly abandoned country estate.  In classic horror movie fashion, the couple are soon ambushed by a collection of monstrous inhabitants that dwell within.  Jennifer is kidnaped and Rick is incapacitated (or possibly killed) only to be revived a short time later with a mysterious mask fused to his face.  From here he must do battle with a variety of foes including ghouls, zombies, "boreworms", and poltergeists.  Eventually, Rick finds Jennifer.  Unfortunately, their happy reunions is cut tragically short when she transforms into a grotesque abomination determined to murder Rick with weirdly long retractable claws.  Having no other option, players must defeat the monster at which point it reverts back into the form of Jennifer only to disintegrate or evaporate moments later (which one depends on whether it is the home console version or arcade game respectively).  Rick, determined to get revenge, enters the fleshy innermost sanctum of the house.  After fighting through a bunch of half-formed bubble-like creatures, he finds and destroys the source of evil - a giant beating heart.  Once outside though he has one last showdown with a huge fleshy golem that partially rises out of the earth beneath his feet.  The first game then ends with the mask shattering into pieces while the mansion burns down in the background.

The second game takes place three months after the original.  Haunted by nightmares and a sense of guilt, Rick (at the behest of the now reformed and apparently sentient mask) returns to the location of the house under the belief that Jennifer may actually still be alive.  Counter to reason, the mansion and its denizens have reformed on an island in the center of a lake.  Gameplay is mostly the same although the story is much more hopeful in that down in the depths under the titular Splatterhouse, Rick finds Jennifer and brings her back out.  The two then take a ride on a motorboat and make it to shore after shooing away one of the lake's more hostile inhabitants.  Like the original, there's a final showdown against some sort of floating flesh monster before the house sinks into the water as the sun rises.  Like the film Evil Dead 2, Splatterhouse II feels as much like remake as a sequel.  In particular, I like the addition of the very thematically appropriate chainsaw as well as the new bosses and monsters.  Much like the third movie in the Evil Dead series, Army of Darkness, Splatterhouse III deviates from the formula of the previous two entries...in a good way, of course.  

A non-linear beat'em up in the same vein as Streets of Rage (Bareknuckle) or Double Dragon might sound like an odd choice of genre shift, but it actually does a lot to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging.  The mask plays a much more prominent role this time out, as well as getting yet another redesign.  In the original the mask was white, but changed to red in the American console port so as to avoid copyright infringement.  In the sequel, the sports theme is dropped in favor of a more skull-like appearance, though the Japanese version features a more elegant design.  In the third entry the developers split the difference and created a mask that is neither beautiful nor terrifying...and yet still possess a disturbing quality to it.  Unlike the brief time skip between the first and second game, Splatterhouse III takes place around half-a-decade in the future.  Rick has become a successful businessman and Jennifer has given birth to a son, David.  For some reason this family of three decided to buy and move into a big house out in the countryside.  What follows is a home invasion story of the supernatural variety.  Players are tasked with fighting through a series of monster infested rooms in order to rescue Rick's wife and son before a sequence of countdown timers run out.  Because of this it's actually possible to get four different endings:  

• Neither of Rick's family members survive
• Jennifer survives, but David doesn't
• David survives, but Jennifer doesn't
• Both family members survive

Regardless, the final battle this time is against the personification of the mask itself, revealing itself to be the mastermind behind all these terrible events.

I have to admit that, despite not being a fan of gore, the initial three Splatterhouse games made a lasting impression on me.  I can still hear the shrieks of the leaping "mimis", still see the red horror that disguises itself as a teddy bear in Davids bedroom, and still remember the Biggy-man who has saws for hands.  Oh, and about the remake...I never played it, nor any of the quirky spinoffs.  Supposedly, the voice acting in the remake is quite good, but the laconic prose of the earlier games set a mood that isn't well suited to verbosity.  Trying to introduce a proper antagonist to the franchise simply distracted from what's great about the series.  The heavy metal soundtrack didn't really work for me either compared to the eerie tunes from previous three games.  As is often the case in the horror genre, simple is the most effective.  

If Horror Movies were Games...

 

No, not that One

Jesus begins aboard the space station "J.E.S.U.S." (presumably an acronym for something).  20,000km above the Earth's surface, players take the role of Hayao Musou.  According to the in-game text he, along with a multi-nation team of astronauts and scientists are on a mission to explore Hailey's Comet on its 2061 visit to the inner solar system.  The protagonist supposedly has some kind of military background training, but really just looks like your typical 80s action hero.  In fact a lot of this game feels like it was written using a standardized anime checklist:

• 18 year-old main character...check
• Big hair...check
• Little to no personality...check
• Multiple women attracted to him...check
• Adorable mascot sidekick...check*

*It should be noted that said sidekick is a robot that looks like a cross between a wi-fi router and a bunny rabbit.

After being introduced to the crew, the game jumps ahead in time to a rendezvous between two spacecraft - the somewhat confusingly named "Comet" and "Corona".  "Comet" has already done a close pass on Hailey's Comet in order to gather scientific data, but has since become unresponsive.  Therefore, it has fallen to the crew of the "Corona" (including Hayao) figure out what happened.  It doesn't take long for him to discover that an alien entity has gotten onboard.  In fact, this game has a lot in common with the film "Alien".   Two anime productions that also had a lot in common with that classic sci-fi/horror movie ("Lily C.A.T." and "Roots Search") were both released the same year as Jesus (1987).  It is also somewhat of a thematic precursor to video games such as Enemy Zero (1996) and Phase Paradox (2001).  Unlike those two video games though, Jesus doesn't have much in the way of gameplay.  In reality, it is more of a visual novel than proper game.  The presentation consists of mostly static less-than-half-screen sized images.  Player inputs are limited to menu-selected commands such as "use", "take", "look", "search", and "speak" while the story is conveyed via a textbox taking up the bottom part of the screen.  Officially, the game is only in Japanese although a crude English fan translation does exist.  Overall, it's also very short...clocking in at roughly one-and-a-half hours to complete, with very little in the way replay value.  So far, I haven't presented Jesus in a very positive light, but it doesn't have one thing going for it.

The majority of the game runtime is spent poking around the two spaceships, and I have to admit the atmosphere of these locations does a surprisingly good job of setting a creepy mood.  Granted it's not as scary as Sweet Home, but for an 8-bit era game it's still impressive.  The music, which in the early game sounds very jaunty and adventurous (one of the tunes is literally the theme for Dragon Quest) turns ominous and almost klaxon-like at times.  The spaceship "Comet" is divided up into a series of four cylindrical levels connected via a central lift.  Players can control their character here by choosing to go either direction in a circular looping corridor.  Doors on the outer wall lead to various rooms while a door on the interior wall accesses the elevator.  Incidentally, this method of navigation feels almost identical to a segment from Space Quest III which considering that it came out two years after Jesus leaves me wondering if the Two Guys From Andromeda copied the concept.

Anyway...after conducting a room-by-room search, Hayao finds the out what happened to the crew and has several run-ins with the intruder.  As it turns out this particular alien is vulnerable to cold.  Eventually, the player has to make a hasty retreat back to the "Corona", but as one might guess the creature manages to get aboard this spacecraft too.  What ensues is kind of a repeat of the prior events except it is revealed that the monster is stealing the DNA of people it kills.  Pretty soon it attempts communication using a mix of various languages indicating that it has also stolen the memories of its victims as well.  Now, evolved into a stronger form, the alien boasts that it is immune to cold and will destroy humanity in order to claim Earth for its own species.  Our hero, undeterred, lures the monster into meeting him near the airlock by bluffing that he has a detonator capable of destroying the "Corona".  Once these two come face to face Hayao uses the power of music to stun the alien and eject it out into space....what can I say?...anime...

A Famicom port of the game entitled Jesus: Terrifying Bio-Monster was released in 1989.  Changes include some tweaks to the graphics and story.  Simplified environmental layouts, the removal of a pointless minigame, and a visual upgrade to the aforementioned robot sidekick.  By far the biggest change though is the removal of a potential failed state.  Based on decisions made during the first encounter with the monster, it's possible to see a "game over" screen, meaning the player either has to start at the beginning again or else reload from a previously save.  This was removed from the Famicom version resulting in what I can only describe as a prelude to the Lucas Art's adventure game experience.  In 1991, a sequel entitled Jesus II was released for home computers, but as hard as it is to believe this follow-up title was not set in space and somehow managed to be even less interactive that the original. 

A Planet of Sand

Frank Herbert's "Dune" novel is about a lot of things: politics, economics, philosophy, religion, sociology, and ecology.  It's also about psychoactive drug use...hey, it was written in the 60s...what do you expect?  The thing I like about "Dune" is how it flips the atypical sci-fi dynamic of technology-affecting-society.  By that I mean, a new kind of social order affecting technological development.

For the uninitiated, "Dune" postulates that humanity established an interstellar empire before nearly disintegrating due to an overdependence on artificial intelligences.  In the aftermath of a great social upheaval, all "thinking machines" were banned, essentially requiring all electronics to be hardwired with dials and switches being the inputs and gauges and counters being the outputs.  There are no keyboards or touchscreens.  Everything is analogue, nothing is digital.  Obviously, this is a very ineffective way to run an galaxy-spanning government.  However, to offset some of the difficulties there are certain in-fiction innovations such as the "Holtzman Effect" (that greatly eases space travel) and "Mentats" (a small number of people specially conditioned to function like human computers).  Even with these advancements, humanity has settled into a state of quasi-feudalism with individual families (or houses) managing planets like fiefdoms.  It's a rich setting that is ripe for intrigue and discovery, but does it have any potential for a video game adaptation?

Between the now-defunct Cryo Studios and Westwood Studios, there are actually five titles set in the "Dune" universe.  Four are RTS games and the fifth an adventure game.  There was also an ambitious MMO in the works that never saw the light of day.  I've gone over my own notions of what a "Dune" game could be in another blogpost found here.  I've also seen a wide variety of suggestions around the internet ranging from a bog-standard RPG to a mobile "Spice Mining Tycoon" Simulator, and even "Mentat Math" game for educational purposes.  I can't really speak to the feasibility of any of these suggestions, but I believe the franchise has potential somewhat paradoxically because of what I don't like about it.

"Dune" has a lot of great and fascinating ideas, but I feel that the execution of the novel (or more specifically, the nitty gritty of how the story is told) is somewhat lacking.  I think this is the reason we have seen so many variations on Dune's themes over the years.  Just off the top of my head there is Star Wars, Battletech, Warhammer 40k, Tremors, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Jupiter Ascending, Homeworld, Fading Suns and the Red Rising Saga.  Only one of these IPs is first and foremost a video game property.  When you think about how much exploration groundwork that has been done in various forms of media, it's obvious that there's a lot of directions a new "Dune" video game could go in.  Sure, it could be about Arrakis and the Spice...but that certainly need not be the primary focus.  There are many ways a video game could explore or expand on the fiction given the breadth and depth of the setting.