Hello everyone today’s game is Splatterhouse for the Arcade Developed and Published by Namco Released in 1988.

Summary: being a huge horror fan this game has always been one of my favourite arcade games. Splatterhouse is definitely heavily influenced by some classic 80s horror movies like Friday the 13th, Evil Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street and of course Re-Animator that was based on a short story from H.P. Lovecraft.

Story: Rick Taylor and his girlfriend Jennifer Willis are both parapsycholgy students. They were so fascinated by the work of the late parapsycholgy Dr.West they went to visit his abandoned West Mansion. The Mansion was known to the locals as Splatterhouse. It got this name because it was said that Dr. West was conducting lots of grisly experiments and practicing in black magic. The rumours from the locals was that the Dr. West’s experiments were a success but these things, these creatures he created are not from this earth.

Rick & Jennifer rush in to the house to get away from the storm. On entering the house Jennifer screams and Rick awakens bloody and disoriented with the Terror Mask on his face.

Gameplay: Rick does not move as good as you would like, this is definitely not a smooth game to play. Rick feels a bit like a tank so you have to move nice and slow and attack the monsters at the right time. Rick has a punch button and a jump button the best way to do well at this game is to keep the weapons you find.

Weapons are:

Plank of wood
Meat Cleaver
Rock
Shotgun
Wrench
Harpoon

All the weapons are lots of fun to use especially the Shotgun found in stage 3 only.

You have to watch out for monsters and traps throughout the 7 levels Splatterhouse has to offer. Each level has an end boss these look great but can be quite tricky to master.

Graphics: some of my favourite graphics of any arcade game. Everything in this game is so grimey and grisly and it’s what makes it so much fun to play through. You get corpses, monsters, exploded heads, bats, skeletons and severed hands. This really is like being in a classic haunted house.

Sound: the sounds match the graphics perfectly with some very nice ambient noises. You get groans from the prisoners chained up. When your meat cleaver connects with a monsters head you get a satisfying thud (that actually sounds more like you have got a strike at ten pin bowling.) The music is really atmospheric and fits in well with the whole creepy vibe.

Replay Value: it’s not the biggest game but it’s still a hard one to get through. I think this games replayability will depend on how much you like horror games and movies. I always play this one around Halloween time and I always will.

Final thoughts: this is still one of my favourite horror games and the two sequels on the Mega Drive I really enjoy too. I will review both of them for a 16bit hits.

Come and share your memories in Forever Arcade Facebook group thanks Jay.

What are your memories?