A new Splatterhouse is on the horizon, Splatterhouse is a series that continued the trend of survival horror that doom started, just in a different setting, you could say that Splatterhouse is the father of most modern survival horror actually.

But what is Splatterhouse? Why do some of us want it so badly? That's the point of this blog, I'll talk of my experiences with the games and link to the best site to get more info but I am getting ahead of myself so let us start from the beginning.

There will be liberal spoilers I might add.

Splatterhouse



Where it all began, the story goes that Rick and his girlfriend Jennifer where writing a term paper on a man called Dr.West, there where lots of rumors about this doctor but none of them where actually confirmed as true, to do some more studies on said paper, Jennifer and Rick feel its a good idea to visit Dr. West's abandoned mansion. During a thunderstorm.

As with all good cliches, shit goes down as soon as they step foot into the mansion and Rick is knocked out, when he comes to Jennifer is missing and Rick has a mask attached to his face, he recognizes it as the terror mask from old mayan scripts he studied, it gives him great power but he can't take it off, regardless of this he goes into the mansion so he can rescue his girlfriend.

The gameplay for Splatterhouse was all side-scrolling, you fought bosses and a variety of monsters, some of these monsters ranged from creepy(hanging corpses), disturbing(weird looking fetus things) and funny(slime monsters that would splatter on the wall when hit with a weapon.) There where so many that for me to talk about them would take up more space, rest assured, you'll be seeing a new enemy till you beat the game.



The game consisted of 7 stages, 7 hard as hell stages I might add, each with their own boss at the end, each stage was a different area of the house, basement, 1st and 2nd floor, Dr. West's lab, a church, sewers and back outside for the final fight.

Everything about the game was creepy, even the music despite the limitations at the time where just incredible, they hold up even today as just really scary songs, you always had a feeling of isolation and that at any moment something was gonna spring up and kill you.

Bosses ran the gamut of a possessed room, a bag wearing zombie with 2 chainsaws, an upside down cross, a womb(responsible for all the monsters you've been fighting), and a giant decaying corpse which upon being defeated, frees Dr. West's soul.

Upon freeing Dr. West, the mansion collapses, Jennifer is presumed dead, the mask breaks apart and its all over, or is it? At the end the mask reforms and laughs.

My entire post for Splatterhouse 1 is based on the arcade version, the TG-16 version had a lot removed from it and it just feels incomplete in the face of the superior arcade one.

Currently the TG-16 version of Splatterhouse is available on the VC.

Splatterhouse 2



This one starts off 3 months after the first, since Jennifer's death Rick has been having nightmares about his time in the mansion and while he wore the mask, but after awhile something in these nightmares calls out to him, Jennifer may not be dead after all, Rick heads back into the charred mansion and is promptly knocked out, upon waking up he's wearing the mask again.

But the mansion burned down, what in the hell are we going to fight now?

Well it seems Rick missed an area during his first adventure, another island near west mansion with another monster filled mansion, the first half of the game is getting there, the 2nd half is going through that new mansion and the battle with the final boss.

Overall there's not much to say about Splatterhouse 2, the core gameplay is exactly the game, some monsters from the original make a comeback alongside some new ones and you go through 8 stages this time.

The only thing that's changed is the terror mask which looks more like a skull now as you can see in the images.





No arcade version this time, just the genesis one.

Your final boss this time is something that looks like a mass of souls and corpses, upon its defeat, you rescue Jennifer for real this time and this 2nd mansion burns down, the mask once again breaks and its truly over.

But not really.

Splatterhouse 3



Its been several years since the first 2 games, Rick is married and has a son and did very for himself since he owns a mansion, all is well for him till he starts having nightmares about the mask again. Eventually his mansion is attacked by a being called the evil one who kidnaps his son and Jennifer, except this time he kidnapped Jennifer to keep Rick busy, the evil one only wants Rick's son as he seems to have physic powers and that's what he needs.

The mask shows up again and thus Rick's quest begins again.

First thing you'll notice is how much different the game looks.



As you can see the game looks much better, the biggest change is how you can move up and down, no longer are you restricted to left and right, this opens up a few combat options which are well represented as Rick now has a basic punch combo and can even grab and throw enemies, the other change is that POW meter at the bottom, when it fills up you can hulk out and gain new attacks, you can also use a super move which kills everything on the screen at the cost of the entire meter, the super move looks pretty weird as it seems Rick's bodyparts emerge from for a moment.


Hulked out Rick, he bears a quite the resemblance to the screenshot we've seen for the new Splatterhouse.

The absolute best part of this game was how much more story driven it was, the story was very fleshed, the mask talked to you and you had multiple endings, see in every stage you had a time limit, as you went through the mansion you would see a family member in danger, if you didn't make it in time, well, there goes that family member. And you would get a bad ending if you didn't save your family. One in particular is an image of Jennifer that says "Jennifer's mind has been lost to the darkness, that image gave me nightmares for like a week, I wish I could find it but it seems to have been lost in the abyss that is my computer and I can't find it again on google.

Anyway, so the main game is like any traditional beat-em up of 1993, you could move in all directions, you had combos and you would even be revived if you died, no more checkpoints, just get up and keep fighting.



Rick seems to have done VERY well for himself as his mansion is GIGANTIC, just huge, to the point that when you enter a new room you see a map that tells where you are, there's a few points of interests marked but naturally you're gonna wanna make it to the boss as quickly possible, unless you simply don't care in which case explore away.

Monsters and bosses once again run the gamut of weird and creepy and just plain odd looking alongside old monsters from the original games, same with the bosses although the first looks a lot like the 1st boss in the 2nd game, once you get through it all and defeat the evil one you come face to face with the one truly responsible for what's going on, its even implied that its responsible for the events of first 2 games.

Who is you ask?

THE MASK ITSELF, yep the very thing you rely on is the cause of all your problems and your final boss, and yet upon its defeat and even with the good ending, its implied that its not really over.

And thus we come to the end, Splatterhouse is easily one of my favorite game series and I look forward to seeing the new one, I'm curious what they'll do with it, is it Rick we saw in that screenshot? Or is it his son?

We know the mask is evil, so if it is Rick, why does he wear it again? Will the new Splatterhouse be a remake or a sequel? I'd really to know the answer to these questions, all in due time I guess.

Hope you enjoy reading this as much I enjoyed writing it but I must thank you one website for without it, I could have never done this, it jogged my memory enough.

http://splatterhouse.classicgaming.gamespy.com/index.html

The premier Splatterhouse fansite on the web, its tells way more about the games than I can.

I will say this in closing, these games need to be available easier, Namco needs to do something and get these games out to the public, VC, XBLA, PSN, everyone needs to play these horror classics.