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.

What draws us toward the insanely difficult games? What makes us wanna keep going?

I ask myself this question as I sit here staring at the game over screen in Ikaruga, I was never intending to purchase this title yet here I sit after having enjoyed the hell out of those 3 stages my meager skills got me through(on easy I might add) and I can't wait to jump into it again.

I didn't even wanna spend the points, I was saving them for the Halo 3 maps, but I downloaded the trial, got through the first stage and I wanted more, the twitch game design, the polarity mechanic, the memorization required, its gaming that requires a degree and I want more.

But why? I've always been the kind of person who's not a huge fan of difficult games, they should be fun after all and this is fun, I speak as a man who is NOT a fan of shoot-em-ups so m sheer love of this game is puzzling to say the least.

Of course the answer is simple, excellent game design. A hard difficulty and a well designed game go hand in hand, sure it will bring you frustration as you try to get over a major hurdle but when you do, you're happy and feel satisfied.

I recall a few years ago when I was slogging through DMC 1 on Dante Must Die mode, I was stick on nightmare for about 2 weeks, normally when someone says they died hundreds of times you think they might be exaggerating , I am not when I say it, I around 500 yellow orbs when I began my fight with Nightmare, I had 120 when I finally defeated him, I hugged my visiting friend, I went around the room dancing like a jackass and then I finally beat the rest of the game. Yet another excellent example of great game design.



But the granddaddy for me has always been Ninja Gaiden Black, this wasn't about magically spawning enemies, this wasn't about taking more damage, it was all about reflexes and defeating your enemies in a symphony of clashing swords and blood.



This bitch caused an untold amount of hurled controllers and a string of profanities and defeating her is one of the best moments of the game, moreso when you get her down so well that you can finish her without taking damage.

Upon having played some games with well balanced difficulties, I wonder why companies always get this wrong, its not about giving every single advantage to the enemy, its not about dying in 3 hits, hard difficulty should not be a giant fuck you to the gamer, it should be about something that tests the skills you've gathered through playing on all the difficulties.

I really wish more game designers took the time to make well balanced difficulty levels, it would go a long toward replay value as far as I am concerned.

2 little known PSP games where released a few months ago by the names Pursuit Force and its sequel, Pursuit Force Extreme Justice, I'm unsure of how well the original Pursuit Force sold but it warranted a sequel it seems, that sold like ass.

Both these titles are good, the sequel is much better though, I'll explain to you why.

The original Pursuit Force started you and your nameless protagonist taking on gangs in Capital City, they all had a gimmick as it where and an over the top stereotype leader.

Mafia: Well this should be obvious.
Convicts: Escaped convicts lead by a man named Hard Balls.
Vixens: Stuntwomen turned thieves.
Killer 66: Japanese gang, loves fast cars, katanas.
Warlords: Military types.

Pretty basic, the game was rather light on the story, you got a cutscene when you first went up against a gang to see their evil ways and then one when you finish off their leader, outside of that, just the narration of the chief(another stereotype).

What made the unique was its jumping car gimmick, you could jump from your car another one, kill the people inside of it and take it for yourself, it was rather bad-ass, you could do this on boats as well and you hang off them to dodge shots.

The game also had on-foot segments, these where a little weird, your guy moved funny and you could arrest everyone without trouble.

It also had segments where you where in a helicopter and you chaingunned a shitload of enemies, these sequences where minimal though.

The game was fun but it was brutally hard, see whenever you're in car based missions, you always had a particular distance that you need to beat the mission in, if not the enemy would escape and you where fucked, some of these where WAY to tight and required near perfection for you to be able to win.

The game also had a justice bar gimmick, kill people, ram them, capture their car, anything violent really would fill up the bar, when full your shots did more damage and you could a justice shot, basically you could shoot the enemies while jumping from car to car, if you pressed the triangle button with a full justice bar you would restore your energy and the energy of the vehicle you where in, a lifesaver at times.

It also boasted horrible driving controls, as you can see the first one probably pissed off anyone who bought it but you would be doing yourself a disservice if you ignore the sequel.



Extreme Justice takes place 2 years after the original, your still nameless protagonist is about to marry the pilot of the helicopter, also from the first game when the wedding gets crashed by the convicts and the game begins. The protagonist does have a pseudo name, the final rank of the original Pursuit Force which is Commander, that's what they call him through the entire game.

Right off the bat you'll notice the much better driving controls and how much active the people are, they talk, they talk a LOT. It gives them a much better ambiance, you also have a team now all specializing in different things like heavy weapons, driving and one that can do pretty much anything the commander can do.

The music is also fantastic, lots of great tunes for when the moment calls for it, you also have a roundtable discussion with your teammates before and after every mission which gives the game a decent story, nothing stellar but it does its job, voice acting is ok as well.

What the game does do insanely well is mission variety, you aren't just stuck doing the shit over and over, now you do all manner of crazy shit, sniping from a moving helicopter, jumping down to a car and taking control of it, walking on the wing of a plane in an effort to take its engines out, boss battles have also been improved from just "shoot him a lot".

The only things that still looks bad are the FMV's, a minor quibble in the face of such an awesome game.

But hey, you beat it, what's left? Well first off you Bounty mode, same cases you've played through already but now you're playing for score, second is challenge mode which requires you to do unique scenarios with whatever conditions the game asks of you such as don't shoot, don't jump to other cars, don't use your justice meter, you also have a slew of content to unlock like game art and cheats, beating the main game is just 16% of the total package.

If you where one of the people who played the original pursuit force, forget it even existed, if you've never tried them, try the sequel, its a great game and one that deserves to sell a bit better than it has.

Once again pardon my grammar, I can speak english quite well but writing it still gives me trouble.

Well the title is incorrect, it sucks more would be a lot more accurate.

Before they decided to EXTREME it, this particular videogame show was good, it started out as gamespot tv under the banner of ZDTV, later known as TechTv, it was actually a good show at the time, you had Adam not acting like an ADD riddled child and Kate Botello all reviewing games and the like, no stupid skits, no "ANIME SUX" mentality, no all RPG's suck except FF crap. It was a good show.

It turned into Extended Play afterwards, Kate left and only Adam was left, the show still wasn't bad though, dumb skits where kept to a bare minimum and for the most part we saw Adam at the start and at the end.

Then of course G4 purchased Tech Tv and shit all over their programming like a cancerous tumor, a lot of shows where cancelled and others where changed, Extended Play was changed.

Morgan Webb of the Screensavers was added as a host, seems realized that with some make-up and longer hair she would look much more attractive, the entire format was changed in favor of dreadfully unfunny skits and us looking at the hosts several times through out the show, Adam suddenly became an idiot, Morgan became the cool, confident host, problem was this gave her air of arrogance and bitchyness, suddenly certain genres where hated and the overall quality of the show took a very sharp decline.

Now the show has been changed, no idea why and its just worthless now, its like they're trying to cram Icons, Cheat and X-Play into a 22 minute show.

Last nights episode was easily the worst I've seen, they an interview segment with a man who ran a high end gaming store, later they reviewed Turok, they gave it a 3, why did a 3? Graphics? Dumb A.I? Nope, they gave it a 3 because it didn't have auto aim assist like most modern shooters had according to Morgan(Notice she didn't say PC shooters), she didn't discuss weapon types, the multiplayer, enemies, nothing, just this and that was the basis of her score.

Later on they had a segment on how game devs made sound work in games, a short 2 minute segment that ended way to abruptly, after that we got the Advance Wars Days of Ruin review, this is what Morgan said.

New units.
Wi-fi online capability.
New story.

That's it, no discussing of the CO powers being so different, barely touching on the story, just these 3 points that any consumer could gleam from simply looking at the DoR box at the local gaming store.

I understand wanting to make a more informative game show but this isn't the way to go about it, this is just overkill, most people just want reviews, I guess G4 is so desperate to mantain the GAMER demographic that they don't want to flat-out cancel everything, just cram it all into one show.

This is a reply to the Moral Kombat as posted by Jim Sterling, it was getting a bit long so I decided to turn it into a blog post.

Regardless of the film's true intentions, the trailer makes gaming look bad, it alienates those of us who play games understand them, we understand that games have evolved past collection coins and stompting on goombas(not to say those games don't have their place), videogames can now be used as a storytelling medium and can do much more.

The ignorant never get it and don't care understand it, the same crop of people who where angry at their parents and the establishment as it where, have no become that old fogey in the street corner complaining about the younguns and their rock and roll.

The people that call and Xbox 360 a nintendo, a small portion of these people simply don't know much about different machines, but a huge portion of them are just a bunch of ignorant fools who still view gaming as a kids hobby, polls have shown the average age of gamers in the 20's to late 30's, those kids who grew with a Nintendo? They're adults with jobs now and they never put that controller down, they've evolved with the times.

As the years pass, something is always blamed, lack of responsibility is ignored in favor of a scapegoat, comic books, jazz, rock and roll, television, books and now video games. Its a sad thing when video games are more closely monitored and censored than any other entertainment medium.

To use an example, even if the game was terrible, compared Manhunt 1's killing to Manhunt's 2 killings, notice how much blurred and censored they are now, Rockstar fought the power allright, they took away the only reason most people played the original game for, the over the top killing(although Manhunt did have a decent stealth engine).

If it where to up to these people, we would only be playing educational games(much like they ruined tv by forcing educational programming into cartoons and beating you over the head with the lesson of the day), there's millions of gamers out there, we need to do something before continues down this path, if they ignore you, at least you tried, at least you told someone "hey, games are more than just kids toys now", at this rate I find video games more interesting and creative than the movie industry, mostly because video games give the director more free reign. There are less limitations in the video game world.

One hopes things will get better, comics and every other thing blamed for society's ills came out ok, I'm sure video games will as well, we simply hear about this more because of the net, its a lot easier to spread a particular message through this medium.

Kids shooting up a school? Where are the real questions? How did he get a gun? Does he have a history of mental illness? Was he bullied?, no, all people look for is "Did he watch violent movies? Does own a copy of GTA?"

Not to mention, that lately when kids starting acting like kids and doing all the stupid shit we all took for granted back then, parents answer to this is send them to shrink to get them medicated, these medicines stun the kid, he can't grow as a person, he has trouble dealing with things or is simply to apathetic to everything around him and you end with someone with all these emotions inside them, inevitably they break free and you end with someone who's just waiting for a reason to snap and do something terrible.

Some kids are strong enough to break free, most are not, I was one who broke free, for 10 year I shut myself off the world, never caring about anything, never expressing an emotion, I played things like Doom, Counterstrike, the PS1 GTA and other things as years passed, I had feelings sometimes of wanting to hurt those who bullied me and turned me into this, at 24 now I've managed to mostly break free, I never took a gun to anyone and even though I wanted to hurt those who hurt me, I never wanted to kill them, I just wanted them to feel like I did, having been through hell, I can see why some kids do what they do, to hit rock bottom in such way is very difficult and even harder to get out of if you don't have a good family or a friend that cares about you. In my story, games didn't have any blame for how I felt, it was people and the fact they are cruel sons of bitches, always have been and always will be.

In a counterargument to myself in regards to the parents thing, some people are just fucked in the head, I'm not sure when it happened but Gabe of Penny Arcade once reported on an 18 year old who killed someone, when interviewed the kid said that it reminded him of playing game, naturally that's all the media focused on.

The mother sent Gabe a message afterwards explaining how the kid was always a lunatic and how her other son was doing well for himself.

Some people are just nuts right out of the womb, I myself know at least 4 people who have never touched a video game in their life but are complete scum and more in common with a turd than an actual human being. Some people will use games as something to drive them but if they didn't have games they would turn to other things, animal abuse, abusing those around them, anything they can do to be violent and generally act like a psycho.

Far as I know, God didn't create the Atari alongside Adam and Eve, murder, rape, spousal abuse and other unheard of crimes have existed well before the age of christ, for society to always pin the blame on something just shows how we have never evolved and sad as it is, those of us who have evolved past that are few in numbers are generally silenced or drowned by the cries of the ignorant.

The old farts can ignore some of us but not all of us, I just hope we never reach the point where millions of gamers have to unite in some way to stop train of ignorance.

Somewhere around June, a little game called Monster Madness was released, it was hyped up to be in the vein of Zombies ate my Neighbors, it did actually deliver on that promise, same quirky sense of humor and even the unsual weapons.

Sadly the game had a bit of an uphill fight, mostly the fault of the playtesters(or lack thereof), the game was buggy as hell, missing save files, weapons vanishing, getting stuck on shit, bad camera, and the fact that you could not even finish the game on the highest difficulty. Outside of this the game wasn't all that bad, it offered a very intense challenge and many of the scenarios presented to you where quite similar to things you would see in Snes game, it had some references to other titles as well such as an achievement titled "Are you related to a belmont?" And when the aliens show up they want to avenge their fallen compatriots while holding up a picture of the space invader alien.

The gameplay itself is top down, you can jump, quick dodge, you have a melee weapon and projectile weapons along with a wide variety of secondary tools such as a toy chimp that explodes or a soda hat that regenerates your health, through the game you also bump into different collectible items such as tape, gas tubes, batteries, pipes, nails and plutonium, you use to craft your weapons and they all that homemade look to them, they run the gamut of nail guns, pipe shotgun, a minigun, a radioactive flashlight and many, many more, though in this sense I feel the game overloaded with crap, you only really need the level 3 versions of the nail guns, shotgun, minigun and radioactive flashlight.

Your character are all horror movie stereotypes, the nerd, the goth chick, the blond cheerleader and the stoner/surfer dude and the mysterious guy who helps you build the weapons and get his truck in the most unsual places. No character has one advantage over the other, its a matter of preference really, the only thing they differ is on their unique melee weapon(of which there is one in every single stage), I find the cheerleader to be the best because of her moronic reactions to everything.


Stage are divided in 5 chapters, suburbia, the mall, school, a graveyard and a castle for 18 total stages.

Your enemies run the gamut of horror movie monsters, werewolves, zombies, evil clowns with some weirder ones tossed into the mix such as a chupacabra that looks like a pinata or mohawk wearing enemies that move around in wheelbarrows.

The game also has a multiplayer setting, capture the flag, standard deathmatch or the co-op dojo, one thing that really hurts the game overall the is lack of online 4 player co-op, the game could clearly use it and the devs overlooked it sadly, its simply offline co-op and a friend can jump in at any moment.

At this point you might be wondering why I typed all this out.

About a week ago Southpeak interactive finally released a patch to fix all the bugs and glitches, they added lifebars to the harder enemies and lowered certain requirements to S-rank the game, every level of the nail gun as auto fire and in general, Monster Madness is now fun and enjoyable.

The game has $30.00 or $22 if you find a use copy, its well worth the price, especially if you grew up during the Nes/Snes era and wish to challenge yourself.

If you a own a PS3 you can hold out for Monster Madness Ex which will in fact boast online co-op and other things 360 owners get shafted out of, as much as I hate expanded versions of games that we never see as I said in my previous blog post, I do like the game enough to support it and I will probably end up buying Ex if I ever get a PS3.

So there you have it, I urge anyone that reads this to at least give the game a shot that's its been patched, maybe you'll like it as much as I and a very tiny group of fans do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Madness:_Battle_for_Suburbia MM Wiki

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-_M6LiJrUg Trailer

http://www.monster-madness.com/site/index.html Official site