It was Halloween 2013 so I got excited and did a couple of Splatterhouse themed sketches. Even though it is a mediocre game with repetitive gameplay and awfully cheesy enemies I must admit it a has a charm to it so I may actually add some more stuff to this page from time to time.
Splatterhouse is a 1988 beat 'em up arcade game developed and published by Namco. It seems to be heavily influenced from horror flicks of its time and the players get to see tons of stuff ripped from such movies.
Rick Taylor and his girlfriend Jennifer Wills are seeking shelter from a storm, and they find a mansion nearby. What they don't know is that this is the infamous West Mansion, otherwise known as the "Splatterhouse" for the rumours of hideous experiments purportedly conducted there by Dr.
West, a renowned and missing parapsychologist. At the mansion, the two
are attacked by demonic creatures that drag Jennifer inside and fatally
wound Rick, leaving him for dead.
Rick wakes up with a mask on his face. A sacrificial artifact from West's house which is capable of sentient
thought. The mask attaches itself to Rick, fusing with his body and
transforming him into a "bad hair day" sort of killing machine with superhuman strength. With the
mask's encouragement, Rick starts beating the shit out of hordes of monsters to save Jennifer.
Monsters designs from Splatterhouse games seem to be all over the place
and lack originality. I know its all B-class horror movie related stuff but still
they could have been more original in having a wide range of different
types of monsters other than "zombies, arms, hands and floating heads." However there are few monsters that i like so I
had to pick stuff from Splatterhouse 2 and 3 to fill the page :)
The monsters in the game may not be very imaginative but the visuals are actually pretty cool. Everything is drawn rather large and clear, easy to understand what's what. Each monster packs tons of blood and gore. The end level bosses are a mixed salad. At the end of the first stage you get a boss fight in a room full of rotting corpses with giant leeches attacking you, but the next stage you get to beat up furniture because they seem to be possessed. Other memorable bosses include a dude who ties a sack on his head and chainsaws to his hands, a cross that whirls severed heads around it and there is the stage where Rick finds Jennifer but she transforms into a demon (which I found surprising) so he beats her senseless like he does all other evil (and this part being not so surprising).
The last boss is a giant, decaying head that rises from a grave after Rick spits on it. Ok, he probably doesnt spit but the lack of visual descriptions force my vivid imagination to depict a floating white blob coming out of Ricks head to be a spit. After tons of punches and kicks the head starts to spill tons of the same white stuff (which this time resembles a rain of sperm due to amount of spit) before it dies.
Naah, this is what happens as told by wikipedia; "The Terror Mask releases energy into the grave,
reviving a giant monster. Rick destroys the creature, which
unleashes a tormented ghost that dissipates into a series of bright
lights. As the lights vanish, the mask shatters, turning Rick back to
normal, and he flees as the house burns to the ground and the credits
roll. However, after he leaves and the credits end, the Terror Mask
reassembles itself and laughs evilly, staying there for 45 seconds, with
the word "END" appearing on the bottom right corner of the screen."
Then comes splatterhouse 2 which is more of the same stuff and Splatterhouse 3 which is even more of the same stuff with recycled visuals. Later on I learned there was a PS3 remake, I didnt play it and i dont think I want to :)
