Does anyone out there remember the arcade game Splatterhouse (Namco)? Were you even f*#king born yet in 1988? For those of you who haven’t played this epic horror arcade game here’s a little description I pulled from Wikipedia:

The game takes place in West Mansion (nicknamed the “Splatterhouse”) where a parapsychologist, Dr. West, is rumoured to have conducted bizarre experiments. Dr. West has subsequently disappeared. Two university students — the series main character, Rick Taylor, and his girlfriend Jennifer Wills — visit the house for a school project, when a sudden thunderstorm causes them to seek shelter inside the mansion.

Inside, a scuffle with unseen enemies occurs, and Rick is knocked unconscious and left for dead, while Jennifer is kidnapped. While Rick is unconscious, the “Terror Mask” (sometimes referred to as the “Hell Mask”, commonly shortened to just “The Mask”) attaches itself to him. Rick wakes and finds that he cannot remove the Mask, which he recognizes as an ancient Mayan sacrificial mask from West’s documents he had been studying. Discovering it gives him incredible strength, he decides to take advantage of its power and use it to rescue Jennifer. All of this information is given in the instruction manual for the TurboGrafx-16 port; there are no in-game cut scenes that illustrate any of these events.

Basically your this muscular dude that has a old school hockey goalie’s mask on (a la Jason from Friday the 13th fame) and your making your way through this creepy mansion. You have to fight, slash and splatter your way through a bunch of zombie like monsters, using a meat cleaver or a stick (which you’ll find during your travels) to kill these guys. The game was very gruesome for its time… you end up chopping these dudes heads off (with the meat cleaver) or swinging for the fences (with the stick) and splattering these dudes against the wall (in a green gooey mess). I actually have this game on Mame… it’s cool and difficult.
Well Namco / Bandai have decided to resurrect this game from the dead and release it for Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2009. Gamespot said that the game will be (of course) a more updated version, with modern graphics and even a storyline penned by comic-book scribe Gordon Rennie (Judge Dredd, Necronauts).
Here’s a more detailed description from Tom Magrino of Gamespot:

Namco Bandai promises a dynamic combat system in which players will be afforded a variety of methods to slaughter hordes of infernal monstrosities. Weapons include makeshift found items as well as the dismembered appendages of enemies, and players will be able to revive defeated demons to help them in their quest as well as solve puzzles. The game also has a vertical element, with players able to leap great distances as the game’s protagonist.

The game’s gore has likewise been updated to 21st-century standards. Namco Bandai says that players will be dismembered if overrun by enemies. “They will begin to dismember him, savagely tearing away limbs and ripping at his flesh to expose his internal organs. To survive, Rick must call upon the power of the Terror Mask to regenerate his mutilated body, allowing players to watch in gory detail as bones, veins, muscles, and skin return to his body in real time.”

Sounds like my kind of game! I’ll keep an eye out and keep you posted on the release!

Gamespot article

Tags: , 1988, arcade, Bandai, comic-book, fight, Friday the 13th, game, goalie, Gordon Rennie, graphics, hockey, horror, Jason, Judge Dredd, mask, meat cleaver, monsters, Namco, Necronauts, parapsychologist, slash, splatter, Splatterhouse, Terror Mask, TurboGrafx-16 port, zombie

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Coming Soon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.