![]() ![]() Far from making headlines with its violence, Splatterhouse simply drifted under the radars of culture’s self-appointed watchdogs. What’s not clear is whether Namco had hoped that Splatterhouse would gain wider infamy through sheer shock factor alone if it did, then the plan backfired somewhat. When Rick fires a shotgun, there’s a blast of smoke and crimson sparks, an impressive detail to spot in an arcade game circa 1988. Sure, the action’s sluggish and simplistic by modern standards, with its 2D action making it the crazed cousin of Sega’s Altered Beast, but it looks and sounds superb. Taking place against a backdrop of torture chambers and haunted houses, Chiller was gory, crude, and faintly unseemly.īut where Chiller was a relatively obscure title made with an evidently small budget, Splatterhouse was in a different league in terms of design. No, Splatterhouse’s closest forebear was arguably Chiller, a horror-themed light gun game created by the same team that made Death Race. Death Race caused a ripple of controversy in 1976, but that was because of its theme more than its visuals – running over tiny stick men in a car was considered beyond the pale back then, making it a Carmageddon for the Gerald Ford era. In arcades, there were far fewer precedents for Splatterhouse’s boundary-pushing brand of gore. Read more: How Arcades Are Making a Comeback ![]() The Atari 2600 received fairly low-rent licensed games based on The Texas Chainsaw Massacreand Halloween franchises, while the ZX Spectrum’s obscure action adventure Go to Hell was full of tiny demons and disembodied heads. In the home computer and console markets, smaller developers had been turning out horror games for years. The craft and sheer detail that went into Splatterhouse’s horror setpieces made it something of a pioneer – even if it wasn’t exactly the first game of its type. Other details in Splatterhouse were evidently borrowed from such classics as Poltergeist, The Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and lots more besides. Anyone with a passing interest in pop culture would have recognized that Rick’s mask was “inspired” by the hockey mask worn by Jason Voorhees in the latter Friday the 13th movies. Like EC’s comics, Splatterhouse showed a voluminous – and perhaps opportunistic – knowledge of contemporary horror. Read more: Rolling Thunder – Namco’s Hidden Arcade Gem In terms of its scenario, it wasn’t unlike Capcom’s Ghosts ‘N Goblins from 1986, but in execution, Splatterhouse was completely different: punching zombies in the face reduced them to a groaning heap of bones and green goo picking up a weapon like a meat cleaver or a slab of wood allowed you to smash enemies into a bloody mess or chop them into chunks of meat.Īdmittedly, the style was still cartoony, much like Ghosts ‘N Goblinswas, but the larger-than-life violence and sprays of claret made it feel more like something out of EC Comics, the infamous publisher whose output was considered so corrupting that it hastened the birth of the Comics Code. Cast in the role of the hockey mask-wearing anti-hero, Rick, the player stalked the halls of the titular mansion, a haunted pile stuffed to the rafters with grotesque monsters and ghouls.Īrmed at first with nothing more than his fists and feet, Rick embarked on a revenge mission against the undead who’d both murdered him at the start of the game and then kidnapped his girlfriend, Jennifer. While games had been growing in graphical richness and violence for a while – Operation Wolfwas a gun-crazed money-spinner for Taito in 1986 – none were quite as gratuitous as Splatterhouse. If you’d stumbled on Splatterhouse in an arcade in the late ’80s, you would’ve immediately noted how different it looked from other video games of the era. Read more: The Evolution of ’80s Video Game Gore
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