GAME CLEAR No. 147 -- Splatterhouse (1988)

Splatterhouse (1988, Multiplatform)

Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Clear Platform: Switch
Clear Version: Arcade
Clear Date: 10/31/23

No one cared who I was until I put on the mask

Every year, I aspire to play at least one Halloween-adjacent game during the month of October. In fact, the very first GAME CLEAR post was about a game I played for precisely that reason. But in 2022 I failed to do it! I was determined not to let that happen this year.

I did so by dusting off an old “why have I never beaten this?” game from the backlog in Splatterhouse. It’s a beat ’em up game about a guy who looks an awful lot like Jason Voorhees (but is actually named Rick Taylor) trying to rescue his girlfriend from a haunted mansion. It’s also reasonably beatable in one sitting. Perfect!

I originally played the TurboGrafx-16 version on Wii Virtual Console (many) years ago and thought it was mid! Well guess what, the arcade version ain’t much better! This is a strictly okay game.

The vibes, though, are quite Halloween appropriate. I mean just look at that arcade flyer; there’s a boss with chainsaws for arms! That’s a great start. And generally throughout the game you are traversing spooky or bizarre environments and either clobbering mutants and zombies with blunt force into the wall (against which they explode) or instead cutting them in half with an appropriate fountain of blood following. All this stuff is quite beautifully animated by any standard, but especially 1988. It’s got some pretty solidly moody tunes to go with the action too. Even its plot takes a surprising and dark turn that I wouldn’t generally expect of a game from this era. That all sounds pretty good, right?

Well, the drawback, as you may expect, is the gameplay. It’s just not great. Rick can punch (or swing his current melee weapon), kick, and jump, but beyond that he’s pretty limited. This means the game mostly amounts to walking to the right and pressing the attack button when enemies are in range. Sometimes you may have to turn around to hit somebody coming up behind you, and sometimes you may have to jump to hit a flying enemy, but it’s mostly walking. It’s quite unsophisticated and a bit dull. Worse yet, it punishes Games Over by sending you all the way back to the beginning of the stage you’re on. Not uncommon at the time, of course, but it does make failure a bit more of a slog in a game that already isn’t a blast to play. I was willing to tolerate this to the end to experience a game that has a lot of other nice things going for it, but it does make me a bit less inclined to replay it.

Will I put that soundtrack on from time to time to think about the game some more, though? You better believe it.

I hope all you gamers out there enjoyed your Halloween however you chose to spend it. 🎃🧡