Welcome to a new edition of Retro Corner and to continue the Halloween traditions from last year, I found a game that some of you may have heard of. Before Mortal Kombat and Doom set their gory standards in gaming, the Arcades during the 80's had no rating system. When it came to themes, any game could show as much gore and blood as they wanted. Then out came Splatterhouse from the Arcade in 1989 which showcased gory detail using 16-bit graphics. It has been a while since I reviewed a TurboGrafx game and because it's the Halloween season, I can't think of a better game to talk about. The theme is about two college kids named Rick and Jennifer that get stuck in the middle of nowhere when their car breaks down. A storm approaches and seeing a mansion in the distance they run to it only to get ambushed by a bunch of monsters inside the building. When Rick awakes he finds the Terror Mask on him, turning the guy into an undead creature with supernatural strength. However, his girlfriend was missing so he sets out through the mansion to try and save her while fending off undead monsters. Gameplay The gameplay has aged badly since 1990 as the levels are really short in comparison to other brawlers in the 80's. The levels have you face waves of enemies and most of the time they will come from behind or in front. Along the way you come across hazards such as spikes coming from under the ground, the monster in the backgrounds vomiting acid and moving spiked objects. I can tell the developers tried to change this up so to not be similar to Vigilante. However, despite these hazards, they can easily be avoided especially during the scrolling areas. In a sense, the gameplay isn't that much different compared to Vigilante as most of the enemies get killed with one or two hits. Playing it like this does get repetitive considering the difficulty doesn't really change that much aside from the enemies might need two or three hits to kill. Along the way, the player can pick up weapons which range from a wooden 2x4 to even a shotgun. That's another thing that seems like an issue with the weapons and it's no different than using a regular attack. The only selling point was to use them to display a gory effect like a monster's blood and guts splatting against a wall. That shouldn't be the only reason to have weapons lying around in each level if they have little effect on the difficulty. Despite the short levels, it feels like more thought went into the boss battles then the actual stages. Unfortunately, the bosses aren't that harder than the levels and they are stuck with the same pattern of attacks. In comparison to Ghouls N Ghosts, the bosses had patterns as well but they also attacked in a random order. The branching paths that appear in the later levels were truly repetitive. It is a nice feature to have for the gameplay but there are some issues. These other areas get recycled two to three times whether it be the hall of worms, mirrors with the doppelgangers or the water-filled corridors. It's the same challenges from before regardless what branching path you take. So what is the point of branching routes if there is no difference from the previous levels? Namco should have taken notes from Capcom and Technos Japan so they could follow their golden standards instead of Irem studio with Vigilante. It is true that Final Fight and Double Dragon have also aged badly since their releases but not as bad as Splatterhouse. Rating: 6.8/10 Graphics/Presentation As usual, when it comes to porting Arcade games to console, these versions are going take a graphical hit. Unfortunately, Splatterhouse's TurboGrafx port wasn't handled that well in comparison to other Arcade to console titles from the Genesis. Now, because of the TurboGrafx's limitations and the HuCards supported up to 20Mbits might have been the reason they toned it down. Several animated backgrounds such as monsters and people suffering have gotten removed. Even the props of burning trees from the seventh level or the pillars and the altar in the church area are also missing. I noticed the absent of those little details in the stages such as water dripping from the ceiling and even paint on the walls. I can tell this game graphically wasn't meant for this console as many key elements for the environments had been stripped. The graphics tries to have a horror theme, but yet the entire mansion looks like a poorly put together haunted house. The original arcade game had everything for the stages' environments from people and monsters suffering to effects like fog and additional gory detail. Perhaps Namco should have at least considered this for either the Genesis or the Turbo CD as it would've been a better port. The subject that probably leads to the port being stripped of most graphic detail is the censorship. I wonder if NEC and Namco had worried thoughts of hurting people's feeling for using gore and certain subjects like religion for this version. An example of censorship is from a couple of the bosses such as the Mother with its embryos bursting out after killing it. In this port, the creature just explodes into flames. Then we have the "Evil Cross" boss with the object being inverted and surrounded by demonic heads. It was changed to a severed blue head surrounding by the same projectiles. Seriously, the Mansion is an evil place of demonic activity and they are telling me it doesn't fit in a horror-themed game. They even changed the meat cleaver and slicing the enemies heads off (which was also removed) by replacing it with a 2x4. I can't understand why they wanted to censor the meat cleaver but kept the shotgun that blows the monsters' heads off. As for the port's graphics, you will notice the color choice seems dull and choppy on the sprites. The dark colors make sense as even the original arcade game has this (the backgrounds and sprites weren't blurry either). It also doesn't help that the monsters have a bad art style to their designs as they appear bland. They came off cheaply made with their melted skin features as if these creatures were a plastic toy that came out of a microwave. Even the bosses suffer from this bad art style and had that same melted skin design. The special effects were probably the only thing that stands out and Namco managed to retain as much of this as possible. The splash effects when jumping in the water look good as it resembles what it was. The fire blazing in stage seven's background was still retained despite the burning trees are missing. The presentation is still limited as even the original game only had a handful of scenes that include the in-game ones as well. The intro from the original of Rick and Jennifer running to the mansion got removed. The scene changed to the mansion looming in the distance with a thunderstorm going about outside. It is clear that the limitations of the system were probably the reason why it wasn't completely added which sucks as it would've been a decent setup for the theme. For a game that sells itself on horror and gore, this port did a terrible job trying to retain whatever detail it could. Rating: 7.2/10 Features/Content Compared to other arcade ports found on the Genesis, this port doesn't even have that many options. There is no menu or a password feature to change the controls and difficulty. You get only seven levels with the later stages having branching paths as already mentioned. However, Namco was smart to add in two cheat codes to try and give some replay value to this packaged. The first one unlocks a Hard Mode which is done by holding Select down until it appears on the title screen. The second one is a stage select and it's unlocked by starting the opening sequence when it rains. You then press Select three times and hold left-down on the D-pad while pressing Button 1. It's surprising that Namco would take cues from Capcom as Ghouls N Ghosts also had this cheat feature on the Genesis port. Unfortunately, I still find the overall package lacking when other arcade ports on the Genesis had plenty of features to play around with it. With simplistic gameplay and challenges, it's hard for me to come back to this game even when these cheat codes are available. Rating: 6.8/10 Final Rating The gameplay borrowed too much from Vigilante which by 1990 was outdated when Kung-Fu Master was using this in 1984. When compared to Final Fight and Double Dragon, it's hard to say the gameplay was engaging. Between one hit killing each enemy regardless if the player used a bare hand or weapon and formulaic boss battles that never change was the reason the gameplay felt dated. The graphics are heavily censored removing some of the gore and suggested material from the levels. If that wasn't the problem it was also the limitation of the console which hindered this port from such unique features. The levels most of the time came off like a cheaply put together haunted house as opposed to a demonic environment. Do you see horror movies censoring religious material and gore effects? No, you don't because Namco censoring the content was a little ridiculous especially if they were shooting for a grindhouse-style. Even when you don't factor in the censored content, the graphics are water down and many features would get axed (no pun intended) which is what gave it a cheap design. The replay value was average and to access any of it you needed to input codes. As I mentioned, this was a lousy port in a time where some publishers actually did a good job at porting Arcade games to consoles. It's too bad Namco didn't look at Sega, Capcom, or Konami to figure out how to develop a quality port. Gameplay: 6.8/10 Graphics/Presentation: 7.2/10 Features/Content: 6.8/10 Final Rating: 7.0/10 Solid
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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