[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Splatterhouse 3
October 26th, 2009 by Benj Edwards
“The kind of game rating systems were invented for.”
Splatterhouse 3 is by far my favorite entry in the Splatterhouse series. The other two just don’t cut it for some reason. I prefer Splatterhouse 3’s room-based approach to the game, and its controls are pretty good. It incorporates an on-screen map too, which makes it feel more like an adventure game.
Happy Halloween, by the way!
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the goriest video game you’ve ever played?
October 26th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I have played a lot of games. In recent years Prototype, The Darkness and Conan rank up there, not just for gore, but because the game designers figured out a way to put three times the normal amount of blood into each on-screen person killed, maimed, decapitated, disemboweled, etc. (Though, in deference to Conan, it is just a testosterone-laced romp of steel, blood, and large-breasted maidens).
As far as the classics go (and this one is on my computer at home, in case I feel like killing some time between writing articles), my vote would have to go to Chiller. The old light gun game (much like Crossbow or Operation Wolf) starts you off in a dungeon with people trapped in various torture devices. You use your gun to do such humane acts as twisting a vice so a prisoner’s head is crushed, shoot the rope on a guillotine to decapitate someone, and various other acts.
While the blood is not much more than plain red pixels, there is enough of it to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool many times over. The animations and graphics may be crude by today’s standards, but the game doesn’t ask too much of the player’s imagination to figure out what’s happening. There was some outcry against the game for its gratuitous violence, and it was even banned in the UK.
Here’s the wikipedia article on Chiller: http://bit.ly/1ViLwB
And to see actual gameplay: bit.ly/1JE6C3
Happy Halloween to you as well!
October 26th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
While it wasn’t excessively gory, “Golgo 13: The Mafat Conspiracy” always struck me as the most R-rated (officially licensed) NES title. Each level started with a skeleton rising from some tall grass as seen through a rifle scope only to have its skull shattered by a round; there was a cutscene implying intercourse between the protagonist and a female counterpart; several sections of gameplay consist of Golgo 13 sniping people in their heads; and the ending showed the targets of one of these long-range assassinations lying in a pool of his own blood.
Mafat Conspiracy was one of my favorite NES action games.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I always was partial to Project Overkill for the PSOne. The puddled-up blood even stayed there until you were through with the level, and you could track bloody footprints all over!
I loved Splatterhouse in the arcade too.
Happy Halloween everyone!
October 31st, 2009 at 3:34 am
The first gory game I played was “The Bilestoad” for the Apple //e. Sci-fi gladatorial combat with an ominous, deliberate pacing to its blood spatters and dismemberment. Quite an ambitious game design, too, with a dynamic overhead camera that could change from full screen to split screen on the fly, and a radar view that could adjust to different ranges depending on how near or far the opponents were to each other.