Think of all of the iconic masks throughout pop culture. The myriad superhero and supervillain masks across DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, etc, obviously come to mind. Jim Carrey's bizarre, blockbuster, smash hit The Mask. The entirety of one of my favorite Legend of Zelda games: Majora's Mask, is hinged entirely upon Link having access to a collection of masks that grant him strange powers. I do think there's a specific mask that seems to sit on the top of this mountain of iconic face coverings though. A mask that used to be known just for a sport, namely hockey. Ever since 1982 though, the hockey mask has been synonymous with violent, bloody, gory horror, thanks to the slasher movie icon, Jason Voorhees.
Jason's well-known design was obviously a direct influence on the lead character of Splatterhouse. And let me just say, given the horrifying, bloody, graphic nature of this series, it feels right controlling a guy that you can easily pretend is Jason Voorhees. Splatterhouse is a sidescrolling, beat-em-up series by Japanese company Namco, first coming out in arcades in 1988, before being ported to a small selection of home consoles. Splatterhouse 2 and its sequel skipped the arcades and smaller, niche home consoles, opting instead for the considerably more popular Sega Genesis. Today, as part of Netto's Game Room's ongoing Halloween-themed article series, I'm covering both Splatterhouse and Splatterhouse 2 in the same review because truthfully, they're almost the same game. The stages are different, which I will address further down in the review, but the gameplay is basically identical in both titles. The only significant inclusions in Splatterhouse 2 are difficulty settings and a password system, which existed in place of being able to save progress.
The story of Splatterhouse, like with most horror plots and also with a lot of games of this era, isn't particularly deep or profound in any sense, but it is fun and schlocky. The original game tells the story of two university students, Rick Taylor and his girlfriend Jennifer. They duck into a mansion to seek shelter from a bad storm and Jennifer vanishes, while Rick blacks out and awakens in a dungeon of sorts, under the mansion, wearing a strange mask, called the "Terror Mask." If you've seen the first season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the Terror Mask is comparable to the stone mask that Dio wears. It is a sentient ancient Mayan sacrificial artifact that attaches to Rick and turns him into a hulking behemoth capable of great strength. Rick, wearing the mask, battles the monstrous experiments and ghouls located in and around the mansion, in his desperate quest to find and save Jennifer. Unfortunately, when he does find her, she has been converted into a monster, and Rick must kill her. He eventually discovers that the mansion itself is also alive, and he must defeat the spirit of the house. Upon escaping, the mask breaks and Rick is free. Or so, you are led to think.
Splatterhouse 2 has almost no plot, but it picks up three months later, with Rick absolutely wracked with guilt over not being able to save his girlfriend, Jennifer. The mask, reforged, shows up and tempts Rick with an alternate ending to the horrific events of the original story. He travels back to the house, finds Jennifer alive and well, and manages to save her from the inexplicably present monsters and spirits that have re-infested the home. In an inversion of the ending of the original game, Splatterhouse 2 ends with Rick escaping with Jennifer, and the cursed mansion sinking into a river.
As I stated earlier, the Splatterhouse series plays as a 2D, side-scrolling, beat-em-up. Similarly to the plot being basically identical, the gameplay of the first two games is essentially identical as well. Rick, by default, can punch and kick enemies. But, the true joy in the gameplay comes from the various brutal weapons that he can pick up in each stage. Whether it be a chainsaw, a shotgun, or a femur, Rick has a full artillery of blunt, ranged, and sharp weapons to wipe out the haunted creatures and demons of the mansion. Using a weapon is, as you would expect, much stronger than just using Rick's hands or feet. And sometimes saving a ranged weapon, like the shotgun, for annoying enemy types makes some sequences much easier. The violence of this series is downright shocking. Each and every kill
involves dismembering your enemy or otherwise blowing them into pieces
or a slurry of gore and viscera. A
particularly startling boss fight involves slashing at the reanimated,
ghoulish bodies of hanged infants with a chainsaw, which has to be one of the most offensives things ever put into a video game, especially for over thirty years ago.
Both games have a relatively diverse, yet consistently spooky set of stages. Rick will navigate and fight through dank sewers, fetid swamps, horrific dungeons, shadowy forests and essentially any other nightmarish location that you could imagine. Each stage culminates in a boss fight that typically features some sort of particularly ghoulish creature or another. I found the games to be fairly difficult, as some of the recurring enemies can be very annoying, so I did utilize save states to get through some tougher sequences.
Halloween offers a good reason to play some horror games, and I've been trying to revisit classic spooky titles that I missed. Splatterhouse has some of my favorite video game box art of all time (the header image for this very review), and I knew that I wanted to check out the series, so it was first on my list to dive into this Halloween season. I want to check out Splatterhouse 3 sometime soon, as it
continues from the plot of the second game, and actually innovates on a
lot of the gameplay elements from its predecessors. If gore and graphic imagery doesn't bother you, I definitely recommend these games. If you utilize save states like I did, you could probably finish both of these titles in under two hours. They are tight, fun, action games that have aged quite well.
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