Virtually Overlooked: Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti
Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it a retro-speculative.
We recently discussed Mighty Final Fight for the NES, which was a weird, super-deformed remake of Final Fight done in a semi-parody style. It managed to competently shrink down the Final Fight gameplay, adapt it to a completely different style and still be fun.
Namco executed a similar NES remake of a beat-em-up in 1989, using as a base a much less likely candidate for chibi-ism: the pioneering horror game Splatterhouse.
We miss parody remakes, actually.
Splatterhouse the arcade game was vivid, detailed, and gory. The protagonist, Rick, was huge and muscular, covered with a mask that stretched painfully across his face. He fought disgusting, filthy, bloody, horrible monsters in a decaying, dusty, haunted mansion. It was a horror game, and it conveyed the atmosphere pretty well. Splatterhouse wasn't the most deadly serious game, but it was bloody enough to be shocking, and as any other game about a guy in a hockey mask carrying a plank around.
How would you follow up a game like that? Namco chose to make an adorable sequel/remake for the Famicom. The content of the game didn't really change-- Rick was still stuck in an evil mask, slaughtering monsters in an evil house to rescue his girlfriend. In fact, in some ways, it got more horrific. The game starts with Rick rising from his grave for some reason. But even if it's the same guy hacking zombies with a meat cleaver, the tone of the game is completely different.
The most obvious change is the graphical style. Rick, no longer a huge monster of a man, is an adorable, big-headed kid, giant eyes peeking out from the lil' evil mask clamped on his head. The enemies are big-eyed zombies, evil dolls, jack-o-lanterns, chickens (straight out of the oven) and even a dancing vampire with a big goofy smile. Even the crawling hands are bright purple and not at all creepy. It's just not as visceral as the original, and that's not just because of the relative lack of viscera. And as fans of nonsensical games, we enjoy the dissonance.
Beyond the visual style, the game went from being a semi-open parody of horror movie tropes to a flat-out parody. Every environment in every level is broad parody of a classic horror movie. The first environment ends with a Thriller-style dance sequence, the first boss is an Exorcist-esque possessed doll, and so on. Rather than being eye-rollingly derivative, spotting the Alien or Jaws or other nods is as much fun as any other part of the game. Of course, there's little chance for an American release of a game in which you're attacked by flying cross tombstones within seconds of entering the first level. We can imagine there are many people out there who wouldn't think that part of the game was terribly cute.
