Creepy Classic of the Month: House of the Dead

Manufacturer:	Sega
Developer:	Wow Entertainment
Genre:	Light gun
Board:	Sega Model 2
Year:	1997

It's halloween at the end of the month, so's time for another creepy classic of the month and boy, is it a doozy.

Zombies and videos games appear to be a match made in heaven. From dedicated zombie games such as Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead and ZombiiU, to the undead appearing in otherwise non-horror games, such as Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty and even western adventure Red Dead Redemption. For fans of arcade games, the number 1 zombie game has to be Sega's light gun series, House of the Dead.

The game is set in the undead-infested Curien Mansion, home and laboratory of the scientist Dr. Roy Curien. Now I won't go as far as to call Curien a mad scientist, but his experiments did lead to the zombie outbreak that permeates the series, so he certainly wasn't all that stable. You and a friend take control of agents Thomas Rogan and "G", as they search for Rogan's missing girl friend. On arrival at the mansion, you encounter a dying man, who hands you a journal containing details of Curien's monstrosities. This becomes essential as you face the game's various bosses.

House of the Dead first made its international appearance in 1997, a few years after Namco's Time Crisis and Sega's own Virtua Cop. Like those two games, House of the Dead featured polygonal graphics, but in the years since those other games first appeared the technology had improved no end. The increased detail in the textured models was essential for giving the zombies and other nasties a suitably decayed and grotesque appearance.

Unlike Time Crisis with its cover/reload pedal, House of the Dead stuck to the old technique of making players to shoot off screen to reload. This only added to the tension of being surrounded by hordes of brain-hungry undead, as you had to readjust your aim when you flicked back to the screen. Whether this was Sega's intention or not I don't know (although I doubt it, given their earlier games used the same technique), but it certainly increased to the sense of desperation.

This first video shows the game in action, but second from FindArcadeGames shows an old cabinet they've recovered, which looks to be in excellent condition.

MTW