It’s time to round out September with some more unbelievably lush and unforgettable art from our favorite classic games. I chose a few more, and I’ve even got some videos this time, because I got all nerd-excited over some of the choices. I also made an earnest effort to find out as much as possible about the individual artists who created these visual masterpieces… that information is oddly difficult to find – or maybe I’m just dumb as hell and don’t know where to look. If you see one I credit incorrectly or that doesn’t have an artist credit, and you’ve got that information, PLEASE TELL ME! Without any further unnecessarily wordy prefacing bullshit, let’s get right to it! Feast your eyes!!!

Salamander/Lifeforce (Konami)

Year: 1986

Artist: Uncertain, my guess is either Kenji Shimoide or Naoke Satō

The cover of the official OST, perhaps the least intruded-upon version of the base image. Back in early days, at the rental store… this snake scared me so stupid I HAD to try Lifeforce. Just to see if I could teach that snake a lesson.

You are looking into the face of galactic evil. Are you even remotely ready for this shit? Do you even know what “ready for this shit” means?

I don’t think you do, ese. I think you’re gonna get schooled into little fragments.

This one always entranced me as a kid. I originally saw it on the US NES cover, and later on in life I was awed at the detail lost in shrinking it from the original arcade flyer. I know it’s just a space snake, but it’s a fucking scary space snake, man. That perfectly coiled length behind it, framed by the yawning star-speckled nothingness of outer space.

I hope you said your space prayers, kiddo.

Space Harrier (Sega)

Year: 1985

Artist: Sega doesn’t even denote who did what in their game credits, everyone just gets lumped in as “STAFF”

I managed to find this one without the retail trim, so you could soak in the moment of visceral chaos. There’s so much going on… there is a gigantic floating brain back there. It’s got a city on top of it. Yeah, everything’s normal here.

There is a lot going on here, and you’d benefit from a close look. Soaring through planetary atmospheres destroying shit with a gun as big as you are? AMAZING career path. Let him show you.

Our dude is so unspeakably cool that he is point-blank nuking the ouroboros dragon thing without even folding p his shades and putting them somewhere safe. He knows the space babes are watching, and Space Harrier never disappoints. The stone heads just sort of toodle by; it seems like they’re either used to this shit by now or just so sullen and insular that they dare Space Harrier to destroy them.

My favorite touch is the light panic on Space Cyclops Elephant’s face. He is not even sure how he’s getting by in this ecosystem, but he sure as hell didn’t sign up for this. He’s got kids.

OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK KEEP UP CARL OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK 

Meanwhile, a gleaming futuristic metropolis stands majestic against the sublime sunset in the background.

The space babes are definitely there.

DOOM (id Software)

Year: 1993

Artist: Gregor Punchatz

“I don’t need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.” -Emil Cioran

I had to come here. Had to tread the blood-red sands of Hell once more. A UAC space marine’s job is never done. It’s a good thing someone tossed med-kits and boxes of bullets all over the place.

This one image defines my late childhood/early adolescence, at least in part. I still have the 11×17 poster that I framed and hung in my room as a preteen. I just don’t keep it hung up anymore because wherever you put that thing, it sucks the eye away from everything else near it.

Here we see a man who’s pretty certain he’s about to die. He’s bleeding, the sneering legions of Hell are grasping at hims limbs, and you can see the stark animal fear building on his face beneath the visor of his helmet. He drops one, maybe two, but like a pissed-off Satanic swarm of fire ants, the demons simply pile on. His buddy’s running up, shouting that he’ll help cover a retreat. Our man doesn’t even have the breath to say what he’s thinking: you’d better turn right back around, private, or this is gonna be you about twelve seconds after I hit the ground.

That’s the thing that really nailed me to the genre and the aesthetic of games like DOOM when I was younger. I was nihilistic, full of existential terror, and coming to terms with my own mortality at an age when I should have been basking in the bucolic sunshine of oblivion. Doom grabbed me because it was not only action packed and no-holds-barred, but because it really did have this nuance of hopelessness to it. The imagery, the implied storyline, and even certain pieces of music from the game are enough to invoke images of humanity’s twilight. This cover art is no exception. We have stumbled upon a fictional future man about to die, just like billions have before him… except he’s fighting demons and it fucking rules.

Anything Yoshitaka Amano Has Done for the Final Fantasy Series (Squaresoft)

Year: So many, and it’s awesome

Artist: Yoshitaka “World-Crafting Visual Arts Deity” Amano

I’m not one of those people who gushes over shit just because it’s Japanese. Don’t get me wrong; I deeply appreciate what Japanese creators and innovators have contributed to video games throughout the history of the industry. I just tend to sift through my consumption of anything a bit more than it seems… some people do. I’m not judging them. Anyway, I WILL gush over this, because every piece of this man’s art is like Hellenic Greece and ancient Rome collided with the hyperbolic world of JRPGs and created an alternate reality where literally everyone was a god.

Left: The crew from FFII, the Japanese II that was so hard they second-guessed releasing it Stateside but relented eventually; and on the right we have FFIV’s Twin Pimp Squad, Cecil and Kain.

I have a confession to make: the latest Final Fantasy game in the series that I’ve played is IX. I just couldn’t stay interested, plus I stopped doing the console thing around the time the Dreamcast went the way of the dodo. My two favorites, both of which mark me as a minority among FF fans, are I and IV. They are the two that I grew up chewing through, that helped shape my sensibilities about RPGs. I also enjoyed VI very much because it had an even richer story than IV had, and once I got to play them in an intelligible format I fell in love with II and III.

Left: the gang from III, all grown up and jobbed out. Right: Some fabulously crazy shit from VI.

Seeing Amano render those characters in such a graceful, hyper-human style takes me back every time. There’s something deeply Classical as well as something very Art Noveau about everything he illustrates, and it depicts these characters as both visually striking and starkly human.

Splatterhouse 2 (Namco)

Year: 1992

Artist: Probably one of the following – A. Chan, Gyoee~! Miyachan, or Taiji Nagayama (again, they just pile names together in these things)

I just realized while preparing to publish: the fucking octopus has eyebrows. Click for larger version.

I finished with this one because October’s right around the corner. Horror in classic video games is one of my favorite topics to swim around in. Usually the end result of such efforts ends up either painfully cool (but not scary) or laughably shitty. The Splatterhouse series (at least, the original three) are painfully cool. This cover is so 1990s cool I can’t even look at it without muttering “yeah dude” under my breath reflexively.

He is battling the SHIT out of a massive purple mutant and an absolutely FURIOUS land octopus with what appears to be an oversized slot machine lever. You can tell he’s been busy, because that knob is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, an army of the living dead shuffles forth under the guidance of the shittiest little Eddie Haskell ghost I’ve ever seen. One look at Rick’s face tells you all you need to know: he’s HAD IT, and every single thing he can physically reach tonight is going to die.

What’s even more amazing than this is the little intro movie from the game. We’re treated to parallaxing horizons, an almost legitimately moving vision of Jennifer begging to be rescued and then PLUMMETING back into the gullet-anus of some unthinkable creature, and some really driving music that consider the best track out all three OSTs. Look on.

All right, RetroFiends. Put on your hockey masks and go get your pillow cases. I will see you in October!

I’ve got another one for you from the Land of the Rising Sun, RetroFans… and oh, my stars and garters is it something. It’s a sizzling double-order of strange with a side of weird sexual stuff, heavily seasoned with Buddhist culture’s way more hardcore version of Hell than ours, and best of all… it’s Namco, so it’s also a pretty good game.

Yokai Dochuki is the fascinating story of a little boy who died and woke up in Jigoku, the Japanese Buddhist version of Hell. For the First couple of levels he carries a ghost with him, which he burps out before frantically praying at a shrine mere feet away as the ghost tears ass like she was the demons’ dad and they were playing with her power tools. Then he goes to see a VERY questionable mermaid show, peeps some pretty disappointing ogre tits, and finally has a chat with Buddha several stories above a lake of blood.

You know, let’s just start from a softer spot. This isn’t “jump in with both feet” shit.

In 1987, Namco had a fresh new deck of 16-bit arcade hardware called System 1, and they figured the best way to kick the tires was to go all-out on a domestic market platformer. Released in Japan in April of ’87, Yokai Dochuki (which literally translates to “Phantom Travel Journal,” a really casual label for a child’s jaunt through Hell) entered history as Namco’s very first 16-bit arcade platform game. While we never got it here in the Western world (and probably would have been aghast at some of the content), the game was reasonably popular among its domestic audience. Despite the fact that everything’s in Japanese and I have exactly zero idea what the fuck is happening ever, I really enjoy playing the PC Engine version I’ve been lucky enough to access. Yokai Dochuki is pretty challenging, and it boasts some really cool little bells and whistles considering its 1987 development/release. I found it completely by accident, but ended up learning a few things about Japanese culture, video game history… and sadly, what an ogre’s boobs look like.

Let’s talk about Jigoku for a second. It turns out that since Buddhism spread throughout Asia from Nepal and the Indian Subcontinent, “Jigoku” (地獄) is just the Japanese name for the Buddhist concept of Hell. Its original name in Sanskrit is “Naraka,” and it’s a huge set of horrible places. It’s not permanent like Christian Hell, but it still sucks big time. A soul also isn’t sent there due to judgment or punishment, but because of “accumulated karma.” So really, a being could wind up there seemingly randomly upon death… just like poor little Tarosuke has!

Fortunately for him, he can pretty much Hadoken at will, and when he’s first finding his Hell legs he walks around with a pet ghost tucked away. When confronted with a powerful demon, Tarosuke shouts something I don’t understand, and then the ghost flies into his mouth and he burps it back out. I’m not sure why that extra step is necessary, but no one seems the worse for it. While this ghost (which appears to be a little girl) whips the ever loving hot shit out of entire gangs of oni, Tarosuke waddles over to a shrine that’s conveniently just a few feet away.

Look at him. It’s 11 AM and he’s already in Hell and three sheets to the wind. He’s gonna get ghost juice all over this guy’s floor.

This type of showdown only happens twice (I think). Mostly it’s just you, Tarosuke, navigating the landscape of screaming living corpses and huge floppy-headed wizard dudes while you try to find the Buddha to have a chat. Again, I stress that my understanding of the spaces between is very limited due to the language barrier, but like most video games worth playing, you have to make a few stops first.

There’s also a store that shows up at the start of a few stages, where an old woman who just runs a shop in Hell will sell sake to a little kid. You can buy something early on that’s pretty useful: there’s an item that looks like the Black Lagoon creature’s foot, and it reduces the amount that water impedes your movement. Most of what the old woman sells seem to be life bar insurance items; that is to say, you auto-use them when you’re about to die and they pump a little gas into your tank. But yes, it seems that in Jigoku, just like in a real hustla’s life, only two things truly matter… money and power.

You’re either about that life… or you ain’t.  Or you’re n Hell and you’re a little kid. Whatever.

Yokai Dochuki actually has five endings, only two of which are remotely happy. The worst one has you end up staying right in Hell where you’re at. There’s also Hungry Ghoul World, which might sound cool to some of you horror hounds, but I want to stress that IT’S A WHOLE WORLD OF THAT SHIT, ALL THE TIME. Beast World is the ending I can reliably get, where you turn into sort of a pig-type creature that is content living in its own filth and eating almost anything. Since this most closely mirrors my actual real-life adult lifestyle, I am proud of my ability to reliably send Tarosuke there so we can be friends forever. One of the good endings has you waking up at your own funeral… and it kind of looks like they dressed you up like Princess Zelda. (I realize I’m probably being boorishly ignorant of East Asian funeral customs, but seriously, you even have a little Triforce tiara.)

Either way, it’s kind of like looking into a mirror.

To get to any of those endings, you’ve got to find Buddha. It’s what you do along the way that helps or hurts you. For instance, I know that to get one of the two happy endings, you can’t kill any enemies on Level 5. At some point early on you get a chance to gamble with some frogs and a zombie. Apparently, even though I think this is extremely fucking dope, Buddha does not.

Rock solid truth: Hell is just gangsta shit 24/7 and the scene is so Mad Max down here even Buddha gettin’ mad sendin’ high rollers to Beast World and shit.

In one of the last stages along the shittier path to reaching the Enlightened One, you have to go get… something from some lady who lives underwater. You ride a turtle down there, and she gives you some carnival barker routine… and then, in possibly the unsettling moment in the game, a set of pre-pubescent mermaids take the stage topless and shake their shit… MUCH TO TAROSUKE’S PRURIENT DELIGHT. To the point where HE CAN’T HELP FREQUENTLY LOOKING BACK AT YOU, THE PLAYER, TO SEE IF YOU’RE GETTING A LOAD OF THIS. I won’t comment further, it’s really not that bad in the grand scheme of things… but still, why does it have to be there? It makes that one level worse than anything in Splatterhouse.

They say that Hell is the impossibility of reason.

In another late level, you meet a grape-colored ogre woman who… has not aged well, and who has become the proud surrogate mother of an alarming number of crows. She wiggles, glances around, and mumbles while her crows look at you like you just got off the boat.

I will always hate birds in any video game because birds in video games simply thrive on defying all common sense in order to utterly destroy you. And yes. I saw them. Now you “get” to see them. JOURNALISM IN ACTION!

Don’t anthropomorphize crows at all. All you get is smarter, smugger crows.

After all these trials and tribulations, you finally ascend about a half-mile into the black sky above a neatly-contained lake/pool/whatever of blood. Apparently that’s where Buddha likes to chill and reflect on enlightenment… on a cloud structure that looks like a wobbly cat jungle gym teetering over Hell’s version of the hotel pool. If you were good (it’s fucking hard to be good in Hell), you go to Titty-Heaven or back to your weird family. If not, you get royally chumped or just turned into a pig. At least as the pig, it looks like you have a girlfriend or something, which is better than anything called Hungry fucking Ghoul World.

You’re on some Dr. Seuss set prop suspended above a gigantic stone bowl of hot blood, asking Buddha if he minds you clocking out of your karmic torment a few eons early since you’re a little kid. Moments of silence pass before he calmly condemns you to Hungry Ghoul World. The worst part? You know he made up his mind in the beginning and made you stand there just because he thought it was funny. And it was.

Ports were released for Japan’s Famicom and PC Engine systems in 1988. Once again, the Western world was left out of Namco’s bizarre yet well crafted piece of video game history. Later years not only saw Tarosuke show up in things like the PS2 game Namco X Capcom, but also saw Yokai Dochuki released for the Wii Virtual Console… yet again, Japan only.

PC Engine (left) and Famicom versions. The Famicom version includes a “Pious” counter so you can actively see how screwed you are. Being the angel-born miracle machine it is, the PC Engine clearly wins out on presentation… but both versions lose surprisingly little of the original feel.

Theories abound as to why the game never made it over here. One of my favorite ones is that it contains shit like the overt sexualization of children (even if those children are cartoon mermaids) and is also set exclusively within a very culture-specific concept that 9 out of 10 of us Westerners would have scratched our head at in the 1980s. It wasn’t until later that just over half of our young people would try so hard to be Japanese that it posed a potential safety risk. I digress; other theories insist that there WAS a version in the works for the English world, to be released on the American/Euro versions of the same two consoles. If you’re into emulation and you look around, there is a very good unofficial translation that goes by the name it’s suggested was planned for the Western cart… “Shadowland.”

Screaming crowds of damned souls; huge bean-headed mutant wizards; a giant woman who doesn’t seem to mind at all that you’ve invited yourself to bath time; the five-thousand dollar cat that was made using Granny’s refurbished Girl Scouts stem cell kit.

From a purely technical, play-the-video-game-you-pansy standpoint, Yokai Dochuki is pretty amazing. In 1987, it had a surprisingly open-ended play experience and was quite involved for an arcade title. It’s fun to play, and once you get the hang of how Tarosuke does his stuff it’s easy to wheel around and look like a badass. A lot of the enemies are creepy as shit; there’s a couple different beef-jerky skeleton dudes and a lot of monsters that are just horrible faces that float. Your environment changes a lot, and there’s not much downtime as you travel across Hell. The music is absolutely addictive, and I’m actually listening to a YouTube video of the main theme as I type. Graphically, Yokai Dochuki is everything a 16-bit heavy hitter should be. It’s colorful, detailed, and it conveys itself well as something that’s supposed to be both creepy and humorous.

I could just do without the mermaid child exploitation and the ogre tits, is all. Here’s the soundtrack!

Thanks for taking another walk to Japan with me, folks. We’ll have more for you in May, and as usual, if you’d like to ask me something or tell me about something I should write about, you can reach me via email or the NRW Gaming Facebook page.

Remember… when you’re going through Hell, keep going. Otherwise you might get turned into a horny, gluttonous pig.

Since the Internet and emulation have become prevalent in gamers’ lives (especially mine), I’ve had plenty of moments when I’ve been exposed to something that never left Japan and thought, “you know, this would have really done well in the West. It’s a shame we’ll never know because they didn’t try.” Import retro gaming and emulation has always been a super-niche aspect of the hobby, a place where the mystical ley-lines of japanophilia and completionism cross at a right angle. Some people are so devoted to the cult that they translate ROMs and keep lovingly curated translations of the games’ plots and stories. Characters and worlds unheard of outside Japan have slowly gained life in the West as the Information Age has taken hold and rendered localization a mere formality.

Which is great, because otherwise I’d probably never have gotten to play Valkyrie no Densetsu.

I won’t say how I got a hold of the English translated ROM for the PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16 version, but I will say that if you join the right forum on the right popular emulation website, you can probably find it if you look around. I was overjoyed to find it, as I’d seen bits of the original Japanese source material and even had an untouched ROM… but I won’t pretend I’m able to read Japanese in any form. Any discussion among hardcore PC Engine or Namco fans was likely to bring up the character of Valkyrie; I was intrigued to the point that I started hunting down an English translation. Apparently a decent official one exists on a PlayStation compilation disc called Namco Museum Vol 5, but PlayStation’s a little past what we cover here. My best hope was a translated ROM of the arcade or PC Engine version. I found the latter after extensive looking, and was not disappointed.

Kurino and Valkyrie bravely fend off flying mandrills. Clearly, Valkyrie’s not even worried. I mean, the weather’s nice out, she’s being launched through the sky somehow… this is a great day. She doesn’t even have time for this shit to drag her down.

As it turns out, Valkyrie no Densetsu (Legend of Valkyrie) is part of a series of games. Its prequel, Valkyrie no Boken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu (Adventure of Valkyrie: Legend of the Key of Time) was released for the Famicom in 1986 and became very popular in Japan. It contained several RPG elements that would later be matched by games like Dragon Quest/Warrior, but also bore a striking similarity in some ways to Legend of Zelda. It wasn’t a hit overnight, but it gained popularity due to its characters and story. What’s most important in the context of this article is that Valkyrie makes a friend during this first quest: a chubby little lizard dude named Kurino Sandra (sometimes called Whirlo in US-release Namco products). He would go on to feature prominently in the plot of Valkyrie no Densetsu in 1989.

In the spotty prologue of Valkyrie no Densetsu, Kurino Sandra has been living peacefully at home since the events of the prequel, but hears about a golden seed that can grant wishes. He decides to go on a quest for it alone, as Valkyrie has ascended back into the heavens. In the process, Sandra finds a magical trident embedded in a block of solid gold.

Just… right there. Among some rocks. No one ever noticed it or bothered with it. Certainly not the head-sized block of pure gold it’s stuck in. Congratulations, Kurino!

He and some companions from the first game end up in a ruined town near a clock tower, and are confronted by a powerful warrior in service to some jerk named Kamuz. Of course, this results in a violent confrontation unfavorable to Kurino and his friends, but what do you know? Having seen the strife caused by the golden seed, the heavens have seen fit to send Valkyrie down once more.

One player or two, this is where the game picks up. The eight stages take you across a wide swathe of the world of Marvel Land (no authoritative source confirms or denies this being related to the Genesis title of that name produced by Namco), from meadows and forests to lava caves and lands of ice. After exhaustive comparison, I can’t see any real difference in mechanical game function between Valkyrie and Kurino; both of them jump the same, cast spells (yes, cast spells) the same, and shoot energy bolts out of their weapons. It’s all a matter of aesthetics. The game is top-down but contains plenty of jump-hazards, so mastering the distance and timing of that jump is essential. Battling small crowds of low-tier enemies isn’t too hard; in fact, it’s pretty fun. The control response is good, and you just point and click. The spells you learn (see below) can do things like turn you bigger and stronger, create whirls of flame, allow you to float in midair, and even summon little versions of yourselves to help deal out punishment. (This last one is actually called “Option Magic,” a reference to similar abilities in various shoot-em-up games.) Health and magic power are both measured with little icons, and the game is generous enough to use half-units as an increment.

Waiting for the duo are ogres, goblins, robots, and various kinds of boss monsters, some of whom are so large that the screen has to zoom out a little to let you fight them. Most non-boss monsters aren’t too dangerous individually or in small groups, but seeing as Valkyrie no Densetsu is originally an arcade title, the swarm effect will be noticeable at regular intervals. Most enemies drop gold in varying amounts, which makes one wonder just what to do with all the loot earned through righteous murder.

Thankfully, A merchant, an old lady, and a little girl are constantly hanging around these dangerous places with the intent of doing business with you (or just giving you shit). The little girl usually just has story items, but the old woman teaches you some bad-ass spells and the merchant guy sells you some useful stuff (including shooter-style power-ups).

From a scan of the Japanese manual for the PC Engine version. 

The game’s soundtrack is pretty good, the obvious best example being the arcade version. The prologue and main theme music are what I’d call “charming” if I were pretending not to like them as much as I do; they’re adorable, uplifting, and delightful. For a game so grand in overall scale, it’s unfortunate there isn’t more there, but what IS there is a wonderful fit for the theme.

Valkyrie no Densetsu clearly exhibits hybrid traits; it is both a top-down “platform” game and a less-than-conventional shooter when held to examination. Larger-than-life bosses, an involved yet approachable in-game economy, and stage features like catapults you must use to get from area to area are just some of the game’s appealing side-dressing. It’s no wonder Valkyrie no Densetsu made it to the PC Engine in 1990, taking a tiny hit in graphics and sound but retaining the bulk of its charm and playability. The Wii Virtual Console released a fairly faithful version of the original in 2009 (after emulating the PC Engine version the year before). As mentioned before, 1997 saw the release of the only official English translation on a PS1 disc called Namco Museum Vol 5, but I’m told the disc was (and is) both rare and expensive. The saga of Marvel Land’s heroes continued with a Kurino-centered entry for the Super Famicom in 1992, which did see release in Europe as Whirlo, but was drastically different from previous games in the series. Valkyrie herself has made various cameos in other Namco franchises: in the Mr. Driller series; in Soul Calibur II as an alternate costume for Cassandra; and as a relative staple in the company’s Tales of… franchise.

Screenshots from the English fan translation of the PC Engine version.

It really makes me wonder what heights she could have reached if she’d ever been let loose in the West. To most gamers, she’s just one of those characters in Namco vs Capcom that you’ve never heard of.

But if you’re a real blood-in member of the cult of retro gaming, you know who she is. At least, you do now. You’re welcome.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back in March with more! As usual, feel free to email me or visit the page on Facebook if you have feedback, questions, or (best of all) a juicy game you think I should hear about.

A whole month worth of shrieks and creaks is right around the corner, so I thought I’d kick September’s sorry ass out the door by reviewing two horrid (horridly awesome, that is) Genesis games at once. Way back when I started doing this for NRW, I reviewed the arcade/TG-16 classic, Splatterhouse.  While that title is a definite milestone in video game history (not to mention one of the best horror-themed games of its era), a lot of our readers will be far more familiar with its sequels. Both are fantastic in their own right, and it’s a valid argument that they even outperform their forebear in terms of playability and presentation.

Splatterhouse 2 and Splatterhouse 3 are very different games, but both are very true to the original when it comes to theme. In Splatterhouse 2, rick is given a chance by the newly-rejuvenated Terror Mask to save Jennifer (whom he failed to save in the original game). He goes back to West Mansion to find it re-inhabited by all manner of gross monsters, and ultimately sinks the whole mess into the lake after saving his lady love.

European box art for 2. Much more cartoony than the first one’s promo art, but still suitably gruesome and chilling.

The game plays very much like the first one, but with a lot more effort put into detail and dynamics. The stages are still mostly linear, and most of the original gameplay elements are present, but sometimes you get a neat surprise like level or weapon specific animations when you kill a monster. The graphics are also a bit more detailed, and the music (composed by Eiko Kaneda) follows suit.  It was the first game in the franchise that I ever played, and I would liken its difficulty to that of the first game, but I would also call it more immediately approachable.

The third entry to the franchise really lets its hair down and stands out as its own title. Splatterhouse 3 continues the tale of Rick and Jennifer, along with their son David. Never released in Europe, Splatterhouse 3 was among the first Genesis titles to receive a rating by Sega’s own Video Game Council… and it understandably got an MA-13. In this one, Rick and his happy family have settled down in a nice mansion in Connecticut about five years after the last game’s events. Of course, that asshole mask comes back again, this time under the service of something called “The Evil One.” After Rick rescues both his wife and his son, he must defeat The Evil One and then finally rid himself of the mask after it reveals its true intentions.

Magazine ad for 3. Rick is looking buff as hell, and he’ll need all that muscle to cut through the monsters and save his family a third time.

Splatterhouse 3 takes the original play formula and cracks it open. Not only are the stages nonlinear, but the game plays much more like a beat em up in the vein of Streets of Rage or Final Fight, affording Rick a bit more up-and-down movement and a crude sort of move-set. Rick can also power-up the mask, saving spiritual energy until he mutates into a sort of Rick/Mask hybrid. This makes him much stronger, but doesn’t last terribly long. There is also a time clock, and how quickly you finish the levels (along with where you end up) can change the cut scenes and endings significantly. In other words, there are multiple endings, which lend significant replay value to the game. These cut scenes are visually impressive, as are the in-game graphics, and the music is all right too. I will say that the audio falls short of Splatterhouse 2, however… but just barely. The sound effects are excellent, though, and go along with the new beat em up format of Splatterhouse 3.

Both of these titles were unlockable as part of the 2010 Xbox 360 Splatterhouse remake, along with their granddaddy, the original game.  Everything I’ve heard and read has led me to believe that the remake just didn’t resonate with fans, which is unfortunate… because the original three games are incredible. Together they form a saga of love, loss, horror, and ultimately, the triumph of good over unthinkable evil. Not to mention that it’s just fun to splatter some monsters once in a while.

Things are gonna get gruesome as hell in my little corner of NRW this month, RetroMonsters. Stay tuned!!!