Splatterhouse, FM Towns

The FM Towns version of the controversial Namco arcade game, Splatterhouse, was developed and published by Ving – in Japan only – in 1992. It doesn’t suffer from any of the censorship, that some versions of the game do, and is a completely uncut and almost perfect port of the arcade original.

Splatterhouse can be played at three difficulty levels – easy, normal and hard – and the aim is to hack and slash your way through seven side-scrolling stages, and survive by any means possible.

You play as Rick, who – with his girlfriend, Jennifer – has entered the Splatterhouse Mansion and fallen prey to the dangers within. Waking up in the cellar, Rick has been resurrected from death by The Terror Mask, which sends him on a vengeful rampage to rescue his girlfriend.

Rick can punch, jump, duck and kick, and can also pick up weapons lying on the ground. With whatever means at his disposal, Rick must destroy the gruesome army of monsters thrown at him, and find Jennifer within a strict time limit (although you’re not actually told this, and you don’t know what that time limit is either). If you don’t reach her in time… Well, you can imagine that whatever happens won’t be pretty…

At the end of each stage is either a “boss room” (where you have to survive an assault for a set period of time), or a boss encounter, with some sort of hulking monstrosity to duke it out with.

Splatterhouse is obviously meant to appeal to horror fans, and to those who love imaginative, disgusting, fantastical creatures and situations. For example: there are chained enemies that barf up damaging acid puke that you have to jump over, and you can decapitate some enemies, and their floating heads will return to attack you… Not the type of occurrences we were used to seeing in arcade games back in the day (now they’re fairly common).

The FM Towns version of Splatterhouse does offer continues, when you run out of lives. Which does make it more accessible than the arcade version (which is as hard as nails). And for that reason (and the fact that the game is all in English), is the main reason why it’s still worth playing today.

More: Splatterhouse on Wikipedia