Crypt Killer is a three-player, horror-themed lightgun shooter that was first distributed into arcades by Konami in 1995. It uses 3D polygonal graphics for the backgrounds and 2D scaled sprites for the enemies and objects. In some respects it is Konami‘s attempt at producing a House of the Dead-style shooter, although in my humble opinion it isn’t as good as Sega‘s famous horror shooter series.

The viewpoint is first-person and the camera movement is ‘on-rails’, and each player assumes the role of a ‘crypt raider’, fighting their way through hoards of monsters in order to find a coloured jewel – called an “Eye of Guidance” – at the end of each of the six stages. The players are guided by Galazon, the spirit of travels, who appears as a spectral floating head before the ‘doors of fate’.

Your default weapon is the shotgun, but you can also find and shoot other weapons to pick them up and use them. There’s a grenade launcher, a machine gun and a more powerful shotgun. These extra weapons disappear after their quota of ammo has been used and you revert back to the default shotgun again. Whatever gun you’re using, they all require reloading when the bullet counter (in the bottom left of the screen) runs down, which is done by pressing button two.

At the beginning of the game the player(s) can choose which of the six stages to play by shooting a rotating sphere on-screen, and each stage has three ‘acts’, plus a boss battle at the end. At certain points in each stage you’ll be confronted by two chained doors. Shooting the chains off one of these ‘doors of fate’ determines which path you’ll take, and you only have a very limited amount of time to decide. The colour of the jewel that you obtain by beating the boss at the end of a stage is determined by the path you take after Act 2.

One interesting and unusual feature of Crypt Killer is that the game has four different endings, one of which is shown after finding two jewels. The ending you get to see depends on the colour combination of the jewels you’ve received after defeating the bosses. And the game doesn’t end there. You’re told by Galazon to continue fighting through the remaining stages.

The four endings, and how to get them, are: 1. the ‘good’ ending: if the first jewel is blue and the second is red you be rewarded with treasure beyond your wildest dreams; 2. the ‘behind-the-scenes’ ending: if both jewels are blue you’ll discover that the monsters are stunt men and actors in a film (!); 3. the ‘bad’ ending: if both jewels are red you’ll be surrounded by all the bosses in the game at once, and will not survive the encounter; and 4. the ‘legendary sword’ ending: if the first jewel is red and the second is blue you’ll find a legendary sword, activate its powers and be able to wield it.

The full size ‘deluxe’ version of Crypt Killer is a very large, impressive-looking cabinet, with wired pistols, allowing three players to stand next to each other and shoot a back-projected screen. Smaller cabinets, with built-in CRT monitors, were also produced.

While Crypt Killer is not a bad game, it’s certainly not one of my favourite light gun shooters. The music is still pretty good, but the graphics have dated horribly and are almost laughable now. There are some fun moments, like the dismembered limbs that fly around the screen when you blast certain monsters to pieces, and some enemies are quite funny or interesting (the mummies aren’t too bad), but overall this is a pretty turgid-looking game. The boss battles also outstay their welcome and go on for what seems like forever. But of course this was all part of Konami‘s plan: they wanted you to keep putting money into the machine to continue, which you can do every time you die. And I didn’t see any way of replenishing my health when I played it, which is another way of getting you to keep putting money in. Playing Crypt Killer with friends in an emulator is the only fun way to play this game. At least that way you can keep continuing until you’re bored with it, without emptying your wallet.

Conversions were released for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Windows PCs in 1997, but they didn’t do much to improve the game.

More: Crypt Killer on Wikipedia
More: Crypt Killer on YouTube