Collection essentials #306 & #307: The House of the Dead (Saturn) and Stunner (Saturn)

If you spent a lot of time in arcades in the late ‘90s and early 2000s then there’s a good chance you’ve encountered today’s game there. Light gun games were popular in arcades, and Sega capitalized by making a great one with a B-movie horror theme. The House of the Dead sees you going into a dangerous, creepy mansion filled with zombies and other horrible creatures in order to rescue innocent people trapped inside.

House of the Dead is what you’d call a “rail shooter”. That is, your character moves as you progress, but the movement is automatic and the player doesn’t directly control movement, instead needing to focus on shooting whatever dangers come their way. You have unlimited ammo, but can only shoot six bullets at a time before having to reload, which in this game (and many others like it) means shooting the gun outside of the screen once. A straightforward but effective gameplay setup.

What’s cool about this game is the stuff you can shoot that aren’t enemies. Shooting at things like barrels can give you secret bonuses like extra health. You must avoid shooting innocent human beings, because you will both lose a point of health and will also feel like a horrible person. And what’s especially cool in this game is the subtle branching path system. You can’t directly control movement, but shooting certain things will cause your character to move to a completely different path. This means any given playthrough can be very different from the last. At the end of your run the game shows you which paths you took, and you can see on the map how many other possible routes there are. And of course, like most light gun games, House of the Dead works great as a two-player co-op game.

There are pros and cons to this Sega Saturn rendition of the game. The big and super obvious downside is the graphics. The Saturn simply wasn’t capable of rendering the quality of graphics used for the original arcade machine, and the difference between the two versions is night in day in that regard. But the Saturn version also comes with some neat features. You of course get an options menu which lets you tweak your experience in a way you can’t with an arcade machine. There’s also “Saturn mode” which most notably lets you pick between different playable characters with different attributes, with various numbers of bullets per round and different levels of firepower and shot area. There’s also a boss rush mode to see how you can fare taking on the various boss enemies in a row. If you don’t mind the graphical downgrade, this is an excellent version of the game.

You’ll see that I have a Japanese copy of the game, but it’s not a Japanese exclusive. House of the Dead was one of the very last Saturn games to be released in the West, and because the console was practically dead, not many copies were printed and that version is a rare collector’s item that commands a high price. The Japanese release saw a normal print run and is far cheaper, and comes with English text and voices anyway so there’s no real drawback to importing it.

I’ve owned this House of the Dead copy for many years and it’s my favorite light gun game of all time. It’s just the right level of challenge, it’s super replayable, it’s awesome to play with friends, and the audio is great with quality music and purposefully-cheesy voice acting. I’ve made it to the final boss, but as of this post I still haven’t managed to actually beat it. Maybe someday, as I’ll definitely play more of it in the course of my life.

Sadly it can be rather inconvenient to play House of the Dead in modern times since old light gun accessories don’t work with HDTVs. There was a remake of the game made for modern platforms not long ago, but without a good light gun accessory the gameplay is sorely lacking compared to the original. But if you happen to live in my area, you can hit me up and simply come play on my setup to enjoy this classic essential.