Chiller Review (Nintendo, 1990)

A horror themed light gun game on the NES sounds fantastic on paper. It’s one of my favorite genres, and after games like House of the Dead I’m always up for a ghoulish shoot fest. What could go wrong? The game I’m referring to is Chiller. This was originally released in the arcades to little fanfare. ‘Weird’ or ‘strange’ are the common words you hear from the few people who remember it when asked to describe the game. The developers decided that a home port was necessary and they set their sights on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Little did they know that the house of Mario drew a hard line on violence back then.

This leads me to why the cartridge is off-color and oddly shaped. It’s one of those fancy non-licensed carts that some developers released their games on to bypass Nintendo licensing requirements. It is these games that are usually the lowest quality and just all around weird in general. That’s the perfect summation of the experience that is Chiller for the NES. It’s bad, low brow, and it doesn’t care if you’re entertained because you’ve already paid for it. Let’s take a more detailed look at this dumpster fire shall we?

There’s no elaborate scenario here. You’re simply a guy with a gun, and you must for some reason shoot a specific number of objects in a set amount of time. There are four separate spooky stages each consisting of a single non-scrolling screen. The scenery is static. At the start of each level you’re shown which items count toward your goal. It only flashes for a few seconds so I hope that you have a good memory. Not that you’ll actually need it though because just about everything that moves or looks out of place can and should be shot with your handy dandy zapper. You’ll get a variety of different effects depending on the target some of which are unintentionally hilarious.

The first setting is a graveyard. It’s not your typical peaceful graveyard however. For one thing you’ve got heads impaled on the fence posts, bodies sticking up out from the ground, a hand continuously throwing skulls into a grave, and more. I’m not quite sure why the shadow lady is pushing a stroller through the graveyard at night, but hey, not much does make sense here in Chiller. You’re not supposed to be concerned with why you’re shooting these things anyway. Just pull the trigger and ask questions later. It’s pretty easy going here but for a haunted graveyard it sure is bland visually.

The second throws you into a haunted house. This is, sadly, the high point of Chiller. It’s the only one that feels like Halloween to me with ghosts that wander the halls and other ghouls waiting to be blown away. In a rather weird twist the final two areas are glorified torture chambers. You’ll see living people strapped in to crude and painful looking devices. For some unfathomable reason shooting their various body parts counts as a hit on your monster meter. What’s even more strange is the fact that you can shoot levers and switches to activate the devices resulting in gruesome deaths for the victims. It’s as weird as it sounds, and after the few seconds of nervous laughter you’ll also be bored out of your mind. I really wish I could figure out what they were thinking with this one.

Despite all this there are a few good things about this game. For starters it’s the only light gun shooter for the NES that supports two players simultaneously. Yes, you and a buddy can each grab a zapper and shoot your way through Chiller at the same time. In addition you can opt to use control pads instead, or even just one while the other person uses the gun peripheral. That’s very unusual as far as quality of life features go for a game this old. I just wish it was with a better game that the developers took the plunge with such ambitious features. Unfortunately this leads to a big problem.

The zapper simply isn’t accurate for this game. It’s like it’s not properly calibrated, and there’s no way to fix it. I struggled to hit even the biggest targets when I assure you my aim was dead on. I’m pretty adept at light-gun shooters and I’m really led to believe that Chiller was just poorly programmed. Yes, that has to be it. Chiller is really only playable with the control pad, and even then there are some issues. The on-screen reticule moves well enough, but there’s some input lag with pressing the A button. It feels like Chiller only registers around half of the shots you take. This isn’t so bad on stationary targets.

Even by light-gun standards this is a super short game. Every time you blink you’re already on the next level. Each stage must be completed in just a minute or two. There’s only four levels, and this means you’ll have seen just about everything Chiller has to offer in under ten minutes. Can you imagine spending fifty plus dollars on something that lasts you ten minutes at best? The developers tried to elongate the experience by giving the player no lives or continues. I call this artificial difficulty, and it’s an old tactic that I’m not particularly fond of. Even with the control quirks I had little problem blasting my way through to the end.

When you’re done Chiller sends you all the way back to the graveyard to start again with absolutely no fanfare. I guess that’s a handy trick to make your game seem longer. On a positive note each level has special talismans hidden in it that are revealed by shooting certain objects or specific places in the scenery. I guess this is a nice feature, but I never felt compelled to complete the collection. The only replay value that comes from this game is in showing off to your friends for a few good laughs. Make sure they have a sense of humor before powering this one up though. There’s absolutely no saving grace to be found here.

The final nail in the coffin for Chiller is its graphics. They’re absolutely horrendous with very little detail, off colors, and really unimpressive animation. I could re-create each of the stages in Microsoft Paint. The second stage in particular is guilty of this. Most of the monsters here are mere silhouettes as they walk back and forth through the hallway. This is truly one of the ugliest games I’ve ever seen on the platform. The music is just as bad. There’s only one song throughout the entire game, and this is just a couple of random notes that barely go together. It’s not creepy or atmospheric. It is however a real ear sore. On another note this game contains a surprising number of real world noise samples. Shooting a hand in the first stage results in a scream that, while scratchy, is impressive.