The original Splatterhouse turned some heads when it was released in Arcades. Video game violence was in its infancy. Those titles that did have blood and guts were heavily pixelated to the point of being almost unrecognizable. Other times the violence was missing even when characters were beating each other to death. Splatterhouse ripped the breaks off and went for gold. Seriously, try and find a video game from the 1980s where you could blast ghouls in half with a shotgun, or splatter them against the walls with a two by four. This was before the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) was established. It’s back when parents had to pay attention to what their kids were playing without a handy guide to show them what they should protect their children from. Being the huge fan of horror that I am, and video games as well, I fell in love instantly.
Today with Halloween looming I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the Splatterhouse franchise in it’s totality. I own and love all of these games. This includes a few different versions of the original release. This series is just perfect to play during the month of all hallows eve, and what better way to honor it than with a full blown retrospective? That’s why today we’re going to take a look back at this storied, gruesome, and spectacularly fun homage to classic horror films. This is our Splatterhouse series retrospective. Before we jump in I’m going to give you a rundown of the format to make it easier to navigate this article.
You can consider each of these sections mini-reviews for the games, but I’ll also include links to the full write-ups we’ve done for them where available. I’ll cover each of the titles on their own page and the links are below:
Part 1: The Original West Mansion Adventure (Splatterhouse)
Part 2: 16-bits of Bloody Glory (Splatterhouse 2 & 3)
Part 3: “So Much Suffering. It’s Beautiful” in HD (Splatterhouse 2010)
Part 4: The Chibi Spin-Off (Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffitti)
So without further adieu let’s dive right in to the gorefest that is Splatterhouse!
