The House of the Dead (0)

First release date

1996-12-31

Platform

Saturn Arcade PC

Developer

Sega AM1 R&D Division Tantalus Media

Publisher

Sega

Theme

House of the Dead

Franchise

House of the Dead

Overview

The House of the Dead is an on rails shooting game featuring 4 stages each ending with a unique boss named after a tarot card. The game is 2-player. Player 1 plays as Rogan and Player 2 plays as G. The game's total play time usually clocks in at about 15-25 minutes.

Plot

On December 18th 1998 Agent G and Thomas Rogan head to the after receiving a distress call from Rogan's love interest Sophie. Upon their arrival, they encounter a zombie ravaging one of the mansion's scientists. The scientist begs the two agents to save the other scientists inside the mansion. The game uses the scientists as their Hostage system. When they reach the mansion's courtyard they encounter Sophie being attacked by the Stage 2 boss. The boss proceeds to taunt the agents as he escapes with Sophie. The rest of the game is centered around stopping the mad scientist Curien who has seemingly raised the zombie army in an attempt to rule mankind.

Releases

The House of the Dead first launched in arcades which featured ground breaking graphics for its time. After the success of the game, it was released on the Sega Saturn and the PC. These releases featured terrible visuals as they could not be supported by the systems at that time. A well known change is the transformation of Rogan's brown trench coat into a brown suit. These releases also had no mouth movements whatsoever.

Light Gun Support

The House of the Dead is one of the first games to take advantage of Light Gun support in a 3D world. This was true on home consoles and in arcades.

Gore

The House of the Dead was known to be one of the most violent games of its time. In an effort to censor some of the violent content many arcade machines and all home releases feature an option to turn the blood color to green.