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Blimey; did the week really go by quite so fast as it did? It feels like I was haphazardly typing out the article that kicked this week off, like, yesterday. It’s honestly a little bit surreal to think that something I planned on doing for two straight years is almost done and dusted. Yet, I still feel there’s more to say before we close the book on this.
There’s a lot of ground I didn’t really cover that I probably could’ve. Certainly I could’ve done a retrospective on the original release of House Of The Dead: Overkill and fitted it in somewhere. I kinda glossed over the series’ penchant for multiple endings (and the truly baffling ways in which you access them in most games), largely because I just couldn’t think of a way to work them in easily, in a way that flowed clearly. The irony being, of course, the articles all flowed in a fairly scatterbrained manner as I struggled to think of what order to talk about things, or where to place certain musings in the article. In more then a few instances, I actually had to go back and tweak or add things after the article’s were posted. Particularly, I forgot to include playthroughs of the 4th game at the end of it’s article at first, due to having to rush to finish it. And I entirely forgot to cover certain aspects of how the first game played until I started talking about them when covering The House Of The Dead 2, and had to go back and edit them in- a whole day after posting. Longtime readers will probably know, however, that I have a habit of editing and tweaking my articles as time goes on anyway; such is the way of the perfectionist. Jesus, I didn’t even do a full, proper Sound Breakdown Paradise on any of the game’s soundtracks (although I came close when covering 4).
Unfortunately, though, all things must come to an end. Which brings me on to my closing thoughts;
As I rather sadly alluded too at the end of the coverage of The House Of The Dead 4, the series really started winding down from about 2006 onwards. Overkill was the last major, sort-of-mainline game in the series, and didn’t feature any involvement from the folks at WOW! Entertainment (although Takashi Oda did provide a little bit of consultation to the project). The spinoffs kinda fell by the wayside as well. Stages based on the series made it into the two Sonic &
Sega All Stars Racing games- although for my money, the incarnation from the first game doesn’t quite hold a candle to the one found in Transformed- but otherwise, not much else to go on. The actual final releases in the series thus far were both related to Overkill- The House Of The Dead: Overkill got an “extended cut” re-release in 2013, and it had it’s own Typing iteration (as briefly covered by Dio yesterday).I have to admit, a part of me isn’t really surprised. The House Of The Dead, at it’s heart, was an arcade experience designed and produced by people who worked in the arcade field for years. And as you probably know- excepting maybe in Japan- arcades are in a real bad way right now. Have been for quite some time, really. Taking the international market into consideration, this really isn’t the best climate to release a new House Of The Dead into economically speaking. That goes double when you factor in the fact that... well, whilst the series has seen plenty of success, it’s not really one of Sega’s truly beloved franchises. Even a lot of die hard Sega fans generally don’t hold it in the same regard as Shenmue, Streets Of Rage, or OutRun, as just some examples. It’s entirely possible that, outside the faithful, there’s just no demand for it the way there once was- and to that degree, Overkill’s shift to ultra-offensive Grindhouse/exploitation cinema stylings, and EX’s shift to cutesy absurdist humour and minigame action are both damn smart moves on Sega’s part from a business standpoint. I’m of course speculating; what hard data there is shows Overkill was successful (in part due to it’s notoriety), but the rest of that I can only guess at. Either way; I’m not holding my breath for The House Of The Dead 5. And considering it’s been ten years since the last numbered entry... it may be too little too late for it anyway.Ultimately, though, I can’t be too negative about the situation. A little frustrated and disheartened, maybe, but not crushed or dismayed. Why? Well see, I think we, as fans of things, sometimes get caught up in the now and the soon to be when it comes to the media we consume. When a series we love comes to a sudden, cruel end, or when we see it continue as a shadow of it’s former self, we feel utter despair. We kinda get tunnel vision and focus solely on just that, treating media almost as a loved one or family pet that’s passed away. It’s a very easy trap to fall into- hell, I’m a massive Sonic fan, and Dio’s a Legacy Of Kain buff. We’ve both got firsthand experience with this sort of thing.Don’t get my words twisted here; I would never call out a fan for being passionate enough to care about something to that degree. For one thing, it would make me hypocrite- I just spent all week gushing and talking critically about a damn light gun game series, for crying out loud. For another, well... that’s fandom in a nutshell, isn’t it? Being so invested in something that’s so beloved to you, that it really does feel soul crushing when things turn out so bitterly.But I do think sometimes we get so caught up in that sort of thing that we temporarily forget that the groundwork that got us to that point is still there. The games, books, movies, whatever that made us fall in love with a piece of media haven’t suddenly ceased to be. And more to the point, the things that made them so great are still there, continuing to make them great. In the end, that’s why I spent a whole week waffling about the series. Certainly I wrestled with the desire to make these articles for the audience, to impart why I love the games onto them and hope they could see what I see, and I tried my best to remain impartial and critical in tandem. But when the chips are down, I did them for myself, too. I did them to talk about something I wholeheartedly love because I love talking about them, and I wanted to celebrate them for my own self indulgence too. Because they are truly fantastic games.No, more then that; they’re some of my favourite games ever made, and they’ve all had a tremendous impact on me and my life in both little and big ways. And as the years go by and the series gradually fades into the annuls of history, that will never change. I and everyone else here at Random Lunacy sincerely hope you enjoyed the House Of The Dead 20th Anniversary Celebration. I know we enjoyed working on it.
~ Decon (23/10/16)
images sourced from segabits.com, oceanofgames.com, digitallydownloaded.net, gamespot.com
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