Sento Nel Core: A Splatterhouse Retrospective

The original Splatterhouse title is a particularly special game for me in a few ways; barring perhaps Galaga or Rainbow Islands, it’s one of the first games from the medium’s formative years that I really fell in love with. Explaining exactly why that is, though, isn’t all that simple; there’s a lot of factors going into my love of the game, and a fair few that arguably contradict it. Thankfully I am fully capable of writing reams of text about Splatterhouse so, without further ado, here’s a really wanky thesis on why I think an old arcade beat ‘em up from the late 80s is Pretty Neat™.

First thing to know out of the gate; I tend not to go in for works that primarily base their horror solely on how much blood it’s going to shove in your face. This isn’t due to repulsion, mind you; a fair few things I do like have their share of offal and viscera, and in certain contexts I think a bit of gibbing really can add to a horror work. Where I usually have my hangups is horror works that don’t really have anything but the buckets of blood backing the terrifying experience they’re trying to sell us; stuff like Melt Movies, for example, don’t really do it for me because they’ve got nothing else to show for it.

Whilst Splatterhouse does feature elements of horror that aren’t based on, well, splatter, the name does kinda indicate that it’s the primary feature. The game’s set in the house, and there’s splatter everywhere. As I’ve previously discussed, Splatterhouse’s overall presentation owes a lot to the Grindhouse movement in film, arguably a lot more then the “big budget” horror movies for which it bases a lot of it’s homages on; it’s very difficult to find a single frame of the game that isn’t coated in something viscerally nasty, and the game takes a ghoulish delight in presenting it’s players with endless litres and gallons of a veritable rainbow of viscous liquids and chunky broths of sputum to wade through. By all accounts, Splatterhouse seems like the kind of horror title that would repel me not for distaste so much as it wouldn’t really feed my particular horror appetite- and indeed, a lot of other horror games that came out in the PS2 era onwards with a similar gory bent escaped my interest for that very reason. So, what exactly is it that makes Splatterhouse different?

There’s actually a couple of reasons, but the first one I’d like to cover is the time and place in which the game came out- 1988.

Here’s a very brief list of games that came out in 1988, both in the arcades and at home: Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 2, Double Dragon II: The Revenge, Final Fantasy II, and the American release of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. In terms of tone and presentation, these games vary from “not at all close to Splatterhouse” to “not even in the same Universe as Splatterhouse”. Certainly there were games with horror elements or minor touches of gore that came out that year and before- again using 1988 as a bassline, we saw the releases of Altered Beast, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden, and Super Contra- but even those titles at their spookiest or most grisly are far brighter in tone then Splatterhouse is.

case in point

I’m aware I’m slightly retreading some of the ground I covered when I wrote A Nightmare in 128 Colours earlier in the month, but I’m approaching this aspect from a slightly different angle; there, I discussed how the abstract nature of early pixel art forced player’s imaginations to fill in the gaps and create something far more fearsome and terrible then a game designer would be able to come up with on their own. Despite Splatterhouse’s increased graphical fidelity compared to the likes of, say, Sweet Home, it does still have a touch of that aspect going on, but that isn’t really what I’m discussing here; the angle I’m approaching is more that, frankly this was only a decade after Space Invaders exploded in popularity and gaming as a medium really begun to take off. Splatterhouse’s existence as a pixilated game released in this time period makes it something of an inherent contradiction, both retroactively and especially at the time.

Simply put, games did not look or feel like this in 1988. Splatterhouse almost feels like a game that couldn’t have, or even shouldn’t have existed, and yet here it is anyway.

Let’s look at the first level specifically- and thus, the first-time players initial exposure to what the game is going to present you with. To paraphrase Derek Alexander of Stop Skeletons From Fighting, Splatterhouse Stage 1 is the place where Happiness and Hope go to die; as soon as the screen fades in, you’re greeted with a grim cave with decaying, utterly savaged corpses dotting the floor around you. And it’s not just one sprite repeated endlessly, it’s several, each of them in several stages of decay- some of them even appear to be reaching out to you, as if begging for help long passed the point where you can do anything for them. There are rudimentary jail cells embedded into the cave walls, and several of those play host to emaciated beings, gripping and shaking the bars that hold them back desperately. Chained up corpses that vomit corrosive acid before decaying completely are an active stage hazard that must be avoided entirely. And, of course, that’s not touching on the stage’s enemies. Barely recognisable as humanoid, these undead creatures don’t just happily blink out of existence when punched or attacked with a weapon; no, they collapsed into piles of meat when punched, the cleaver will take off the tops of their bodies and leave a geyser of green gore in their wake, and the 2 x 4 just utterly splatters them against the wall, insides exploding out of their frail frames as said frame slowly slides down the wall.

This probably doesn’t seem like much when stacked up not only against games of the modern era, like OutLast or Until Dawn, but even against titles from the PS2 era like Manhunt or Condemned. But, again, bare in mind; this came out the same year as Super Mario Bros. 3. The Mega Drive was first released in 1988. There was almost nothing else like Splatterhouse at the time, and it must have been quite the system shock to anyone that got to play it “in the moment”.

As a result of being a genre lead at such a formative time, the way the game goes about trying to scare you and implement it’s creative ideas is incredibly novel. Certainly, there are portions of the house that look identical and certain setpieces or enemies are reused several times over, but by and large each stage does attempt to introduce new elements to you that differ subtly or greatly from elements it has already introduced. As previously alluded to both here and in other articles I’ve written, pretty much none of Splatterhouse’s enemies are immediately identifiable as human, or as anything that could’ve been human at any point- certainly a lot of them have vaguely humanoid shapes, there’s the ghostly Jokers of course (those anime-ass looking ghost girls that drop skulls on you), and though spectral in nature the Mirror Ricks are obviously splitting-image lookalikes of our protagonist- but most everything you fight is so removed from anything you could relate to that that, alone, ramps up the spook factor. You can’t even begin to understand or relate to the things you have to lay waste too, and that just makes the mess dealing with them makes somehow even more disgusting. The only recognisably human things you encounter besides Rick and his girlfriend Jennifer are the corpses and bodies strew around the landscape, all of them previous victims of the house’s cruelty and sadism- and a good smattering of those are so fucked up beyond repair that THEY don’t even look recognisably human.

Admittedly, the stock Bats and bizarre use of Birds in Stage 3, or the spiked mine-looking things seen in the water segments don’t really fit with this design ideal and are a little uninteresting as a result, but hey, they can’t all be winners lads.

I do think there’s something else at play, though; something that’s ultimately a lot more important in the long run in regards to the game’s lasting appeal, and that’s the game’s story and content itself. Bare with me for a bit whilst I waffle about it, I promise it does lead up to an actual point.

Forget the sequels that came later or the additions that the PC Engine port made- Dr. Henry West and the overt nature of the mansion’s reputation, mainly- and let’s focus on just what the arcade title gives us. Everyman Rick and his lovely girlfriend Jennifer are caught up in a terrible storm, and as luck would have it they stumble upon a large, abandoned estate that would provide ample shelter to ride out the storm in. It’s possible that this estate may have an ill repute in Somewhere, Some State, USA Probably (which is where I assume the game is supposed to take place), but other then the dramatic organ melody over the attract mode sequence there’s not much immediate indication that the house is bad news- to Rick and Jennifer, at least. Of course when they do go inside, they’re attacked in the dark; Jennifer is taken away by the denizens of the house and Rick is struck with a killing blow, putting him completely out of commission. During the little pre-game sequence that the player is shown after hitting the start button, we see a mask hover over Rick’s prone body before attaching itself to his face- rendering him Buff, Bald, and insanely Powerful. I believe even in the arcade version the Mask at least was given some explicit explanation- it is an ancient artefact of evil known as the Terror Mask (or Hell Mask, depending on the translation) that gives those who wear it unimaginable strength; in fact, it’s powers are seemingly limitless, since it’s seemingly capable of bringing people back to life in tip-top working order. Why exactly it took pity on Rick and gave him this power + the chance to save his girlfriend is n’t really explained- Splatterhouse 3 gives us an answer, but again we’re ignoring the sequels (and honestly, the answer is kinda lame).

This seems fairly standard for the time- it’s the typical Save The Princess trope, but tarted up with a bit of icky stuff and extra Bookiness- and whilst you’re not given any active explanation for who’s running the joint, for what purpose they’ve taken Jennifer from you, or what an insanely powerful thing like the Terror Mask is even doing there, but your opined to assume it’ll be some sort of Mad Scientist/Supreme Occultist/Absurdly Powerful Demon who wants your girl as a Sacrifice for something.

But then Stage 5 happens, and everything get’s turned on it’s head. You encounter Jennifer at the end of the level, and after scaring off a gaggle of Deadmen and a lone Top Heavy accosting her she wakes up and seems to be perfectly fine for all intents and purposes- look, she’s even greeting you with a smitten “Rick, my darling!” (er, at least, I think that’s what she’s saying; it’s a little difficult to tell). But then she doubles over in pain, the room shakes and trembles with tremendous energy, and with a painful scream overlain with horrendous laughter, the love of your life transforms into a hideous monster out for your blood. The boss of Stage 5 is the damsel you were trying to save from distress, and throughout the fight she briefly shifts back into her human form, saying... something (this voice clip is so garbled nobody can agree on what she’s saying; to me it sounds vaguely like “*murmur murmur*, Don’t kill me!”, but that isn’t really congruent with the rest of her dialogue), making for a very disconcerting battle all things considered. And then, when she finally goes down, she reverts to her human form one last time and utters, much more clearly then anything else she says “Thank you; goodbye...” as she disappears in Ricks arms. He doesn’t have much time to mourn, though; the Top Heavy comes back and makes a mocking gesture, because enraging the Beefed Up Burly Man Who’s Girlfriend You Just Made Him Kill even further is a very smart thing to do.

The weird plot twists don’t ease up, as the entrance to Stage 6 is shown to be a horridly disgusting hole in the floor (with drips oozing down from the ceiling above no less), and the stage itself is... well, there’s no delicate way to put this; it’s a fleshy tunnel that spews out little eggs that hatch into what appear to be infantile monsters.

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Splatterhouse’s birthing canal! Yeah, turns out this whole time, the house was alive in the literal sense. And make no mistake, this isn’t for aesthetics sake; if we take into account at least some of the PC Engine port’s additions (namely the stage descriptions in the manuals), this area is directly referred to as the “heart of the house”, and blimey o’riley, the pulsating organ at the end of the level certainly looks like a heart.

I need to briefly pause to address something; there’s nothing in the arcade version, or the flyers that advertised it, that directly disproves that elements like Dr. Henry West- the previous owner of the house, a noted expert in the field of Parapsychology who performed gruesome experiments in the manor (thus lending it it’s moniker) before, depending on translation again, going missing or outright dying during the course of his experiments. In fact, the addition of Dr. West actually gives reason for Rick and Jennifer going to the house besides the storm (they’re Parapsychology majors who live in the area, and decide to investigate the house as part of their combined thesis) and adds an explanation for something that’s coming up in Stage 7, but I’ll get to that shortly. Cutscenes were definitely a thing in games at the time- and Splatterhouse has them- but there was only so much you could convey with them due to limited memory space and overall primitive hardware. It’s possible that additional details like that were planned from the start rather then retconned in- without interviewing the original “Splatter Team” staff or getting a closer look at original archive material from the game’s development, we can’t know for sure- but as far as the original arcade version itself goes, based on it’s presentation, it is entirely possible that Dr. West was not yet conceived of. I actually find this, in a sense, even more satisfying and atmospheric; that way, we’re given absolutely no explanation for what the gruesome house is or what it’s end goal seems to be beyond the fact that it is sentient, is quite literally “birthing” monsters of unimaginable horror, and is seemingly spiteful and cruel for it’s own amusement. And as they always say; lack of coherent explanation in horror sometimes adds to the terror, provided just enough explanation is given to satisfy. And I think Splatterhouse, as it is, gives just enough to satisfy but keeps enough cards to the chest to keep us wondering. In a way, we don’t need to know how the house came to be this way or what it’s actually trying to achieve; knowing it is alive, is giving birth to monsters, and has caused an unmitigated amount of mental and physical suffering on those that dare to enter it’s halls is perfectly succinct for the mood, I feel. But I appreciate this might not satisfy everybody. The one area in which this factor is both at it's strongest and paradoxically is actually in the Terror Mask itself. Outside the universe of the game, it's because supposedly in the earliest stages of Splatterhouse's development, Rick was a straight up Jason Vorhees ripoff who was actually pursuing Jennifer through the house rather then trying to save her, and though this plot detail was abandoned fairly early on the Mask was kept in (as was the rest of Rick's attire, which is... admittedly a little strange, even for a supernaturally empowered human being). In universe, however, the first game in either incarnation doesn't really offer a concrete reason for what brought the Mask to the Splatterhouse; we can infer that Dr. West somehow obtained it for further study, but in the arcade version, it's just there, and it only seems to help Rick out at all because Fuck It, It's Tuesday. Whether or not the complete absence of explanation for the Mask beyond what it is works just fine or shatters the foundations of the overall narrative is something that'll depend on the original, I feel (for the record, I'm of two minds about it; it's frustrating in a way, but it does add to things about the game I cover below and it doesn't ruin the overall product for me personally).

To segue back on point, the questions only further pile up during the final level. Destroying the literal heart of the Splatterhouse seems to have lead to it’s very firey destruction, and the brief portion of the level that isn’t a boss fight consists of Rick escaping through the also-on-fire woods on the mansion’s grounds, dodging burning logs and the screaming, flailing, and also burning monsters created by said mansion. But then, you come upon a clearing with a single wooden cross as a grave marker; the mask seems to spew out some sort of spirit that attaches itself to the grave, causing an enormous, disgustingly rotten undead creature of unimaginable size to poke it’s head and arms through the ground and attempt to try and kill Rick, evidently for no other purpose then to bring Rick (and the Mask) down with the House. It, of course, doesn’t work; Rick knocks seven shades of shit out of the beast- canonically known as Hell Chaos, unofficially referred to as “Captain Mozzarella” by fans- and it disappears into the ground. Then a ghostly face rises out of said hole, roars in agony, and explodes into a thousand balls of light for a long period of time. This is the element that makes more sense with Dr. West factored in to the story, by the by- in the PC Engine version of the game’s manual, it is made clear that Dr. West died in no uncertain terms (whereas in the manual for the Turbografx-16 version released in the US, this detail is changed to West simply "going missing" and merely implying he MIGHT no longer be of this world, for... what I'm sure was a very good reason at the time). It’s not much of a leap to assume that the grave marker is for West, and that Hell Chaos is the good doctor given an abominable form in undeath. And, likewise, that the spirit released upon it's defeat is his own soul or essence passing into the afterlife, finally free of the accursed house that he had created- and that had destroyed and consumed him in the end. Assuming that actually is what's going on here- again, there's no clear indicator in the PC Engine version beyond assumption, so what Hell Chaos' relationship to the Splatterhouse actually is, how it got to be that way beyond the canned explanation of “EXPERIMENTS!!!!1111“ offered by the PC Engine port, and most importantly WHY the Mask is the one that actually summons him for you to do battle with are all questions left entirely unexplained throughout the entire trilogy.Further muddying the waters is the fact that Splatterhouse 2 completely undoes the idea of Hell Chaos being Dr. West, as that game brings him back as a normal-sized Zombie and end-of-level boss in one of it’s own stages, once again leaving the question of who or what Hell Chaos is supposed to be in the air entirely. But, again, focusing on just the first game with no assumption sequels would ever be made, Hell Chaos being the long dead and wholly corrupted remains of Dr. West makes some level of sense.

After the confrontation and spooky light show, the Mask quite literally explodes off Rick’s face, it’s task seemingly complete. Rick can only stand in front of the burning remains of the Splatterhouse, heartbroken and traumatised by the events of the night, as one of the most haunting and depressing songs in all of videogamedom plays over the credits. The final stinger where the Mask reassembles itself and laughs maniacally makes no sense, but given it’s a homage to how many horror films end with a nonsensical “final scare” it can be written off as just that. This is the only ending you can get in the entire game no matter which version you play; there’s no optimal route through the game’s multiple paths that allow you to rescue Jennifer, and playing on higher difficulties results only in a bragging right reward. Which, finally, brings me to my main point with the story:

You don’t save the damsel. In fact, not only does she die, she dies at your hands. You technically enact revenge for her death by destroying the house, but you never get any answers for anything; you don’t know why Jennifer was corrupted into a monstrous form, you don’t know who or what made the house this way, and you have no idea why you went through any of what you did that night. Really, there isn’t one; you and your girlfriend just had the poor dumb luck of getting caught in a storm and seeking shelter in the one place you wouldn’t find it, and you both suffered terribly at the hands of something vile and grotesque for nothing more then it’s sick, idle pleasure. And you walk away with absolutely nothing to show for it except the irreparable damage done to your psyche.

It’s cruel. It’s callous. It’s depressing. It’s well worn ground in horror, but, again, in a game from 1988? Really?

Don’t get me wrong; though these ideas aren’t anything new under the sun, and the twists are hardly unique, for as much story as there is in Splatterhouse it is told fairly well. You do connect with it on an emotional level fairly easily on its own terms, and that is to be commended. But, again, I can’t help but keep coming back to that release date of 1988. For the time, this was extremely complex stuff to present in a medium that only ten years prior was satisfied to give you a story surmised thusly: “Aliens are invading. Shoot them. Don’t cock this up.”

And there is something inherently alluring in the fact that such an early made title is presenting us with some fairly lofty and kind of heavy ideas, and presenting itself with such a viscerally disturbing visual finish. It would be wrong to say Splatterhouse was the first horror game, or even that it’s the first ultra violent video game- arguably, a lot of what I’ve discussed here would also apply to Exidy’s Chiller, except for the bits where there’s actual thought put behind... pretty much any aspect of it’s design- but it’s one of the earliest examples of both in it’s field, and it could be argued that it’s the first to do both successfully and in a way that made an impact.

It’s fair to say that Splatterhouse has never been a hugely mainstream series at any point in it’s lifespan- depending on your criteria, it’s sat somewhere between the edge of mainstream and obscure pretty much since day one- but it’s fan following are fiercely devoted in a way only cult followings can be. The presence of that fandom was strong enough to lead to two sequels, one of which rejigged the gameplay in a considerable way, a much more lighthearted and goofy spinoff that goes completely ham with the horror references, and even a moderate-budgeted 3D remake in 2010 with a whole heaping tonne of extra Lore™ and even some big name talent- Jim Cummings voicing the here-somehow-more-sympathetic-yet-more-outwardly-sadistic Terror Mask. Each of these titles have their ups and downs, of course, but each of them manages to connect with people on some level due to what it brings to the table, and I think it would be unfair to write any of them off as being just about the gore gimmick- even the much maligned remake has some plus points to it that show the team actually gave a shit about what they were making, no matter how misguided they may’ve been.

And I think really, that’s the most important aspect I come away with here. Yes, a big part of Splatterhouse’s appeal, especially the earlier titles, is the time and climate in which they were made; they were forerunners of ultra violent, “dark” horror titles in a time when not many games like that existed, and that alone made them novel. But if that was all they had, they’d... well, they’d be Chiller, wouldn’t they? Truth be told, the thing that makes Splatterhouse different is that it ISN’T just mindless gore with nothing else going on behind it; there’s a degree of substance and level of thought behind all the gunk that grabbed my interest, and made all the mangled corpses and drooling fleshy monsters more effective then they otherwise would’ve been if they were there simply for the sake of it.

~ Decon Theed (25/10/17)

Images sourced from the-haunted-closet.blogspot.co.uk, arcade-museum.com, newretrowave.com, board.sonicstadium.org, retrocollection.net, aminoaps.com, vgmuseum.com, sega-16.com, emuparadise.me,