Light gun games were (and still are) a big part of gaming. From Nintendo’s classic Duck Hunt, to the greatness of T2 The Arcade Game, there are many titles fondly remembered. One company that produced many great light gun shooters was Sega, and today we will discuss one of their best.
To begin, let us turn our attention to Takashi Oda, then of Sega AM1, has recently finished work on Puzzle and Action Treasure Hunt and wanted to do something different for the arcades than his previous work. He wanted to create a new light gun shooter and had thoughts of a police shooter themed shooter. The issue there however, was that Sega AM2 had already put out the amazing Virtua Cop. Oda decided to have a little in house rivalry with Yu Suzuki’s team and go even further.
Whereas Virtua Cop was aimed at a casual demographic, Oda’s new game would be aimed older demographic. Seeing that zombies appealed to older audiences, the team decided to use those as enemies in the new game. After deciding to pick a name based on what was the most cool sounding one in English, they settled on the House of The Dead, and designed the game using the engine from Virtua Cop. There needed to be adjustments however, as the game would operate a bit differently.
One thing that immediately stood out about the game was its loving tribute to classic B movie dialogue, while the action managed to stay in your face. This gave the game a unique feel to it, and it stayed fresh in our minds. There was a dark sense of dread, but also a sense of power when you took down the enemies. The unique bosses were also a big reason for the game’s success. They were based on Tarot cards and managed to help set House of the Dead apart from Virtua Cop even more.
A funny story is that the game was nearly banned in Indianapolis, when the local government argued it was obscene and unprotected by the first amendment. A U.S. Appeals Court Judge ultimately tossed out the case and ruled the ban unconstitutional, arguing that the game’s gory nature was so cartoonish and flamboyant and “patently fictitious” that it could not be called obscene and therefore not banned.
House of The Dead was a phenomenon, and was one of the two series, along with Resident Evil. that managed to help revive the Zombie genre in the 90’s. It succeeded in attracting an older audience and had a good enough story, that people wanted to know more. This was especially the case with the 3 different endings you could get in the game, which encouraged replaying to see everything. Oda may have started the series as a friendly competition with Yu Suzuki, but it is safe to say that House of the Dead had the bigger impact. There were many sequels, multiple spinoffs, typing games and even a pinball video game.
The games had a big impact on pop culture as well, introducing the concept of fast moving zombies, which would later become a staple of Zombie media. Kim Newman even had the following to say about the game in his book Nightmare movies.”
The zombie revival began in the Far East” during the late 1990s with the Japanese zombie games Resident Evil and The House of the Dead. The success of these two 1996 zombie games inspired a wave of Asian zombie films, such as Bio Zombie (1998) and Versus (2000). The zombie revival later went global following the worldwide success of Resident Evil and The House of the Dead, which inspired a wave of Western zombie films during the 2000s, such as 28 Days Later (2002) and Shaun of the Dead (2004). In 2013, George Romero said it was the video games Resident Evil and House of the Dead “more than anything else” that popularised his zombie concept in early 21st-century popular culture
One can still play the games and enjoy them as an excellent time capsule of the 90’s, while also enjoying what the series has become (as long as we pretend the movie never happened). There is a reason many are looking forward to the remakes of the first two games in the series. House of The Dead is a great game, and a series everyone should play at some point.
In addition, I would like to add that there is an active Sega retrogaming Facebook community group you can join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/segaretrogamers/
For more, visit Retro Gamers Hub (www.retrogamershub.com) for their extensive collection of retrogaming interest groups to choose from.