Developer: | Now Production |
| | Release Date: | 1992 | | | Systems: | Mega Drive |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out Mega Drive brawler Splatterhouse 2! I figured I should play something with a bit of a horror theme for Halloween... for a change. I generally only remember to play a Halloween game 40% of the time, so you got lucky this year. Or unlucky, if you came here hoping to get away from it.
Horror's never really been my favourite genre to be honest, plus I get bored of side-scrolling beat 'em ups very quickly, but I found Splatterhouse 2 at #1 on Horror Geek Life's Top 10 Spookiest Horror Games on the Sega Genesis so it has to be something special. Unless it's just not a very spooky console. Splatterhouse 3 also made the list, but not the first Splatterhouse... which makes sense as it was never released for the system. Splatterhouse 1 started out on arcade and was ported to TurboGrafix-16, FM Towns, PC, but not the Mega Drive. The two sequels, on the other hand, were Mega Drive exclusives. So that must have sucked for all the TG-16-owning Splatterhouse fans who wanted a sequel, and the Sega-owning completists who wanted them all.
The original arcade Splatterhouse was by Namco, but this sequel was outsourced to Now Production, the folks who'd made the Splatterhouse spoof spin-off Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti on the NES. They've got 70 games listed on MobyGames and they're still going strong to this day, releasing Switch titles like, uh, Spaceship Curse, Seal Electric Railway, and Shark Copter vs. Zombie Dancers.
Bloody hell, I've written Splatterhouse 9 times and it's only the intro. 10 times now. Alright I usually stop after the first hour, but that would probably be enough to beat Splatt... this game twice over, so this time I'm only going to cover the first ten minutes. Fortunately I can probably drag those ten minutes out all night, as I'm crap at these kinds of games.
Content warning: this is a horror game so it's going to be a bit horrible at times. Lots of 16-bit gore and nastiness. There'll also be spoilers for the first game.