This Week In Retro: The House of the Dead 2 (Patreon)

November 1998: Suffer, like G did?

by Diamond Feit

I believe my political leanings have drifted further and further to the left as I get older and realize how much damage decades of far-right rule has done to the United States, but one opinion of mine hasn't changed since childhood: Guns suck. Whatever their usefulness as a hunting tool or sporting equipment, their omnipresence due to lax regulation leads to the deaths of thousands of Americans every year. I remember my great-uncle showed me an (unloaded) handgun once and I was terrified; to date it remains the one and only occasion I have held a working firearm.

Staged gunplay, however, is totally awesome. Movies like The Matrix and The Killer (1989) have their heroes wield these weapons like extensions of their own body. I marvel at the effort Keanu Reeves and the rest of the cast puts in behind-the-scenes for each John Wick film. Personally, I have on occasion had the opportunity to fire so-called Airsoft guns which shoot harmless pellets instead of bullets and I always walk away feeling like a badass for my marksmanship.

Naturally, many of my favorite video games require ample use of make-believe bullets and bombs, and I cannot imagine what my digital body count might be after decades of button-mashing. I know the earliest arcade games to capture my imagination had me peeping through scopes and firing artillery at military targets; this includes more recent releases such as the 2001 Golgo 13 cabinet which includes a life-size sniper rifle for a controller.

25 years ago, a new arcade shooting game stormed onto the scene and turned a lot of heads. A sequel which built on the formula its predecessor established in 1996, this new game surpassed the original with more enemies, more exploration, and more storytelling. I remember playing the first game but The House of the Dead 2 would become an iconic example of the genre and an arcade mainstay.

Debuting the same year as Capcom's Resident Evil, The House of the Dead also invited players into a mansion packed with carnivorous zombies. However, as a score-driven game designed to target our pocket change, Sega's arcade shooter featured full-3D graphics and didn't skimp on the ammunition, offering up a steady stream of shambling stiffs for target practice.

Arcadegoers had seen plenty of light gun games prior to House of the Dead, but the quasi-horror setting gave it a different feel than earlier titles like Time Crisis or Sega's Virtua Cop series. For one thing, since the enemies attacking the player are undead, they can take more damage than living foes. Shooting them slows their approach and blows off chunks of their body, but unless you're a crackshot who never misses a weakpoint, you'll need an itchy trigger finger to put them down before they close in for a chomp.

In-between hungry ex-humans lunging towards the screen, House of the Dead players also have to keep an eye out for scientists trying to escape. These defenseless non-combatants cry out for help and need to be rescued before a zombie takes them out; successfully shooting their pursuer will net the player life refills and, on occasion, open an alternate path through the level.

Notably, health packs and bonus points are the only pickups found in House of the Dead. Plenty of other shooters feature weapon upgrades or screen-clearing explosives to get out of a tight spot, but that's not the case here. House of the Dead keeps things simple, offering players nothing but a basic handgun. This makes the game a real challenge to complete, or an expensive one for those willing to credit-feed their way to victory.

From a gameplay standpoint, House of the Dead 2 changes very little from the first game, as just about everything written above applies to the sequel. Zombies still rush towards the player, their flesh flying apart as they soak up bullets. Civilians still stumble into the battlefield and require quick action to be spared a monstrous fate, although the generic scientists have been replaced by a swath of ordinary folks this time around.

What has changed is the setting, as House of the Dead 2 notably abandons the premise of secret agents storming a mansion in search of a mad scientist's hidden lab. Instead, the sequel covers an entire city, one that the game never identifies. Given the presence of canals, these events appear to transpire in Venice, although one boss battle takes place in "the Colosseum" which would indicate Rome. Either way, the outdoor, European locations give the sequel a much brighter and more appealing look.

Another factor in the game's improved visuals lies in its use of new hardware. House of the Dead 2 was Sega's first arcade game released on the company's NAOMI architecture, a low-cost replacement for the Model 3 boards used since 1996. NAOMI debuted in the same month as the Dreamcast in Japan, and the two pieces of equipment shared the same CPU. While I can't speak to the technical reasons behind this, I've always felt that NAOMI/Dreamcast games have a look all their own, one that holds up even decades later, and House of the Dead 2 is a great example of that. The colors pop on the screen, bestowing an uncanny sense of liveliness to the undead.

Behind these superficial aesthetic changes, House of the Dead 2 also expands the threadbare narrative component of the first game. As the player characters advanced through House of the Dead 1, they would occasionally speak ill of an unseen villain named Curien. He appears late in the game, lets loose a couple of advanced creatures, but ultimately falls when the final boss refuses his orders and kills him. At no point does the game shed light on Curien's identity or motive, making him a paper-thin antagonist.

An arcade experience driven entirely by aiming a plastic gun at monsters can only tell so much story, but a little intrigue goes a long way, and House of the Dead 2 makes the most of the brief interludes between action scenes to offer players morsels of motivation. The game opens with the heroes driving to meet "G," only for a surprise attack from above to push them off the road. A flying imp taunts them and commands a horde of zombies occupying the city streets to unleash havoc.

For a random player to insert a coin and receive this much information before ever firing a shot might sound slight, but I remember finding these tidbits inviting. I had no idea who G could be, or why the weird gremlin knows more about the situation than the protagonists. During each chapter break, the game escalates matters by giving players a glimpse of the real mastermind, an executive in a penthouse named Goldman. His dialogue makes no sense and the actor sounds like the dubbed bellhop incarnation of Pee Wee Herman, but I still wanted to know what he could possibly hope to achieve with an army of rotting corpses.

More House of the Dead sequels and spinoffs would follow in the 21st century, but to me this second installment was where the series peaked. I saw this cabinet in every movie theater, rest stop, and shopping mall amusement center for many years. Whenever my friends and I came across one in the wild, we'd inevitably pump a couple coins in and see if we could clear the first stage. One friend was particularly fond of paying for two players but wielding both guns by himself, a real risk/reward strategy that doubles your firepower but spawns more enemies to harm you.

Even though arcades have long fallen out of favor, horror remakes are all the rage these days, so Forever Entertainment recently published a top-to-bottom reimagining of the original House of the Dead for PC and consoles. I can only assume that developer Megapixel Studios has at least pitched Sega a House of the Dead 2 remake, and so I must make my case here and now: Please consider casting me as the new Goldman. I may not have the most voice acting experience, but I am a fluent English speaker and very familiar with how the language sounds in everyday use, two things which I don't think can be said about the original performer.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.