The House of the Dead

I enjoy blasting ghouls as one of may favorite pastimes and this game is one of them. I love the gameplay here: blast the zombies, save the hostages, your performance determines route. The enemies come in a wide range such as unarmed, axe, chainsaw, spider, frog, monkey, and bat. While not as diverse or long as the sequel which is my favorite, I still find this game pretty enjoyable to this day even with the dated graphics and bad acting (not as bad as the second). The bosses are pretty generic (for the time) though the Magician more than makes up for it if you make it to him. The music is really slamming! Gets your blood pumping with excitement as you blast the zombies. The 9 I'm giving it is for the minor faults and surprisingly low difficulty, but otherwise fun to play.

God I love this game. I remember when this game used to cost at least $1.00 in the arcade. now it has been about 5-6 years later that this arcade now cost a quarter or .50 cents to play. I played this with my family, my friends, or by myself. i even spent almost $20.00 to beat the magician, the last boss of the game when the game first came out. I give this game 10/10. warning do not get the sega saturn version of this game, the graphics are so horrible ( why did i even bother telling you not get this game for the sega saturn. I mean sega saturn no longer exist anymore)

Sometime in 2005 Sega's classic hit 'The House of the Dead' (1996-98) was re-published onto CD-ROM by Empire Interactives as one of there Quality Fair Game Value collections. It works on Windows 95, 98, Me and XP. Higher PCs like XP require you to right hand click on the game as set the compatability to Windows 95 mode. It runs perfectly. Just make sure your monitor can support 640 X 480 resolution. Most monitors are backwards compatible and change once the game loads on there own.

You can use the PC mouse to shoot and 'reload' or use the keyboards arrow keys and space bar. Two player mode uses 1p mouse and 2p keyboard. You can use PC light guns as well, however most monitors today are LCD and light guns only work with the old fat CRT monitors. You can get LCD light guns today that work on PC, PS2, XBOX etc.

Depending on your PC, you can set the textures to low or high. Most high resolution computers (XP) do not not display the game properly when high textures are on. You also get DirectX 5 on the CD-ROM to play the game or play the game with DirectDraw. DirectX is better but DirectDraw is handy if any issues occur. Most XP PCs have DirectX 9 + on them so that installation can be skipped for most people.

The game is a classic copy of the arcade version and is a great CD-ROM for your collection, or retro collection for that matter. I use Xp and the issue I have is the sound. Sound effects work perfectly (i.e. guns, zombies and speech) but the music don't always play. Some days it will decide to play music and sometimes it wont. You can tell as soon as the demo starts. Also by watching the demo to the end, it will crash and must retsrt in order to open up THOTD game again. This might be due to XP. Get arcade mode, PC mode, boss mode. A must get.

Of course you can't expect anything clever like a brilliant story line or amazing graphics but that isn't what the game intended to be. It's a basic shoot-up arcade-style game and that's what I love it for.

Basically you are a secret agent and you have been sent out to deal with a problem at a house that's festering with zombies. It's been a time since I played it but I remember it having to do with a mad scientist and his experiments. Now you have to help other scientists who are being attacked by zombies, weird frogs, mean giant maggots etc. You also have the bosses, before you fight them you are told the weak spots you have to aim for except for the last boss, you'll have to guess all on your own. There's a boss who I particularly love who looks like a flying grey demon that sends his bat friends after you. His voice is high-pitched and sorta squeaky so even when he's threatening you it just sounds so damn cute.

Although when you've completed this game you'll find you can just play straight through it in a very short time which I think is good because it means there's enough time to have plays of it before you start doing the work you're supposed to be doing. Fans of shoot em ups and old arcade-style games should love this but I'd recommend it to any video game fans just to give it a try. It's really fun.

Do you dream of walking into a house and just blasting the green out of the dead people walking around? well, this arcade first person shooter is for you. you're a guy who walks into a house full of zombies and you blast the guts out of them. literally. or parts of their head. you can even shoot off arms and legs and decapitate enemies. all from your pistol. doesn't that sound fun and innocent? Nope.

I Suggest you wait till your child is 12 or 13 before he or she tries this game. even if it deserves an M rating, those ratings are stupid. Children see worse things at school. there's m rated content on the news. Heck, let them play this when they're 8. it's not like they've seen a zombie on TV without his head before.

it's an M rated game with 8/10.