![the house of the dead 2 and 3 return the house of the dead 2 and 3 return](https://retrogameman.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/screen-shot-2017-07-04-at-6-52-39-pm.jpg)
But, obviously, as an arcade game, its job was to entertain while extracting coins to encourage the inevitable Continues. That the game could still prove to be a huge challenge when set to Very Easy difficulty gives you some idea of where SEGA was pitching it. With absolutely zero concessions to notions of accessibility, the only way to get through its five stages was supreme dedication, memorising every part of every stage, and deploying cat-like reflexes with an epileptic trigger finger to back them up. And even with its occasional technical aberrations taken into account, in terms of out-and-out style and in pure playability terms HOTD 2 beats the squishy-looking sequel hands down.Īs an example of the genre, there are few on-rails shooters that can claim to be as hardcore as HOTD 2. Although SEGA managed to create a pretty decent 3D engine for the time, and create a posse of still-terrifying zombies, its hilarious attempts to render realistic-looking humans is almost as unhinged as its approach to voice-overs, with stilted animation and wonderfully deranged faces guaranteed to raise a smile. Far enough advanced from the embarrassing 3D visuals of the early '90s and sharp, detailed and well-animated enough to still be bearable by today's standards, this NAOMI-powered title still manages to hold a stylised nostalgic appeal. You may recognise me from school canteens in the late 1970s.Įven the angular late '90s visuals of HOTD 2 have a strangely perverse appeal. Hello, I am in fact a zombie jam roly poly. Hearing it again all these years later is a strangely wonderful thing, with age only helping to enhance its kitsch status.
#The house of the dead 2 and 3 return full#
Full of solid gold Japlish utterances and delivered with the kind of cold, stilted monotone that you only ever seem to hear in Western versions of Japanese videogames, it has a peculiar charm that's far greater than the sum of its parts. One of the star releases in the early days of the ill-fated but much-loved Dreamcast, it came out in an era when routinely, unintentionally hilarious voice-acting was par for the course. Looking at HOTD 2 now is simultaneously heart-warming, hilarious and terrifying. If you care enough about the genre, the chances are you'll already own one or the other (probably both), and will simply relish the chance to play them again using the Wii controllers - either the Wii Zapper or the similarly adept Wii Remote. Recently, SEGA got the ball rolling by belatedly treating us to a port of 2004 arcade title Ghost Squad, so it's only logical to service this peculiar niche by re-issuing something more renowned and familiar - in this case House of the Dead 2 and 3 in the same package.
![the house of the dead 2 and 3 return the house of the dead 2 and 3 return](https://www.arcadeclub.co.uk/cdn/game-library/house-of-the-dead-2/screenshots/house-of-the-dead-2-3.png)
It's little wonder we're currently experiencing a flood of old and new point-and-shoot blasters. You can either berate SEGA for blatantly cashing in on its tired old light-gun back catalogue, or continue to celebrate the fact that the Wii is the new spiritual home for all these old classics, with a control system that lends itself perfectly to the genre.