Splatter House 3 is a side scrolling beat em’ up for the Sega Genesis. It’s the predecessor to the games before it, yet a precursor for the new game on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The nature of the game is dark and atmospheric, a bit of Friday the 13th and Michael Myers. You lead the battle as a character named Rick, who seems to be possessed by a mask, that is like a separate personality from himself. He wants nothing more than to rescue his wife Jennifer and son David, from within a mansion that is riddled with all kinds of demons and apparitions, monsters etc.
The difficulty of this game is pretty stellar, even on low difficulties you can easily get your ass handed to you, if you’re not wise to getting drops, particularly books which will give you an extra life. It’s important to be well stocked on lives because you’re guaranteed to be dying a good deal. Other power ups, include hearts which give you health, and there are little blue orbs which will assist in your power up, where Rick gets all super buff and goes beast mode. I believe if you play on the hardest difficulty, “game master” you will gain access to extra levels known simply as “Stage X”, this is the best opportunity to score on books (extra lives).
You will navigate through a mansion, where you can look at the map when you complete particular room. This will help you get to the boss in the fastest route possible. After all the game is timed, and if you’re too slow you might miss out on saving Jennifer or David. In the best case scenario, you rescue the both of them and get the “good” ending.
What I like most about this game is, as I said before the atmosphere. It just has this dark and eerie vibe about it, and it’s insane to think this is old Genesis game. I remember playing this as kid, and those cut scenes scared the ever living shit out of me. To this day, the whole package they put together runs very well, and is unparalleled by other games at the time, and even today. I could compare this to, the first Resident Evil game, where they opted for live action fmv’s. There is something about that, that just works perfectly.
As I said before, I played this game as an adolescent, so it does have a particular nostalgic piece about it. But I can be for certain, had not played it as a youth, I would still find its dark and eerie display charming. I have made the claim before, that Sega showcased some of the darker and sicker kinds of games, stuff with more of an adult vibe about it. This game in particular represents that very well.
