The House of the Dead (1996 video game)

Main series
(Sega AM1's universe)

The House of the Dead
Production information
Producer(s)	Rikiya Nakagawa
Director(s)	Takashi Oda
Planner(s)	Takashi Oda
Developer(s)	Sega AM1
Programmer(s)	Koji Ooto Kazutomo Sanbongi Kazutaka Horie Tomoyuki Naito Gen Miyazaki
Designer(s)	Hiroyuki Taguchi Yasutada Kawata Nobutaka Tozawa Takahiro Kudo Akiko Shirota Satoshi Ito Norio Ishii Yasushi Sekido
Composer(s)	Tetsuya Kawauchi
Publisher(s)	Sega
Release information
Release date	September 13, 1996 (Japan) March 4, 1997 (International)
Platform(s)	Arcade Sega Saturn Microsoft Windows
Arcade system	Sega Model 2

For the 2003 film adaptation by Uwe Boll, see House of the Dead (film).

It feeds on your fear. Don't go into the house... Alone!

Marquee

The House of the Dead (ザ・ハウス・オブ・ザ・デッド, Za Hausu obu za Deddo) is a horror-themed rail shooting game developed by Sega AM1 and released by Sega to arcades in 1996. It is the first installment in the main House of the Dead series.

Set in December 1998, The House of the Dead follows AMS agents Thomas Rogan and G, who investigate the mansion of genetic engineer Dr. Curien. In a fit of insanity, Curien has produced hostile creatures which threaten mankind.

Developed in just over a year, The House of the Dead was designed to emulate horror films, appeal to adults, and differentiate itself from Sega AM2's 1994 rail shooter Virtua Cop. Sega AM1 faced time constraints, hardware limitations, and controversy over the game's violence.

The House of the Dead was a financial and critical success, spawning a franchise. Despite director Takashi Oda's insistence that the enemies are not zombies, the game was, along with Resident Evil, credited for popularizing zombies in the media.

The game was ported to the Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows. It also received two mobile adaptations, The House of the Dead Mobile and The House of the Dead: Nightmare. A remake of the game, developed by MegaPixel Studio, TA Publishing, and Forever Entertainment, was released in April 2022.

A sequel, The House of the Dead 2, was released in 1998.

Plot

Characters

Thomas Rogan

G

Sophie Richards

Dr. Curien

Synopsis

In his pursuit of controlling life and death, DBR Corporation research director Dr. Curien descends into insanity. On December 18th, 1998, he unleashes biologically-engineered creatures upon his staff at the Curien Mansion.

Two days later, after receiving a distressed phone call from his fiancée, DBR researcher Sophie Richards, AMS agent Thomas Rogan arrives at the creature-infested mansion with his partner G. Rogan and G reunite with Sophie, who is then kidnapped by Hangedman, a bat-human hybrid. The agents find Sophie inside the mansion, but the armored behemoth Chariot seemingly kills her.

Magician awakening in the BioReactor.

Rogan and G kill Hangedman in a rooftop fight. They find Curien, who escapes. After defeating the spider-like Hermit and a revived Chariot and Hangedman, the agents confront Curien in an underground DBR research center located in a cavern system underneath the estate.

Curien awakes Magician, an armored creature with mastery of fire. However, Magician refuses to recognize Curien as his master and kills him. Rogan and G defeat the creature, who, before exploding, warns that the ordeal is not over. The agents leave the mansion, bidding Sophie and Curien farewell.

Endings

After the credits, the camera pans back to the mansion; depending on the player's performance, two extra scenes may play out:

Image	Criteria	Description
	Score under 62,000 points with a ones digit of any number except 0.	The mansion is shown in the distance.
	Score under 62,000 points with a ones digit of 0.	The mansion doors open, revealing Sophie to be a creature.
	Score over 62,000 points.	The canon ending. The mansion doors open, revealing Sophie to be alive. She runs at the camera and exclaims "Thank you!"

Gameplay

Players use a light gun (or mouse, in the PC version) to aim and shoot at approaching enemies. Both characters' pistols hold 6 rounds in a magazine; to reload, the players must shoot outside the screen. Levels, or chapters, consist of fighting creatures, rescuing DBR researchers, and shooting destructible objects for bonus items. Each chapter ends with a boss battle.

The players' lives are represented by flaming torches; one torch is removed with every enemy attack and hostage shot. Losing all lives kills the player and triggers a "Continue?" screen, followed by a game over if one elects not to continue. Rescuing researchers and collecting first-aid kits hidden in the environment yields extra lives. Other items include coins and hopping golden frogs, which award points. Rescuing every researcher encountered unlocks a secret room filled with bonus items in the final chapter.

The first three chapters are nonlinear, with branching paths taken based on the player's decisions. For example, in the first chapter, a researcher is about to be thrown from the Curien Mansion's bridge to his death; rescuing him takes players through the Curien Mansion's front door, while failure redirects them to the sewers. Other paths are taken by shooting objects in the environment or being attacked by certain creatures. The paths vary in locations, difficulty, and enemies encountered, but do not otherwise change the story.

Chapters

1. Tragedy

2. Revenge

3. Truth

4. The house of the dead

Bosses

Chariot (Type 27)

Hangedman (Type 041)

Hermit (Type 6803)

Magician (Type 0)

Development

See also: The House of Dead (prototype)

See also: The House of the Dead (prototype)

See also: List of unused content in The House of the Dead

Concept

Takashi Oda, the director of The House of the Dead.

The House of the Dead began development in December 1995. Directed by Takashi Oda, it was the second light gun game by Sega's AM1 arcade division after Alien 3: The Gun. Production lasted a year and three months.

AM1 felt pressured to compete with Sega AM2 (Virtua Cop) and Sega AM3 (Gunblade NY). To distinguish their game, AM1 chose a horror theme and targeted adults instead of children. The team was inspired by horror and sci-fi media like Seven, DNA, and The X-Files.

Nobody at AM1 spoke English; to create game titles, they used horror-themed Japanese phrases that looked "[cool]" when translated to English. The House of the Dead is based on the phrase shi no ie ("house of dead"), which implies the place of a person's death.

Design

Characters and setting

Concept artwork drawn by Takashi Oda of three creatures (from left to right): Sam, Ebitan, and Harris.

AM1 used zombies because they felt ghosts were unrealistic. They said the idea preceded Capcom's survival horror game Resident Evil. However, Takashi Oda thought zombies were unoriginal, so AM1 called the enemies "creatures" and depicted them as bioengineered lifeforms.

The creatures were designed quickly without rough drafts. Many controversial designs were cut. After two days of brainstorming, Magician was devised as a strong final boss, with a "handsome" appearance unlike the other creatures.

The human characters were given less priority, and were designed generically for realism. Inspired by the manga Black Jack, Oda wanted the game to have morally-grey characters.

Enthusiasm for The House of the Dead was so great, AM1 struggled to manage time and resources. Designer Hiroyuki Taguchi recalled, "Once we started working on [the Curien Mansion], we didn’t want to stop—we wanted to craft every detail, right down to the trim on the doorways".

Gameplay

AM1 worried that The House of the Dead would be too easy; enemies approach the player, gradually becoming larger targets. The team resolved this by giving the enemies evasive movements. Enemies also require several shots to kill, which confused test players. In response, AM1 created a "physical strength" mechanic where certain body parts inflict different damage on the enemy.

The branching paths were designed to add replay value and encourage players to discover their preferred routes. Sega AM1 drew rough sketches to plan the level layouts. The paths were originally complex, selectable at the start of the game, and influential on the plot. Hardware limitations forced Sega AM1 to simplify the routes.

Sega AM1 wanted the scoring system to correlate with the quality of the player's performance. They also felt revealing boss weak points would help players who could not discover them on their own.

Cabinet design

In an early cabinet design, players stood between two monitors and shot enemies as they approached from multiple directions. Sega AM4 designed the final version of the cabinet, with AM1 providing artwork. On location test cabinets, the light guns used air compressors to simulate blowback. This feature was removed from production cabinets due to constant breakdowns.

Sega Saturn port

Graphical comparison between the arcade (left) and Sega Saturn versions (right).

Sega put Australian game developer Tantalus Media in charge of porting The House of the Dead to the Sega Saturn. This was because Tantalus' last Saturn port, Manx TT, was successful. The House of the Dead port had a rushed production.

Tantalus was given a backup drive containing art and mostly incomplete character rigs. Using the arcade version for reference, they pieced together assets and colored the grayscale textures by hand. Due to the Saturn's limited 3D capabilities, textures were reduced to 4-bit pallets and special effects became sprites.

Ex-Tantalus graphic artist Warren Hawkes reflected on the port in 2006: "Corners had to be cut perhaps with quality in the sense we had little time for polish, but that's different from calling it unfinished."

Release

Initially released to arcades, The House of the Dead was ported to the PC and Sega Saturn with downgraded graphics.

On October 10, 1997, a House of the Dead score tournament was launched by arcade chain GameWorks to promote their Grapevine, Texas location's grand opening. Four semi-finalists from Seattle, Las Vegas, Ontario, and Texas competed on October 30 at the Grapevine location for a $5,000 check from Coca-Cola. Dallas Cowboys player Jay Novachek, Miss Texas USA 1997, and other special guests hosted the finals. The winner was Ottis Pittman from Ontario.

Reception

The arcade version of The House of the Dead was generally well received. However, the PC and Saturn releases were both met with mixed reviews. The game received a percentage score of 70.54% by GameRankings. The arcade version received 4.5 out of 5 stars, while both the Saturn and Windows port were rated 4 stars by Allgame.

The Sega Saturn port was released in the final days of the console's lifespan. Despite its high market value, it is generally considered a poor port due to its lower frame rate and graphical resolution compared to the arcade version.

Controversy

Anticipating that foreign markets would require the violence to be censored, Sega AM1 allowed arcade operators to change The House of the Dead's blood color. The game was nonetheless controversial.

Following the brutal 1997 murders of two children in Kobe, Japan, Sega ordered The House of the Dead and other arcade games in the country to change their blood color from red to green. This is also why the Sega Saturn port features green blood by default.

In 2000, the city of Indianapolis, Indiana attempted to ban violent video games, enacting an ordinance which penalized arcades for letting minors play violent games without parental supervision. Indianapolis argued that The House of the Dead was obscene, thus making it unprotected by the First Amendment. U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner found the ban to be unconstitutional, describing The House of the Dead's violence as so "stylized" and "cartoon-like" that it would not be deemed as "obscene" as a photograph of a person being decapitated.

Remake

Main article: The House of the Dead: Remake

A remake of the game by Polish developers Forever Entertainment and MegaPixel Studio, under license from Sega, was confirmed in late September 2019. The House of the Dead: Remake was released on April 7th, 2022 for the Nintendo Switch,, and on April 28th of that year for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia.

Trivia

• Although the game takes place in an unknown country in Europe, it is implied that the setting is in either the United Kingdom or Ireland, due to the agents' car being a right-hand drive type (driver on the right), which is a characteristic of British and Irish cars. Dr. Curien's notable British accent also serves as an indicator.
• Despite that the game's intro shows the date December 18th, 1998, the game actually takes place on December 20th. The game's Sega Saturn manual revealed that December 18th was when Curien unleashed his creatures and Rogan received Sophie's message.

Gallery

To view the The House of the Dead (1996 video game) gallery, click here.

External links

• Official Japanese arcade website (archived)
• Official English Sega Saturn website (archived)