The House of the Dead 2 (I’ll write about the first one later). I don’t know how popular it is, but I know one thing – when I was a kid, this game was the shit. It also was responsible for robbing me of money (together with Star Wars) since it was a machine on the central street in my hometown. And I spent quite a time there.
The House of the Dead 2 is basically an interactive shooting gallery where you assume the role of one of two secret agents of a rather strange governmental body (when I was a kid, I thought they were from the FBI, but when I grew older, I found out they were agents of some other alphabet stuff) – James and Gerry (or Harry or Herry). Yeah, I still remember their names even though almost 20+ years have passed.
So, playing as one of two agents, you’re on a mission to stop zombie invasion by introducing them to freedom. Freedom came in the form of a gun with a six or eight (I don’t remember) round magazine. When you played it on the machine, you had to take a laser gun. And oh boy, I would tell you this game was a blast. The effects, the zombies, the sound – everything was top-notch. It was also somewhat scary, but I still played it. Conquered my fears, to be precise. And it also was hard.
Yeah, since the game was basically for getting as much money as possible from you, the difficulty was ramped up disproportionately high, and zombies moved like freaking Usain Bolt on bath salts. No way a kid could beat the game. Even if you were lucky enough to beat the first level with flying rat and its giant headless bosses and the second level with Aqua-man for poor people, the third level with Hydra was almost impossible to beat. But once we were loaded with coins, my friend and I made it through the third level, and that’s where we got royally fucked by the giant dude with a chainsaw. If we thought everything else was fast, we knew shit. This guy ran around like motherfucking Flash on a caffeine overdose. No matter how hard we tried, there was no way we could hit him. Well, I still didn’t give a crap. I loved this game and was ready to play it as many times as possible just because I liked it.
Much later, my grandpa bought me a CD with this game. Yeah, I was shocked – the game was on CD. On a computer. I could play it in the comfort of my home, using my mouse, and have an infinite amount of tries. Now that seemed like a big deal.
I came home. I installed the game. And I beat it in half an hour tops. Couldn’t believe that was it. Also, couldn’t believe I was this close to the finish line. Only this sucker with a chainsaw, a repeat of the previous bosses, some David Blaine magic dude who shoots fireballs and flies all over the place, then Hydra again, and then the big bad guy who looked like Sonic the Hedgehog and Liquid Terminator from Terminator 2 had a baby.
The game on the CD was much easier because I could aim with the mouse, and it was faster and more efficient. And also because since it didn’t have its goal to milk you off your money, you could choose the difficulty. Now difficulty made all the difference. If you played Normal (I think there was no Easy), all of a sudden, all enemies behaved like regular zombies, no one attempted to run like bats from hell. The game looked easy and normal.
Also, there were modifiers. And this stuff made the game much-much-much more interesting than the one in the machine. Here you had an opportunity to earn some things, which made your game actually easier. Like a bigger magazine, more powerful ammunition, different weapons, and other stuff. Also, there were less useful but still fun mods, like skins of different characters. You also could choose how many continues and lives you would have. Instead of 3 lives and I think 5 continues (for your money, of course), you could have 5 lives, and 9 continues (free of charge). Now that changed everything. With those things, you had no chance to fail at the game.
I think I replayed it at least 50 times just because I liked it so much. Besides, I wanted to play the game on every mode, open every skin, every modification. Finish it on the hardest difficulty and be the guy who made it by going through it with zero deaths. Easier say than done.
It also had a kickass two-player mode, where one player used a mouse, and the second one went with a keyboard. My cousin and I played this game like that. She used a mouse, and I went with a keyboard. And I tell you what. After enough practice, I could play it with the keyboard as well as with the mouse. It wasn’t this hard or different. But the mode itself, the ability to go in there together, bringing order to the chaos and saving the day in the process – that was brilliant. And made the experience so much more enjoyable.
PS Also, I think there’s a terrible movie by a semi-professional boxer Uwe Boll (or maybe professional? I don’t know). Never saw it, but since I saw his Blood Rain, Far Cry, and Postal (yeah, I had this thing for terrible movies, and I actually enjoyed them in a weird, fucked up way), maybe it wasn’t as bad as everyone claim it to be. Or maybe it’s even worse. I don’t know, there’s not much chance I would dare to watch it anytime soon.