Who doesn’t love House of the Dead?
Please try not to call me out on this rhetorical question. I’m well aware the answer might include people with RSI, those who abhor violence, quadriplegics, anyone with a phobia of zombies or green/red gore, those clinically terrified of houses, and the dead.
My point is that the notoriously tacky lightgun game series has been a steadfast presence in arcades since the late 90s. Even I, a gamer who cut his teeth in front of a PC rather than in an arcade, has fond memories of hammering invisible bullets into low-polygon zombies in arcades – striking earnest and tragic poses with the guns during cutscenes, of course. House of the Dead 2 is my favourite Dreamcast game thanks to the two lightguns I own. I’m considering buying an old CRT television purely so I can play it again. This is akin to buying a VCR to play the one film you still own on VHS… but it’s okay because it’s a really great film and it’s not on any of the torrent sites Netflix.
This is not to mention some of the more ridiculous yet inspired spin-offs such as 2000′s Typing of the Dead, a typing skill improvement spin on House of the Dead 2 that made the series’ tongue-in-cheek and absurdist qualities even more evident.
So yeah, the House of the Dead series – particularly the core games, enduring staples of those arcades still clinging to existence today – is fondly thought of by a lot of people. It’s daft. It’s fun. And you get to shoot stuff in a non-problematic context.
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