Rainbow Chara X
Impossible to gauge!
- 129
- Posts
- 8
- Years
- Shiny Hunting in Sinnoh
- Seen Apr 25, 2024
This is the end of the 2017 Halloween-a-thon, guys. I did have one more game planned, but the end of October came faster than I expected.
I'll save the rest of my thoughts when we reach the end of this.
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter #2 - The Hell House (Finale)[/font][font=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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Last time on Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, we had a choice to go to two different places. One is straight-up progression into the next stage of the game while the other is... well, special.
Rick enters the same pod the Fly Man came out of...
[The entire room flashes a vivid rainbow]
I didn't make a gif of the teleporting scene because it nearly made my eyes bleed with how bright the colors were. I did you all a favor.
[Current OST: Japan]
Excuse me?
We're just in Japan now, I guess. What kind of wacky adventures will our masked axe man have here?
Well, we're going to get assaulted by the local umbrella legs. No big dea--
Okay seriously though. These little guys are known as Kasa-obake, a yokai that's pretty much an animated umbrella and not much else. They're based off of the concept of tsukumogami, everyday objects that come to life as their own creature given enough time.
If this sounds familiar to anybody, then it's because Pokemon has done it with pretty much every "object" Pokemon they have.
Kasa-obake appear in stories about haunted houses and aren't really that dangerous, but it's fitting that they appear in this game anyway.
The Japan stage has this real neat pagoda rooftop scene where you climb up the rafters. They could have totally made it a flat platform, but that's nowhere near as interesting.
Once inside, you're confronted by these clumsy pink maid robots(?) and falling bamboo spikes. The spikes are obvious, but if the maids trip, they drop scalding hot tea all over you.
Imagine you're on a quest to save your girl from demons but hot tea spills on you and burns you to death. On one hand, that'd be a silly way to die but on the other, melting to death is pretty brutal.
Edit:
My friend has stated that the pink maids are actually a special kind of wind-up doll.
In his words: "zaishiki ningyo are automatons made for the purpose of walking forward, placing a tray of tea in front of you, and then bowing". That's hella neat and I wouldn't have known what they were otherwise.
This has to be the coolest door-opening effect in the game. The guys behind this stage must have really liked it a lot.
... A geisha?
Oh no, don't tell me she turns into a monster or something. I've already been scorned twice by a certain purple gargoyle man.
[Current OST: Geisha Dance]
Never mind, disengage killing machine mode.
She just wants to dance for us, I guess! This is actually kind of adorable. It helps that the geisha herself is real cute with the wave-patterened kimono and all.
I'm not going to question how we wound up doing this, but I will bring up that you can fart in this scene. I mean, if you want to be a rebel / an undignified pig, but that's all on you.
Oooh, nice. The crystal doesn't seem to do much aside from being a shiny collectible, but it actually unlocks another part of the ending! So yeah, very much worth taking the side path.
You still come to level four no matter what you do... but wait a second, Diamond Lake? That doesn't sound familiar at all, no sir.
[Current OST: Diamond Lake]
This is a nice-looking stage with the mountains and the purple water. The song isn't as memorable as the Graveyard theme, but it's still pretty good. (Plus it's hard to top anyway.)
The two main gimmicks of this stage is that you're going to be jumping across these elevated piers that no normal person would reach without Mario jump powers.
The other is waddling through the corpse and shark infested water. Obviously, this place is an Addams Family-funded summer camp.
(I feel bad for that bat, but at the same time it was trying to kill me, so...)
Awwwww snap. We found a shotgun, boys.
The axe is nice and all, but the good ol' buckshot is too tempting to pass up.
Groovy.
It only has ten shots though, so you better make good use of it.
One of the many things that will hop out of the water is this hideous grinning blob creature. Their pattern is predictable but I couldn't help but pump them full of lead.
There's also some disembodied legs sticking out of the water. I would make the obvious Monster Party reference, but I'm actually more curious as to how massive the rest of that person is... that is, if they're intact.
That has to be one of the doofiest skeletons I've ever seen out of a non-Castlevania game.
Oh, this doesn't look good.
That was closer than I wanted it to be.
I would ask why the sharks are pink and why they're in a lake, but I'd rather just not get shredded into fish food.
That's about all the lake has, but then we have...
[Music fades out]
... This guy.
He may have a predictable pattern but the presentation for this fight is astounding. This boss manages to be legitimately unnerving despite this being an otherwise silly game. Like jeez, that silhouette at the start.
The screen flashes blood red every time you hit him, almost as if he can't stand getting hurt. The sadist in me finds that extra satisfying.
A few swings cut him down for good, leaving the background to explode in a sea of red flashing lights. I have no idea what's happening, but damn if it doesn't look cool.
They really wanted to milk the Friday the 13th parallels, huh. Rick is a glorified Jason Voorhees reference to begin with, so it's about right.
[Current OST: Diamond Camp]
I should mention there's also 8-bit crickets chirping in the background, so... alright. They want to pull off some atmosphere, I see.
O-oh. That's pretty graphic.
Remember when I said Halloween Flop was the lightest entry of the entire Halloween-a-thon? Yeah this is what I meant.
It may be a cutesy spinoff that parodies B-horror and the like, but it's still part of the Splatterhouse series after all.
Oh, and for an extra scare, the bodies drop off the nooses and chase after you without a head. That's just a tiiiny bit terrifying.
There were also these spiders that jumped out of the background just to be annoying, but they don't stay there forever.
[Current OST: The Cabin]
This is my second favorite song aside from the Graveyard theme for some reason. The Diamond Lake/Cabin sections are arguably the best in the game even if they are blatant Friday the 13th references.
One section was a rising water level with a ceiling with falling spikes. It may not last long compared to most of the other rooms we've been in, but add in our reduced mobility in water and you have a very stressful room.
... We have enemies based off of The Scream painting in here now. Hey, anything's fair game at this point.
They're notable for being the only enemies that are strong enough to survive more than one hit of Rick's axe, along with releasing a projectile on death - the rainbow glowing "eek" in the second screenshot.
This was changed from the Japanese version where they shot out rainbow glowing Japanese text instead... but you know, "eek" is way funnier/cuter to me for some reason.
Going outside and we have bats that float around in a diamond pattern over where I need to go. I had to try real hard to not lose all my health on this bit, so it kinda drove me insane.
I mean, yeah, I could always just start over from the checkpoint but I was being extra stubborn this time around.
One of the neat things you can do here is that you can chop down logs with your axe. It reminds me that hey, our axe is useful for more things than just cutting monsters apart.
In the last part before the boss, you get chased by a conga line of falling buckets. If I currently weren't walking over spikes, this would be at best a dumb prank.
The boss of the camp itself is a small kid that transforms into a werewolf! Sure, it doesn't get as much build up as the fork and knife guy from before, but we're still technically beating up a little kid...
His main strategy is jumping around. He shoots out two projectiles that bounce off the floor and ceiling every time you hit him so it can get kind of stressful if you don't time your hits.
It's hard to see due to screenshots not being able to catch flickering sprites, but he also gains some kind of temporary shield. It stretches his hitbox, so be careful.
All in all, it should be pretty easy as long as you pay attention.
Hooray, we have exorcised the werewolf out of him! I'm not going to ask how we did that with an axe, but alright. Be free, little kid.
You can get there or... die? Not on my watch, game.
It shares the Cabin theme from before, but now you're climbing up a mountain. If I played this bit a little smarter, I could have actually gotten the shotgun down there, but that's not much of a problem.
For you see, we get one anyway. This stage isn't too terribly interesting - you're just trying to get to the Hell House. There's collapsible bridges and bats everywhere, but they're more of an inconvenience than anything bad.
See, I fell down one and all it did was take me back here. It doesn't seem like much, but this actually resets all of the enemies and items past this point, so you could theoretically get an infinite stream of health, experience and shotgun bullets as long as you keep falling.
That's pretty busted.
Later down the level you can find these bubbling pools of strange blue acid. They hurt you, but what catches my attention about them the most is that they sort of look like they've been ripped from another game.
I don't know why I get that feeling, but whatever.
There's the Hell House, folks... this is where the Pumpkin King took Jennifer. How this guy got such a fancy place like this I'll never know, but I'm ready to trash it.
Yeah, we're already at the end. Crazy, huh?
I do like how this game doesn't try to overstay its welcome, even if level 3 was friggin massive.
[Current OST: Hell House]
This song isn't a favorite, but it's alright. I do like the consistent teal coloring of the house, though.
At this point I've maxed out my level so killing monsters doesn't do anything for me anymore, so there's not much else but to go to the end.
In this part, you'll have to tail behind the cultist guy from before. That or it's another guy, but that's not important.
If he catches you, you get thrown into that mouth there. I'd rather not get chomped by a demon, so let's go through the door instead.
[Current OST: Egypt]
WHAT
I kind of expected this, but how did we go from a Hell House to Egypt? That's too wacky for my candy-corn laced blood.
You get a shotgun at least, but the most annoying part of this level is that you can actually fall down holes that take you out of the pyramid.
It resets the stage, monsters and all, but there's no health refills... you can see where this is going.
The only other enemy here aside from bats are these ghostly pharaoh heads that won't die no matter how many times you shoot them, so the best thing to do is to run away.
This is such a surreal dungeon in the grand scale of things. It was weird enough to go to Japan, but I didn't expect Rick to go to Egypt. If that happened in the real Splatterhouse games, that'd be some ridiculous shit.
Thankfully, the dungeon is only three rooms long, but... what's this room all about?
Oh hey another lady. Is she going to dance for us too?
Oh that's funky looking.
Rick seriously has a way with the ladies. Maybe it's the mask.
He-hey, nice! Thank you, mysterious Egyptian dancer lady that may or may not be a ghost.
Pressing a button here will prompt Rick to jump down the hole, taking him to...
... The Hell House. Was Egypt an illusion or did we teleport around the world just by opening a door?
If you get captured by the cultist man, he'll shove you into the gaping maw of this unpleasant pumpkin creature.
The screen flashes red and everything.
But it's alright because we didn't actually die! However, this does make the upcoming parts a bit more difficult...
You get a repeat of the chainsaw room from before... but TWO chainsaws instead!
The humanity.
There was also a room filled with nothing but the Fly Man from before, but they're far easier to kill now. Did they clone him or something?
There was this room where the clock hands shoot themselves at you, complete with these delightfully sinister looking eyes on the pendulums.
At first there doesn't seem to be a pattern, but they always fire either straight down or down-right/left. Falling down any of the holes will reset you back to this room, and I'd rather not have that.
There's a public toilet in this house of horrors. Arguably the most terrifying thing in the game.
They even shoot out little slime fellas at you from the toilet! Wonderful.
Honestly, this is just the last grinding spot before you fight the final boss because they throw out like 50 or 60 of them before they're done.
Even the plunger attacks you... maybe it just had enough of your shit?
...
If you look closely, you can see an eye peeking at you out of the toilet. Yeah... I'm just gonna go.
There's this room that definitely looks the most hellish out of any other one here, complete with floating skulls, but it doesn't last long.
The deer head on the wall is notable because it would actually get used as a background element in Splatterhouse 2... that vomits acid on you. Yeesh.
The bats in this room hold you up and try to drop you in one of the holes to undo your progress. Not gonna lie, that's pretty devilish of the game to do.
... So, what happened here is that I got hit the instant I opened the door and wound up dying when I went through the other end.
It was a weird little glitch that I just had to show off.
In fact, while we're at it, the beta of Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti is unfortunately nowhere near as interesting as the likes of Monster Party.
It's just an unused sound test and level select that isn't that useful due to the password system being nowhere near as complicated as Monster Party's.
Ooh, a soda machine! I desperately need it after all the trouble we went through just to get here.
Rick even has a cute little animation for drinking the soda.
But alright... this is the end of the game, guys. It's time to throw down against the king of Pumpkins himself.
[Laugh SFX]
Whoa... I didn't record a gif of it, but the ground goes through a rainbow of colors. They really liked playing around with the rainbow effect in this game, huh?
But anyway, yeah! This is the final battle and it's against... a big pumpkin. I would normally say that's kind of lame, but Halloween is right around the corner as I post this so it might as well be the grand conclusion.
He drops an array of six tiny pumpkins that can potentially combo-lock you into losing health, but that's small potatoes compared to his most annoying attack.
See, whenever you hit him, he has this ridiculous tendency to go completely invincible and bounce around the room. Basically, you can't hit him, but he can hit you.
It is as unfair as it sounds.
Cap this off with his tremendous health and the fact he'll often be too high to hit... it's a migraine in the making.
[The screen flashes wildly as Pumpkin King sends out tiny pumpkins in a spiral]
Stick at it long enough and you'll get him eventually. It's not that fun a final boss battle if I have to be honest, but the rest of the game was still good enough for this not to be a real problem.
[Current OST: Ending]
We got our girl back!
Awwww. That's super cute.
Wait, what?
It was a movie the entire time?! Now that's a twist.
The weird games always seem to have some surprise twist at the end for some reason.
Oh, and here's our director taking a smoke break. Wonder how we did?
"This'll be a great movie! Nice job!"
Excellent! I gotta admit, he looked pretty sleazy at first but I'll take the compliments I can get. It does make me wonder what was real and what was fake, mostly because Rick dying multiple times wasn't exactly in the script...
They shake hands and part ways. I am curious of seeing a real film/cartoon adaptation of the Splatterhouse games, but it'd take a lot of effort to make them good and not just trash horror.
Oh wow, we actually get to see Rick's face without the mask. I don't understand why most of his hair is gone, but it was part of his character, I guess.
All seems well until...
... The mask starts floating into the air and laughing, flinging some lights and the director's chair around the room.
This isn't part of the movie, either, so that's really happening! Oh, this doesn't look good...
If you didn't collect the crystals, this would be where the game ends, but since we did...
Aww, Rick and Jennifer are having a little moment together.
But, well...
[Current OST: Mourning for Rick]
... It doesn't last for long.
So this entire game has been a prequel to the first Splatterhouse... yeah, that's kind of chilling if you know what happens in that game.
[Current OST: Credits]
But hey, the game's over for real now. What do I have to say?
... Alright, thank you game. You're a winner too.
With that said... yeah, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti was a cute diversion. It's not the best game in the world, but it had a lot of charm and visual appeal. The music is pretty nice even if it's not my favorite.
The gameplay was a little shaky, but it was still satisfying to hack and shoot your enemies into pieces. A lot of the enemies were pretty neat, even if the final boss themselves were just a lame floating pumpkin-head.
I have to admit that Wanpaku Graffiti is the weakest out of the four games I picked for this year's Halloween-a-thon, but that doesn't mean much because it's still a lovely little obscure game on its own merit. In fact, that's proof that it had some solid competition.
I wholeheartedly give it a 78/100 (Good). In fact, that's a higher score than the original Monster Party, so make of that as you will.
Before I finish this off, I might as well tell you guys my original plan for the (now-cancelled) fifth game in the line-up. It was a little game by the name of Eversion. Without spoiling too much, it's a PC game that involved a little flower fella going to save a princess in Mario-esque fashion.
If I had more time I could have pulled it off, but at the same time it's not exactly an easy game to do a screenshot let's play of. Oh well.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
Next year I might do a playthrough of an actual long game for the Halloween-a-thon, but for now? Grab as much candy as you can and... don't get spooked.
*Insert Vincent Price laugh here*
I'll save the rest of my thoughts when we reach the end of this.
[font=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter #2 - The Hell House (Finale)[/font][font=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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Spoiler:
Last time on Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, we had a choice to go to two different places. One is straight-up progression into the next stage of the game while the other is... well, special.
Rick enters the same pod the Fly Man came out of...
[The entire room flashes a vivid rainbow]
I didn't make a gif of the teleporting scene because it nearly made my eyes bleed with how bright the colors were. I did you all a favor.
[Current OST: Japan]
Excuse me?
We're just in Japan now, I guess. What kind of wacky adventures will our masked axe man have here?
Well, we're going to get assaulted by the local umbrella legs. No big dea--
Okay seriously though. These little guys are known as Kasa-obake, a yokai that's pretty much an animated umbrella and not much else. They're based off of the concept of tsukumogami, everyday objects that come to life as their own creature given enough time.
If this sounds familiar to anybody, then it's because Pokemon has done it with pretty much every "object" Pokemon they have.
Kasa-obake appear in stories about haunted houses and aren't really that dangerous, but it's fitting that they appear in this game anyway.
The Japan stage has this real neat pagoda rooftop scene where you climb up the rafters. They could have totally made it a flat platform, but that's nowhere near as interesting.
Once inside, you're confronted by these clumsy pink maid robots(?) and falling bamboo spikes. The spikes are obvious, but if the maids trip, they drop scalding hot tea all over you.
Imagine you're on a quest to save your girl from demons but hot tea spills on you and burns you to death. On one hand, that'd be a silly way to die but on the other, melting to death is pretty brutal.
Edit:
My friend has stated that the pink maids are actually a special kind of wind-up doll.
In his words: "zaishiki ningyo are automatons made for the purpose of walking forward, placing a tray of tea in front of you, and then bowing". That's hella neat and I wouldn't have known what they were otherwise.
This has to be the coolest door-opening effect in the game. The guys behind this stage must have really liked it a lot.
... A geisha?
Oh no, don't tell me she turns into a monster or something. I've already been scorned twice by a certain purple gargoyle man.
[Current OST: Geisha Dance]
Never mind, disengage killing machine mode.
She just wants to dance for us, I guess! This is actually kind of adorable. It helps that the geisha herself is real cute with the wave-patterened kimono and all.
I'm not going to question how we wound up doing this, but I will bring up that you can fart in this scene. I mean, if you want to be a rebel / an undignified pig, but that's all on you.
Oooh, nice. The crystal doesn't seem to do much aside from being a shiny collectible, but it actually unlocks another part of the ending! So yeah, very much worth taking the side path.
You still come to level four no matter what you do... but wait a second, Diamond Lake? That doesn't sound familiar at all, no sir.
[Current OST: Diamond Lake]
This is a nice-looking stage with the mountains and the purple water. The song isn't as memorable as the Graveyard theme, but it's still pretty good. (Plus it's hard to top anyway.)
The two main gimmicks of this stage is that you're going to be jumping across these elevated piers that no normal person would reach without Mario jump powers.
The other is waddling through the corpse and shark infested water. Obviously, this place is an Addams Family-funded summer camp.
(I feel bad for that bat, but at the same time it was trying to kill me, so...)
Awwwww snap. We found a shotgun, boys.
The axe is nice and all, but the good ol' buckshot is too tempting to pass up.
Groovy.
It only has ten shots though, so you better make good use of it.
One of the many things that will hop out of the water is this hideous grinning blob creature. Their pattern is predictable but I couldn't help but pump them full of lead.
There's also some disembodied legs sticking out of the water. I would make the obvious Monster Party reference, but I'm actually more curious as to how massive the rest of that person is... that is, if they're intact.
That has to be one of the doofiest skeletons I've ever seen out of a non-Castlevania game.
Oh, this doesn't look good.
That was closer than I wanted it to be.
I would ask why the sharks are pink and why they're in a lake, but I'd rather just not get shredded into fish food.
That's about all the lake has, but then we have...
[Music fades out]
... This guy.
He may have a predictable pattern but the presentation for this fight is astounding. This boss manages to be legitimately unnerving despite this being an otherwise silly game. Like jeez, that silhouette at the start.
The screen flashes blood red every time you hit him, almost as if he can't stand getting hurt. The sadist in me finds that extra satisfying.
A few swings cut him down for good, leaving the background to explode in a sea of red flashing lights. I have no idea what's happening, but damn if it doesn't look cool.
They really wanted to milk the Friday the 13th parallels, huh. Rick is a glorified Jason Voorhees reference to begin with, so it's about right.
[Current OST: Diamond Camp]
I should mention there's also 8-bit crickets chirping in the background, so... alright. They want to pull off some atmosphere, I see.
O-oh. That's pretty graphic.
Remember when I said Halloween Flop was the lightest entry of the entire Halloween-a-thon? Yeah this is what I meant.
It may be a cutesy spinoff that parodies B-horror and the like, but it's still part of the Splatterhouse series after all.
Oh, and for an extra scare, the bodies drop off the nooses and chase after you without a head. That's just a tiiiny bit terrifying.
There were also these spiders that jumped out of the background just to be annoying, but they don't stay there forever.
[Current OST: The Cabin]
This is my second favorite song aside from the Graveyard theme for some reason. The Diamond Lake/Cabin sections are arguably the best in the game even if they are blatant Friday the 13th references.
One section was a rising water level with a ceiling with falling spikes. It may not last long compared to most of the other rooms we've been in, but add in our reduced mobility in water and you have a very stressful room.
... We have enemies based off of The Scream painting in here now. Hey, anything's fair game at this point.
They're notable for being the only enemies that are strong enough to survive more than one hit of Rick's axe, along with releasing a projectile on death - the rainbow glowing "eek" in the second screenshot.
This was changed from the Japanese version where they shot out rainbow glowing Japanese text instead... but you know, "eek" is way funnier/cuter to me for some reason.
Going outside and we have bats that float around in a diamond pattern over where I need to go. I had to try real hard to not lose all my health on this bit, so it kinda drove me insane.
I mean, yeah, I could always just start over from the checkpoint but I was being extra stubborn this time around.
One of the neat things you can do here is that you can chop down logs with your axe. It reminds me that hey, our axe is useful for more things than just cutting monsters apart.
In the last part before the boss, you get chased by a conga line of falling buckets. If I currently weren't walking over spikes, this would be at best a dumb prank.
The boss of the camp itself is a small kid that transforms into a werewolf! Sure, it doesn't get as much build up as the fork and knife guy from before, but we're still technically beating up a little kid...
His main strategy is jumping around. He shoots out two projectiles that bounce off the floor and ceiling every time you hit him so it can get kind of stressful if you don't time your hits.
It's hard to see due to screenshots not being able to catch flickering sprites, but he also gains some kind of temporary shield. It stretches his hitbox, so be careful.
All in all, it should be pretty easy as long as you pay attention.
Hooray, we have exorcised the werewolf out of him! I'm not going to ask how we did that with an axe, but alright. Be free, little kid.
You can get there or... die? Not on my watch, game.
It shares the Cabin theme from before, but now you're climbing up a mountain. If I played this bit a little smarter, I could have actually gotten the shotgun down there, but that's not much of a problem.
For you see, we get one anyway. This stage isn't too terribly interesting - you're just trying to get to the Hell House. There's collapsible bridges and bats everywhere, but they're more of an inconvenience than anything bad.
See, I fell down one and all it did was take me back here. It doesn't seem like much, but this actually resets all of the enemies and items past this point, so you could theoretically get an infinite stream of health, experience and shotgun bullets as long as you keep falling.
That's pretty busted.
Later down the level you can find these bubbling pools of strange blue acid. They hurt you, but what catches my attention about them the most is that they sort of look like they've been ripped from another game.
I don't know why I get that feeling, but whatever.
There's the Hell House, folks... this is where the Pumpkin King took Jennifer. How this guy got such a fancy place like this I'll never know, but I'm ready to trash it.
Yeah, we're already at the end. Crazy, huh?
I do like how this game doesn't try to overstay its welcome, even if level 3 was friggin massive.
[Current OST: Hell House]
This song isn't a favorite, but it's alright. I do like the consistent teal coloring of the house, though.
At this point I've maxed out my level so killing monsters doesn't do anything for me anymore, so there's not much else but to go to the end.
In this part, you'll have to tail behind the cultist guy from before. That or it's another guy, but that's not important.
If he catches you, you get thrown into that mouth there. I'd rather not get chomped by a demon, so let's go through the door instead.
[Current OST: Egypt]
WHAT
I kind of expected this, but how did we go from a Hell House to Egypt? That's too wacky for my candy-corn laced blood.
You get a shotgun at least, but the most annoying part of this level is that you can actually fall down holes that take you out of the pyramid.
It resets the stage, monsters and all, but there's no health refills... you can see where this is going.
The only other enemy here aside from bats are these ghostly pharaoh heads that won't die no matter how many times you shoot them, so the best thing to do is to run away.
This is such a surreal dungeon in the grand scale of things. It was weird enough to go to Japan, but I didn't expect Rick to go to Egypt. If that happened in the real Splatterhouse games, that'd be some ridiculous shit.
Thankfully, the dungeon is only three rooms long, but... what's this room all about?
Oh hey another lady. Is she going to dance for us too?
Oh that's funky looking.
Rick seriously has a way with the ladies. Maybe it's the mask.
He-hey, nice! Thank you, mysterious Egyptian dancer lady that may or may not be a ghost.
Pressing a button here will prompt Rick to jump down the hole, taking him to...
... The Hell House. Was Egypt an illusion or did we teleport around the world just by opening a door?
If you get captured by the cultist man, he'll shove you into the gaping maw of this unpleasant pumpkin creature.
The screen flashes red and everything.
But it's alright because we didn't actually die! However, this does make the upcoming parts a bit more difficult...
You get a repeat of the chainsaw room from before... but TWO chainsaws instead!
The humanity.
There was also a room filled with nothing but the Fly Man from before, but they're far easier to kill now. Did they clone him or something?
There was this room where the clock hands shoot themselves at you, complete with these delightfully sinister looking eyes on the pendulums.
At first there doesn't seem to be a pattern, but they always fire either straight down or down-right/left. Falling down any of the holes will reset you back to this room, and I'd rather not have that.
There's a public toilet in this house of horrors. Arguably the most terrifying thing in the game.
They even shoot out little slime fellas at you from the toilet! Wonderful.
Honestly, this is just the last grinding spot before you fight the final boss because they throw out like 50 or 60 of them before they're done.
Even the plunger attacks you... maybe it just had enough of your shit?
...
If you look closely, you can see an eye peeking at you out of the toilet. Yeah... I'm just gonna go.
There's this room that definitely looks the most hellish out of any other one here, complete with floating skulls, but it doesn't last long.
The deer head on the wall is notable because it would actually get used as a background element in Splatterhouse 2... that vomits acid on you. Yeesh.
The bats in this room hold you up and try to drop you in one of the holes to undo your progress. Not gonna lie, that's pretty devilish of the game to do.
... So, what happened here is that I got hit the instant I opened the door and wound up dying when I went through the other end.
It was a weird little glitch that I just had to show off.
In fact, while we're at it, the beta of Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti is unfortunately nowhere near as interesting as the likes of Monster Party.
It's just an unused sound test and level select that isn't that useful due to the password system being nowhere near as complicated as Monster Party's.
Ooh, a soda machine! I desperately need it after all the trouble we went through just to get here.
Rick even has a cute little animation for drinking the soda.
But alright... this is the end of the game, guys. It's time to throw down against the king of Pumpkins himself.
[Laugh SFX]
Whoa... I didn't record a gif of it, but the ground goes through a rainbow of colors. They really liked playing around with the rainbow effect in this game, huh?
But anyway, yeah! This is the final battle and it's against... a big pumpkin. I would normally say that's kind of lame, but Halloween is right around the corner as I post this so it might as well be the grand conclusion.
He drops an array of six tiny pumpkins that can potentially combo-lock you into losing health, but that's small potatoes compared to his most annoying attack.
See, whenever you hit him, he has this ridiculous tendency to go completely invincible and bounce around the room. Basically, you can't hit him, but he can hit you.
It is as unfair as it sounds.
Cap this off with his tremendous health and the fact he'll often be too high to hit... it's a migraine in the making.
[The screen flashes wildly as Pumpkin King sends out tiny pumpkins in a spiral]
Stick at it long enough and you'll get him eventually. It's not that fun a final boss battle if I have to be honest, but the rest of the game was still good enough for this not to be a real problem.
[Current OST: Ending]
We got our girl back!
Awwww. That's super cute.
Wait, what?
It was a movie the entire time?! Now that's a twist.
The weird games always seem to have some surprise twist at the end for some reason.
Oh, and here's our director taking a smoke break. Wonder how we did?
"This'll be a great movie! Nice job!"
Excellent! I gotta admit, he looked pretty sleazy at first but I'll take the compliments I can get. It does make me wonder what was real and what was fake, mostly because Rick dying multiple times wasn't exactly in the script...
They shake hands and part ways. I am curious of seeing a real film/cartoon adaptation of the Splatterhouse games, but it'd take a lot of effort to make them good and not just trash horror.
Oh wow, we actually get to see Rick's face without the mask. I don't understand why most of his hair is gone, but it was part of his character, I guess.
All seems well until...
... The mask starts floating into the air and laughing, flinging some lights and the director's chair around the room.
This isn't part of the movie, either, so that's really happening! Oh, this doesn't look good...
If you didn't collect the crystals, this would be where the game ends, but since we did...
Aww, Rick and Jennifer are having a little moment together.
But, well...
[Current OST: Mourning for Rick]
... It doesn't last for long.
So this entire game has been a prequel to the first Splatterhouse... yeah, that's kind of chilling if you know what happens in that game.
[Current OST: Credits]
But hey, the game's over for real now. What do I have to say?
... Alright, thank you game. You're a winner too.
With that said... yeah, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti was a cute diversion. It's not the best game in the world, but it had a lot of charm and visual appeal. The music is pretty nice even if it's not my favorite.
The gameplay was a little shaky, but it was still satisfying to hack and shoot your enemies into pieces. A lot of the enemies were pretty neat, even if the final boss themselves were just a lame floating pumpkin-head.
I have to admit that Wanpaku Graffiti is the weakest out of the four games I picked for this year's Halloween-a-thon, but that doesn't mean much because it's still a lovely little obscure game on its own merit. In fact, that's proof that it had some solid competition.
I wholeheartedly give it a 78/100 (Good). In fact, that's a higher score than the original Monster Party, so make of that as you will.
Before I finish this off, I might as well tell you guys my original plan for the (now-cancelled) fifth game in the line-up. It was a little game by the name of Eversion. Without spoiling too much, it's a PC game that involved a little flower fella going to save a princess in Mario-esque fashion.
If I had more time I could have pulled it off, but at the same time it's not exactly an easy game to do a screenshot let's play of. Oh well.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
Next year I might do a playthrough of an actual long game for the Halloween-a-thon, but for now? Grab as much candy as you can and... don't get spooked.
*Insert Vincent Price laugh here*