The Mask is Back for Some Splatter

How about some remake news we can all get behind? This time the classic horror property coming in for a touch up isn't a film though, it's a game. In fact, some might call it the horror game. That's right, Splatterhouse is going next-gen, according to EGM, who have put the game's vaguely-Jason-Vorhees-like main character on the cover of their June issue.

The game is being developed by Namco-Bandai, who were responsible for the original version of the game that appeared in arcades in 1988 before venturing to home consoles in later versions. The action, at least in the original, centered on a young man imbued with freakish strength by an ancient mask. The mask also gave him the freakish ability to look like a generic slasher-killer, which played well with the kiddies.

Many folks consider Splatterhouse to be the first proto-survival horror games. It plays like a straight beat-em-up, in the vein of Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, or even my personal favorite, Bad Dudes, only Splatterhouse, as you may have guessed, featured buckets of blood and indiscriminate killing. Both of these things have clearly become regulars in our modern videog game vocabularies, but at the time, it was quite revolutionary. According to it's Wikipedia page, Splatterhouse was the first game to receive a parental warning label, which is a sweet distinction to hold. If you can't wait for the updated version of the game, the Wii's Virtual Console has a censored version available for download under the TurboGraphx-16 console.