Now, I hate scary movies (rarely see them) and I have not played any scary games... but this is October and I am feeling very brave as of late... and it seemed a fun way to pass the time since I'm not working on a big costume this year. My value of how scared I get may be MUCH different than yours, so I will try to be very specific when I rate them.
I'll also try to record myself playing them, but since it's in the dark (and me with a normal digital cam-corder) it might be tough. But I'll only include the parts that made me jump so you can see my expression.
Now I have actually had this particular game cartridge since 1990 (when I started collecting import games) but I never played it (having, at the time, no ability to read Japanese). This time I can read Japanese but I am going to play it in English on an emulator. I couldn't find a good download for the English patch so I went to DGEmu.com and found it no sweat.
And I'm using an official NES controller via the USB adapter that I bought from RetroZone.
Come to find out that there was a movie released at the same time in the theatres... and it seems that they were based on each other rather than one coming first. If you would like to buy the movie, my "sources for obscure movies" found it for sale, but I'll just play the game for right now. You can also watch a strange shot-by-shot synopsis here. I have not yet gone through this yet as I don't want to have "spoilers".
So, in the words of Arino-sama: "Kachou ON!"
The scariest thing that happened this evening was when my dog "Kitty" started howling out of loneliness upstairs. All the lights were out in the house, I was downstairs, Jen was out... and halfway through my gameplay she starts howling out her sadness...
Bit creepy that.
But as far as the game goes, I was more jumpy by the unexpected things that happen during the game like the falling chandeliers and flying chairs that come out of nowhere. It is a bit frustrating to get anything done as you're constantly switching characters... but since each character has their own "item" then it makes it more challenging. And the barrage of powerful monsters that attack you from the get-go... and keep occurring and occurring...
The frescoes that you're supposed to find looked pretty spooky I guess... but there was this evil doll that popped out of nowhere and gave me a jump. I personally hate dolls. But I really wasn't scared per-se... by any of the game. Perhaps I'm just jaded by the graphics and CD quality of the games today... but to tell you the truth, it was a pretty groovy RPG as RPGs go. There's really no way to heal your HP and so you have to be very careful how you proceed. That's tough. There's interesting puzzles and hidden items.
Very much like the board game Arkham Horror where stuff just keeps popping up and you don't have time to think... that's what 'Sweet Home' is like.
You can definitely tell how the company tried to think of what might be spooky in a game and how they tried to make it so with the fade-ins. This was a brand new genre and the NES pulled it off well and I think that they were the only ones who could do it in the time of 8-bit games.
My suggestion: if you have a NES emulator, play this game. It's pretty good. It's not gonna scare the pants off of you, but it will be a good RPG with interesting horror aspects. Try it out.
I couldn't get the video camera working correctly for this week, so perhaps for next week.
Next week I'm going to mix things up by playing Clock Tower: The First Fear for the SNES... since it will show how horror games progressed from 8-bit to 16 bit. Then, the following week, I will play Resident Evil Code Veronica.
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