1989 Capcom - Capcom - NES
Sweet Home was a movie and also a video game released in 1989 in Japans. Different sources suggest that the movie is based on the game and that the game was based on the movie, HOWEVER, both were released simultaneously. In fact, they were advertised simultaneously--the ad shows footage from both the movie and the game--which is pretty silly.
Sweet Home, the game, was never released outside of Japan. Sweet Home, the movie, as far as I know is not available on DVD. This isn't 1989, though, and there has been a fan translation of the game for a decade now, and the movie is on the Internet!
The plot focuses on five people going to a supposedly haunted old mansion to study artwork (frescoes!) for a television piece. Weird stuff happens, shadows happen, death happens, etc. Without giving too much of the thin plot away, there's one very pissed off ghost lady who misses her baby.
I watched the movie a few weeks ago on the YouTubes. It's a pretty standard haunted house horror flick. Nothing too noteworthy.
The game, however, is sweeeeeeeet (home).
It's an 8-bit survival-horror RPG. You control the five characters from the film, individually, as you explore the Mamiya mansion. Each character has its own special item and room to hold other items as you progress. You can switch between characters whenever you want, and move each individually. Moving five characters independently through the same house would get incredibly tedious, so you are able to make teams--the maximum number of team members is three, and you will spend the majority of the game with two teams (one of three, one of two). There are random enemy encounters, which are only troublesome in the beginning of the game. Once you level up a bit, the battles just become a time waster.
I mentioned items, and that becomes the bulk of the game. You can't walk over broken glass, you have to vacuum it! You can't cross a gap in the floor, so put a piece of wood in it! You can't step over that rope (?!), so burn it! Fire on the floor? Extinguish it! This game features quite a number of objects and quite a number of obstacles. Generally the game is pretty good about leaving an item somewhere near where you need to use it, but the problem is that each character can only carry two at a time, in addition to their initial tools. This limited inventory space results in you leaving important items throughout the mansion and hoping you can remember where you left that mallet when you need to smash a mirror to find a hidden passage.
The "puzzles" (which usually are nothing more than "which item do I need to use here and where is that item?") are all pretty easy. Only in a few instances might you get stumped, and the solution there typically is using the odd "prayer" option (which uses this game's closest form of MP/mana).
The bulk of the game is exploring the mansion in a top-down view, like any RPG. There are also the fights (standard menu-based fights), and a few first-person "puzzle" sections (essentially you are looking at something and need to interact with it, using the right tools or praying at the right time or just reading hints).
Oh, and when you die--you die. Remember how each character has two open item slots, so the biggest team would only have six inventory spaces? If somebody dies, you will need to find a replacement item for their initial tool, so you can subtract one more slot! It's not so bad, though, as the game lets you save anytime, anywhere. If you save often, it's super easy to avoid game-changing situations.
Also the death animations are definitely worth seeing.
I think anybody who ever talks about this game mentions Resident Evil. Sweet Home was developed by Capcom, who went on to make Resident Evil and "invent the survival horror genre" (hey what about Clock Tower?) RE, like SH, has you exploring a scary mansion full of bad things. Also, limited inventory space. Also, when you open a locked door in SH it shows a little animation of a door being opened, just like opening a door in RE. I can't say if there are more similarities, personally, as I've only played Resident Evil for thirty minutes or so.
But I can say personally that Sweet Home is awesome.
8/10
Screenshots
//Marshall
