House of Memories

House of the Dead (the first one) is a game that i remember with fond memories, having played it with my schoolmates after school in the arcades though i never once got further than level 3 i believe. It's also a game with significant meaning for me as it was a precursor to my fascination with the survival horror genre. Sure there were plenty of other lightgun arcade games then which were more popular and far better than House of the Dead but i never once played any of them. The appeal of House of the Dead for me was always the idea of a haunted mansion and of course, the freakish monsters that inhibits inside it.

Interestingly enough, the first House of the Dead came out in the same year as the first Resident Evil game. By then, i had already given up on console gaming briefly after the Super NES era and have yet to be seduced by Sony charms. So Resident Evil fell completely out of my radar up until one day when i was looking for a new game to play on my PC and my best friend told me "Remember that game we used to play at the arcade, House of the Dead? You should totally tryout this game called Resident Evil, it's a bit like that except it's in third-person view. I bet you will love it."

I was sceptic and hesitant, even after seeing the boxart at my local game store which hardly gave me any clue what's the game about as it was the picture of the bleeding eyeball. Without the wonders of the internet to turn to during then, i had to take a gamble and sure enough, once the opening evil dead-style teaser played, i was hooked. If it weren't for Resident Evil, i would have probably gave up gaming during then but if it wasn't for House of the Dead i wouldn't even have taken the chance on it.

Over the course of the years, I did picked up the PC port of House of the Dead and eventually finished it but it sure doesn't feel as significant as it did back then. I have seen the other installments of House of the Dead playing in the arcades but never once played them. Now that House of the Dead 2 & 3 is returning to the Wii with a budget price, i'm pretty tempted to take a trip down memory lane and see what i missed out over the years.