Growing up playing video games, the arcade was a pretty special place for me. There I was able to spend a token or a quarter and sample a variety of different games. This is where I learned my favorite games were the skill-based ones and beat ‘em ups, but even without much interest in the shooter titles, there was always something about the The House of the Dead games.

SEGA’s The House of the Dead 1 and 2 are the most namely titles to have eaten countless tokens of mine as I tried to clear level after level of zombies, aiming to save as many scientists and civilians as possible. And now, Forever Entertainment has brought a The House of the Dead Remake to the Nintendo Switch, which makes brings back the memories of when I somehow had The House of the Dead 2 on the Sega Dreamcast as a kid.

Story

Some idiot scientist thought he could create a powerful, biogenetic creature that would follow his every command. Along the way of creating this creature, he has created countless other atrocities that didn’t quite make his cut. Now, all of the atrocities have been let loose and are killing the scientists that worked in his secret Mansion laboratory. Sent there to stop the horrors from escaping, it is up to you to put an end to his plans and take out his biogenetic creature!

Gameplay

Just as always, this game plays as an on-the-rails shooter where it makes all the movement for you. All you have to focus on is putting your crosshair over your target and firing. Since you don’t have to point a gun off-screen, reloading is done with a single button touch which is way faster, so don’t be shy and unload that gun as much as you want.

You can adjust the sensitivity and color of your crosshair in the settings, so make sure you put it to your favorite set up. For me, that was the blue crosshair and low sensitivity sense moving the crosshair with the analog stick can be too quick for me.

You can also play this as a two-player, of course, so be sure to set up a controller for a friend. From there, you can choose the mode you want to play and the difficulty, because this isn’t an arcade setup after all. They have the base game style and offer different difficulties for it. Then they have a new mode called ‘Horde’ which basically ups the number of enemies during every given fight screen to have a bunch of zombies rather than the scripted amount. I don’t recommend this mode unless you are playing with two players.

They also added a bunch of different achievements to unlock, so make sure you take all the different pathways, beat the game on different game modes, and practice your best for the harder-to-achieve medals. Some of them are basically handed out, but if you want to get them all then you have some hard challenges ahead of you.

Audio and Visual

I am pretty sure they took the audio almost directly out of the original build of the game because it all sounded so incredibly cheesy; just the way I like it! This game is a retro arcade shooter, so if they would have updated the voice acting or sound effects to the game, it easily would have thrown off that retro feel. I’m glad they kept all the poorly done sound effects and half-acted voice work.

Graphically though, they definitely upgraded the game quite a bit to be better displayed on today’s more visually impacting screens. Even in the old arcade days, the graphics felt rather dull, but as a kid, I never cared. Now that I am not a kid, these aspects do matter, and they did a good job upgrading the graphics to be of better quality, even if they just look like someone put a fresh coat of paint over old graphic textures.

Replayability

Just as it was in the game, this title is as replayable as you want it to be! Once you beat a level, you can always start your next campaign at a later level, but if you want to do the first level again then go ahead. Challenging yourself to start from the beginning and reach the end without dying is the typical approach to this game and even after you beat it, it can always still be a fun title to go back and play it again.

What It Could Have Done Better

Given this game is a remake of the classic arcade shooter, it is plagued by the complaints you would expect if this were a console game. The game itself is super short, even with multiple pathways the game doesn’t offer much variety, the different enemies are generally the same just with different textures giving a total of roughly four different enemies - not counting the bosses, and the setup is pretty basic. This is all stuff you would expect from an arcade game, so bringing an arcade classic to console it is expected but still, something that brings down the experience in its own ways.

Another issue is that no matter how well you set up your settings, playing with a controller just doesn’t give the same experience as playing with a toy gun that you can actually aim at the screen. If you have a gun controller, this wouldn’t be a problem for you, but for most players, they will be on a controller and so the experience will always feel watered down in this case.

Verdict

The House of the Dead Remake lets me relive classic arcade enjoyment! It is an unexpected title release, but one that I am happy to have in my library. This team did a great job remaking it and I hope they end up giving us more remakes from the series. I really enjoyed this classic remake and found it a delight to play through all over again. It offers everything the original arcade game did, which is pretty much all I could have asked for.

The House of the Dead Remake will be available on April 7th on Nintendo Switch and a physical release is being handled by Microids.