Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="20f785a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>Mikes Homepage</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mikes Homepage"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id390.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse Shrine"><U>Splatterhouse Shrine</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id357.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse"><U>Splatterhouse</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id366.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatter House 2"><U>Splatter House 2</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id368.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse 3"><U>Splatterhouse 3</U></A>   |   <B>Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti</B>   |   <A HREF="id370.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="West Mansion Horror"><U>West Mansion Horror</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id391.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ANSI Splatterhouse"><U>ANSI Splatterhouse</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id392.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse: 2k3"><U>Splatterhouse: 2k3</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id446.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse Mobil Games"><U>Splatterhouse Mobil Games</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id447.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Evil Splatter"><U>Evil Splatter</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id547.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Madhouse"><U>Madhouse</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id548.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse 3D"><U>Splatterhouse 3D</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id549.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Splatterhouse Project"><U>The Splatterhouse Project</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id550.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Slaughterhouse"><U>Slaughterhouse</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="210d2b03.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="id390.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Splatterhouse Shrine"><U>Splatterhouse Shrine</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>Platform</B></div> <div> NES</div> <bR> <div> <B>Downloads</B></div> <div> <A HREF="shwanpaku.zip" TARGET="_top" TITLE="shwanpaku.zip"><U>Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="c9c933b0.png" border=0 width="147" height="59" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <A HREF="http://splatterhouse.classicgaming.gamespy.com/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://splatterhouse.classicgaming.games"><U>West Mansion Splatterhouse website</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti</I></div> <div> <B>Review and screenshots by </B><A HREF="mailto:axelay@ureach.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:axelay@ureach.com"><U><B>Rob</B></U></A><B> @ West Mansion</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Splatterhouse - Wanpaku Graffiti</B>  </div> <div> <IMG SRC="a1c80ba0.png" border=0 width="128" height="186" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <IMG SRC="a1ec4b20.png" border=0 width="196" height="178" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <IMG SRC="a20c5b30.png" border=0 width="197" height="179" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <IMG SRC="a22c6b30.png" border=0 width="198" height="179" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Truth be told, I'm not exactly where this fits into the rest of the Splatterhouse series continuity-wise, or even if it does. The game starts off in a graveyard. Jennifer is there mourning Rick, who somehow ended up dead - don't ask me how. Suddenly the wind starts blowing, lightning flashes - and a bolt of lightning strikes Rick's grave! The grave bursts open and Rick sits up (at this point he is wearing the Mask). He looks at Jennifer, who starts jumping for joy. Suddenly a bolt of lightning strikes the grave to the left of Rick's... and a giant jack-o-lantern comes out of the ground! This jack-o- lantern, the Pumpkin King, takes Jennifer and flies off with her. Rick jumps out of his grave, and takes off in pursuit of the Pumpkin King.</div> <bR> <div> Once again, you control Rick as you hunt the Pumpkin King through seven stages. It plays quite a bit differently than the arcade game. You have a life bar to the left of the screen, and a level meter on the top of the screen. Believe it or not, you gain levels in Wanpaku Grafitti - and the more levels you gain, the longer your life bar gets... which is a good thing, as you only start with four bars.</div> <bR> <div> The graphics are excellent. Despite being super deformed, a lot of gore is still present (gotta love the headless chickens and especially the hanging zombies - their bodies drop off and chase you while their heads shoot at you), and the backgrounds are very well done - the background even scrolls independently on several of the boards, which was almost unheard of on the NES. Rick himself looks excellent - it's a perfect SD rendition of the character... although they used a little too much orange on him, I think. The bosses in particular are extremely well done - one of my favorites is the evil priest that attacks you in the church on level three. He summons cool looking little dragons to attack you, then he turns into a goat and tries to beat the crap out of you. I also like the "disco vampire" that's the first level miniboss - he summons zombies that dance around on his disco stage with him, and then they attack when the dance is over. The Pumpkin King himself is also extremely well done - for a giant flying jack-o-lantern, at any rate.</div> <div> <IMG SRC="ad9f8db0.png" border=0 width="248" height="219" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">  <IMG SRC="adafadc0.png" border=0 width="250" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Musically, Wanpaku Grafitti is a bit of a mixed bag. The level themes are done very well - probably some of the best music I've heard come out of the NES. There's some slight repetition, but the quality of the music is so good that it never becomes annoying. The sound effects are pretty good too - there's some good splat sounds whenever you whack a monster.</div> <bR> <div> Rick controls beautifully, as well - he responds perfectly to your commands. I'd have to recommended that you use a turbo controller, though... it's quite helpful. The way Rick controls and the overall feel of the game reminds me a lot of Monster Party, one of my all time favorite NES games. You only have one life to go through the game with, but you do have continues... only four continues, unfortunately, but they're more than enough, as the game is pretty easy. There is a password feature as well - at the beginning of each level, you're given a four digit password. If you run out of continues and put your password in to start the level that you were last on, all of your continues are restored - but your levels that you've built up are gone - to a point. You won't start on level 8 with the same measly four life bars you started the game with... you will have more, just not as many as you had. This is the only drawback to the password system that I can see.</div> <bR> <div> One of the most interesting (and funniest) things about Wanpaku Grafitti is all of the movie parodies that are sprinkled throughout the game. The movie parodies Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, The Fly, Alien, The Exorcist, Jaws, and Friday The 13th (perhaps it has more parodies that I just haven't picked up yet - I'm not sure). The Friday The 13th parody isn't just because of the character design (for the uninitiated, Rick - in all of the games - resembles Jason Vorhees, the killer from the Friday The 13th series)... one of the levels is called "Diamond Lake" - hmmmm. What do you think? The Alien parody is interesting... a girl's chest bursts open and all of these little spider/facehugger things come swarming out (interestingly enough, when you kill them all, her chest seals up and she walks away. Weird.). Of course, the "disco vampire" bit in the first level is obviously a parody of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. The other parodies are sprinkled throughout the game. In fact, the tagline for the game is "In the haunted mansion, no one can hear you scream!", which of course is a spoof of Alien's tagline "In space, no one can hear you scream."</div> <bR> <div> The movie parodies make sense, though, when you reach the end of the game and you're reunited with Jennifer. As Rick and Jennifer are hugging each other (and little hearts are floating to the top of the screen), the lights suddenly come up, and you see a film crew filming the whole thing! The director shouts "Cut!", and the ending goes from there... unfortunately, I can't read much Japanese, but thanks to D, we now have the ending screens translated into English. Rick walks up to the director, who proceeds to congratulate Rick, saying "That was some damn fine acting! This'll be a great movie! Nice job!". Rick jumps up and down, and the director leaves the room. Rick tosses of the mask and walks out, then the mask starts floating in the air, laughing and tossing chairs and lights around. Hmmm... it appears that there was more to this than meets the eye.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Review and screenshots by </B><A HREF="mailto:axelay@ureach.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:axelay@ureach.com"><U><B>Rob</B></U></A><B> @ West Mansion</B></div> </td> </tr></table></body>