Splatterhouse 2

About Splatterhouse 2

Splatterhouse 2 (1992) is Namco's Genesis horror brawler in which Rick, tormented by guilt, puts the Terror Mask back on to rescue Jennifer from the land of the dead.

Splatterhouse 2 in Depth

Three months after the first game, Rick is wracked with guilt at failing to save Jennifer and plagued by nightmares of her and the Terror Mask, which reformed after breaking at the end of the original. The Mask reappears and tempts him to find the house, promising that Jennifer can be saved and that it will give him power. In the Japanese version it tells him to find "the hidden house" and that Jennifer is in "the land of the dead", while the Western version simply says to "go back to the house", leading some players to mistake the intact mansion for the original West Mansion, whose charred ruins actually form the first stage. Rick rescues Jennifer, and the house sinks to the bottom of the river.

Play is very close to the first game: Rick fights through eight two-dimensional stages, punching, kicking, jump-kicking and slide-kicking and picking up weapons scattered through the levels, with a grotesque boss at the end of each. New are a difficulty setting and, in the English version, a password system taken from Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti. In the West the Terror Mask is skull-like, while in Japan it is white with black stripes over the eyes, loosely resembling a kabuki mask. GamePro invited players to "seek revenge on all those early childhood closet monsters".

Making Splatterhouse 2

Now Production developed it and Namco published it for the Sega Genesis in 1992 as the sequel to the 1988 arcade Splatterhouse. Game Informer said it was "definitely one not to pass up", and Mega Action gave it 88 per cent as a "sick, slick scrolling beat-'em-up", while Mega Play's reviewers thought its gore would appeal to horror fans. Others felt the premise could not carry it: Sega Force called the controls "sluggish", VideoGames & Computer Entertainment said it did "nothing to advance the genre", and Mean Machines Sega noted poor graphics and a short campaign. Splatterhouse 3 followed in 1993.