The House of the Dead | Code Like It's 198x

The House of the Dead put zombies in front of a light gun. Sega’s AM1 studio took the formula of AM2’s Virtua Cop, a gun, a camera that moves for you and enemies that react to where they are hit, and set it in a gothic mansion full of the undead. Shots tore away heads, arms and chunks of torso, and the zombies kept coming. When the game reached London that summer, Computer and Video Games found the hardcore players who normally crowded the fighting games queuing to master it. Its designers said they wanted something that felt like The X-Files or Seven. What players remember just as well is the voice acting.

Fast facts

Developer: Sega AM1, directed by Takashi Oda.
Hardware: Sega’s Model 2 arcade board, with the same light gun as Virtua Cop.
Shown: AOU show, Makuhari Messe near Tokyo, 19–20 February 1997, about 80% complete.
Released: arcades in 1997; Sega Saturn version in 1998; a PC version too.
Players: one or two, as agents Thomas Rogan and G (early previews spelled him “Tom Rowgun”).
Setting: the mansion of Dr Curien, a scientist whose experiments have filled it with monsters.

From the AOU show to London

Sega first showed the game at the AOU (Amusement Machine Operators’ Union) show in February 1997. Sega Saturn Magazine reported it as 80% complete and one of the best things on display, and readers of the arcade magazine Gamest voted it seventh among the playable games at the show. Edge called it “Virtua Cop how George Romero would present it if he were a game designer”, and regretted only that it ran on the older Model 2 board instead of the new Model 3.

The development team told Sega Saturn Magazine later that year that research had begun in December 1995 and that the game “took us one year and three months”. That puts its arcade release in early 1997. Some later retrospectives, including Retro Gamer’s 2008 history of the series, date it to 1996, but the magazines of the time first show it in February 1997, still unfinished. By July Computer and Video Games was reporting crowds at the machines in London, where Deith Leisure distributed it.

Making a horror gun game

AM1’s director Takashi Oda and his team explained their thinking in a long interview with Sega Saturn Magazine’s Japan editor, Warren Harrod. They wanted a gun game without a police theme, with “serious images, such as the X-Files or Seven”. They chose zombies “because we thought they were very real”, with “a less childish image than ghosts or monsters”. The title was a translation of the Japanese shi no ie, “house of dead”. Other names on the list were “The Horror Show”, “Zombie” and “The Deadly Dead”.

Capcom’s BioHazard, known in the West as Resident Evil, came out four or five months into development. “We were really stunned,” the team said, but they had already chosen zombies, so they tried “not to care about BioHazard”. The difference they saw was pace: in BioHazard the player fires once and then walks for a while, but in The House of the Dead “the players are shooting almost all the time”.

The grainy, scratched-film look of the cut scenes came from the title sequences of Seven, which Oda had admired. The groans were recorded from three people in a small room. The first boss, Chariot, is the only monster animated with full motion capture: the team found a man who moved the way they wanted, and he performed the battle-axe swings holding a broom.

Playing it

The player shoots with the light gun and reloads by pointing it away from the screen. Zombies take several hits, and each hit leaves a mark. The team drew a normal and a damaged head for every zombie, and one whole body and three or four damaged bodies. “It was just twice the work,” they said. They had worried that the game would be too easy: in Virtua Cop a missed shot at a small, distant target could be fatal, but here a zombie that survives a miss keeps coming and gets bigger. Head shots count for more. Arcade operators could switch the blood from red to green, and the team added other colours, such as blue, for countries with stricter rules on violence.

Branching routes were the game’s other idea. Virtua Cop 2 had offered a choice at the end of a stage. In The House of the Dead the route depends on what the player does. Early on a zombie is about to throw a scientist off a bridge. Save him and the agents go through the mansion’s front door; fail and they take the sewers instead. Saving scientists also earns extra lives, and shooting trapdoors, bookshelves and switches opens other passages.

The game has four chapters. The first is called “Tragedy”, the third “Truth” and the last “The House of the Dead”. Each ends with a boss: Chariot, an armoured giant with an axe; Hangedman, a winged creature surrounded by bats; Hermit, a giant spider; and Dr Curien’s “ultimate creation”, the Magician, who throws fireballs. Before each fight a scroll shows the boss’s weak point. “We felt sorry for those people” who could not find it, the team said. A score over 62,000 unlocks the true ending, in which Rogan’s fiancée, Sophie Richards, turns out to be alive.

The voices

The English dialogue was performed in a flat, halting way that players found funny, and Sega Saturn Magazine’s review of the Saturn version praised its “hilarious voice acting”. One line, about suffering “like G did”, became a running joke: Retro Gamer borrowed it for the opening of its 2008 history of the series.

Home versions

Sega gave the Saturn conversion to the Australian studio Tantalus. Sega Saturn Magazine found it “a disappointing arcade conversion, but not without its merits” and gave it 82% in May 1998. It kept every monster and added a Saturn mode with extra characters and a boss-rush mode, but the textures were scrappy, the game paused to load mid-level and it ran at about 20 frames a second. The magazine had already noted that the AM4 department, which made Sega’s cabinets, had not had time to build a gun shaped like the agents’ pistols, so both the arcade and Saturn games used the standard Virtua Gun. A PC version followed.

The series

The House of the Dead 2 (1998) was the first game on Sega’s NAOMI arcade board and came to the Dreamcast in 1999. Retro Gamer noted its automatic reload and its even sillier voice track.
The Typing of the Dead (1999) replaced the guns with keyboards: the player kills zombies by typing words.
The House of the Dead III (2002) used a shotgun controller with a pump-action reload.
The House of the Dead 4 (2005) gave players sub-machine guns that they shook to reload or to throw off a zombie.
The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return (2008) brought the second and third games to the Wii.
House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, the fifth arcade game, was announced in January 2018, with a first location test in Tokyo that month.
The House of the Dead: Remake (2022) rebuilt the first game. In November 2024 a film based on the game was announced.

Sources

Edge issue 44, April 1997: AOU news report (AM1’s “playable demo” of the game); Arcadeview, pp. 115–117 (“Virtua Cop how George Romero would present it”, Model 2 rather than Model 3, extra lives for saving bystanders).
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 19, May 1997, p. 90: AOU ’97 report by Warren Harrod (the dates, 80% complete, Gamest’s poll, blood marks, UK arcades “soon”).
Computer and Video Games issue 186, May 1997, p. 84: the game at the AOU show.
Computer and Video Games issue 188, July 1997, pp. 84–85: arcade report (crowds in London, Thomas Rogan and G, Dr Curien, Deith Leisure, the Virtua Cop gun, reloading off-screen, red and green blood, the bridge and the sewers, the bosses’ weak-point scrolls).
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 23, September 1997, pp. 58–63: interview with AM1’s team (Takashi Oda, director; Kouji Ooto and Masakazu Sanbongi, programmers; Hiroyuki Taguchi, designer): the inspiration, the title, BioHazard, the development time, the damage system, the blood colours, Chariot’s motion capture, the 62,000-point ending, the sound effects.
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 30, April 1998, pp. 45–49: Saturn version preview (the chapters, the bosses, the scoring, the Virtua Gun and AM4, Tantalus).
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 29, March 1998: Saturn version preview (“The First Chapter: Tragedy”).
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 31, May 1998, pp. 64–67: Saturn version review by Matt Yeo, 82%.
Retro Gamer issue 50, 2008, pp. 30–35: history of the series (the 1996 date, the Saturn port by Tantalus, the sequels and spin-offs, “like G did”).
Gematsu, “House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn announced for arcades”, January 2018 (web, secondary). https://gematsu.com/2018/01/house-dead-scarlet-dawn-announced-arcades
Den Fami Nico Gamer, 1 November 2024 (web, secondary): the game “began operating in arcades in 1997”; the 2022 remake; the film project. https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/news/2411012b