Haunted House (video game)

Last updated

Haunted House
Hauntedhouse atari.jpg
Developer(s) Atari
Publisher(s) Atari
Programmer(s) James Andreasen
Platform(s) Atari 2600
ReleaseFebruary 1982
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single player

Haunted House is a 1982 adventure video game programmed by James Andreasen for the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed Atari 2600) and published by Atari. The player controls an avatar shaped like a pair of eyes who explores a mansion seeking out parts of an urn to return to the entrance. The game world is populated by roaming enemies including vampire bats, tarantulas, and a ghost. Haunted House was among the first games to use player-controlled scrolling between large portions of the visual space.

Contents

Haunted House received positive reviews from contemporary video game publications such as The Space Gamer and Electronic Games while others, such as How to Win at Home Video Games, noted the game's difficulty and lack of intuitiveness. The game has seen several releases across consoles and formats as part of Atari compilation packages as well as follow-up games, such as Haunted House (2010) and Haunted House: Cryptic Graves (2014), and Haunted House (2023).

Video game critics such as Christopher Buecheler of GameSpy have called Haunted House one of the earliest examples of the survival horror video game genre due to its elements of creepy themes, limited item management, and a variety of monsters. Other studies of the genre have suggested that the game lacked the specific elements that later games like Alone in the Dark (1992) and Resident Evil (1996) had to establish it as a unique game genre.

Gameplay

Haunted House is a single-player video game in which the player's goal is to recover three pieces of a magic urn that are randomly placed throughout 24 rooms of a mansion and return them to the entrance. [1] [2] The items and some areas within the game are revealed to player via matches which the player can ignite and blow out. [3] The magazine How to Win at Video Games described Haunted House as a "storyline" game, comparing its gameplay as being similar to that of Atari's previous games Superman (1979) and Adventure (1980). [4] Tim Onosko of The Capital Times also compared Haunted House to the two previous games, describing it as an adventure game that requires players to learn rules and requirements and gathering items to reach a goal as they play. [5]

The player has nine lives to attempt this task. [1] The player can only collect one object at a time, and can swap between two objects by touching another one. [6] The mansion is a set of 24 rooms between four floors. [3] The player can traverse through different doors that ascend and descend, but none permit the player to go in both directions. [7] Throughout the mansion, the player may encounter such enemies as vampire bats, tarantulas and a ghost, which cause the player to lose a life upon contact. [3]

The game has nine settings of varying difficulty. For example, setting 1 has a room where walls around the room are lit by matches while all others are completely dark. [3] [8] Further challenges introduce locked doors, which require a master key that is also hidden within the mansion. [8] [9] Other difficulties add extra enemies and enemy abilities such as the bats stealing a carried item and placing it at a random location around the mansion. [8] A scepter can be found inside the mansion as a collectable item, which prevent enemies from chasing the player on most levels of difficulty. The ghost will still give chase on higher difficulty levels regardless of whether the player has the item or not. [8]

Development

The player is represented by the pair of eyes in the house. Haunted House was among the first video games to use player-controlled scrolling. Screen scrolling in Atari game Haunted House.gif
The player is represented by the pair of eyes in the house. Haunted House was among the first video games to use player-controlled scrolling.

Haunted House was developed by Atari. [10] It was programmed by James Andreasen, [11] a graduate of the University of Colorado in Boulder who worked as a software engineer at MSI and Atari. [12] Working titles for the game included Mystery Mansion and Graves Manor. [13]

The game was developed for the company's Atari 2600 video game system, then named the Atari Video Computer System. [14] [15] For sound and graphics, the Atari 2600 had its Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) which authors Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost described as a programming challenge, allowing for only a relatively small number of unique features. The Atari 2600 did not allow for such services such as graphic rendering, forcing programmers to draw the entirety of each frame of the game's display. [16] Like other games such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982), the environments in Haunted House are hard-designed and loaded into the game, and are small compared to the other games such as Pitfall! (1982) where the worlds are consistently generated by code. [17] Haunted House was among the first video games to use player-controlled scrolling between large portions of the visual space. [18] To save further memory for the randomly placed items in the game, the locations of the urn pieces are generated through polynomial counters, creating numbers that are counted in unusual orders. [19]

Sound effects were common in Atari 2600 games, though the frequencies that the TIA could generate would miss most parts of the chromatic scale. Due to the limited sound, programmers at Atari would often have the system make percussion sounds, which were applied by Andreasen to create the foot step sound effects of ascent and descent in the stairway in the game among other sounds. [20]

Release

Steven Hendricks's original art for the cover of Haunted House. The image was rejected by a member of Atari's marketing department due to the location of the glaring eyes. Atari-haunted-house-initial-cover-art.jpg
Steven Hendricks's original art for the cover of Haunted House. The image was rejected by a member of Atari's marketing department due to the location of the glaring eyes.

Haunted House was released in February 1982. [5] The artist for the cover art and manual was Steve Hendricks. Hendricks stated that the art used within the game's manual was initially going to be the game's cover art. After receiving approval for the design, he was told by a member of Atari's marketing department that the art was going to be rejected due to the location of eyes over the chest of the person. [21]

Haunted House was re-released in various compilation formats, such as the Atari 80 in One for Windows in 2003 and the Atari Anthology for PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2004. [22] It was also released on portable devices as part of the Atari Greatest Hits release for the Nintendo DS and iOS. [23] [24] Haunted House was included as part of the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration (2022) compilation for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One. [25]

Reception

Cashbox reported the game as one of the top selling video games by July 1982. [26] Reviews commented on the game's similarity to other titles, graphics and sound, and its difficulty. Arnie Katz and Bill Kunkel of Electronic Games found the game similar to Atari's previous game Adventure (1980). [27] The reviewers commented that it was "much more atmospheric" than Adventure, and found it to be "one of the most intriguing and novel video game cartridges to appear in some time" calling its audio and visuals excellent, while finding the scoring system a bit difficult to parse. [7] Another review from Electronic Games, from the "1983 Software Encyclopedia" issue, gave the game a seven out of ten rating, again finding the audio and visuals as excellent while stating that the game gave the player "the spine-tingling sensation that something spooky is always about to happen". [28] Richard A. Edwards of The Space Gamer declared that the game was among the best graphics and sound Atari had produced and could not find any drawbacks to the game. [29] [30]

Onosoko of The Capital Times wrote that the game's graphics were deemed as "blocky" and unimpressive, but the game itself could be challenging. [5] A review in Video Games found that it was hard to get excited by a game predominantly played in darkness, giving it an "interest rating" of five out of ten and a "skill rating" of nine out of ten, stating that "you almost need to take notes to keep track of things in this game [...] there is no single solution to any of the [difficulty levels]". [31] How to Win at Video Games found the game difficult and not easy to understand at first, but recommended it to audiences willing to give time to learn the game's mechanics. [4]

In 1995, Flux magazine ranked Haunted House #68 on their list of "Top 100 Video Games". [32] Christopher Buecheler of GameSpy included Haunted House into the website's "Hall of Fame" in December 2002. Beucheler praised the game, stating that "in an age where most game design was "fire lasers until you die"", that the game was a noteworthy accomplishment. [33] Brett Weiss included the game as an "honorable mention" in his book The 100 Greatest Console Video Games 1977-1987 (2014), recommending it for Adventure fans who were "hankering for something creepier". [34]

Legacy

Some video game critics, such as Buecheler of GameSpy and Skyler Miller of AllGame, have cited the game as being one of the earliest in the survival horror genre. [10] [33] Buecheler specifically noted the elements of the genre with its creepy themes, limited item management, and a variety of monsters. [33] In her writings on the genre, Laurie N. Taylor traced the origins of the genre to Alone in the Dark (1992) and that the genre was expanded on by Resident Evil (1996) while stating that survival horror was "Like most genre definitions [...] a loose category and one unevenly applied by players, journalists, designers and scholars". [35] Matthew Wiese in 2009 similarly said that labeling all horror-themed games as survival horror was problematic due to the term not existing prior to the release of Resident Evil (1996). [36] In Horror Games Magazine (2003), Vim Sical and Remi Delekta found that horror required mise-en-scène , which required visual technical capabilities. [37] [38] Bernard Perron, in his book The World of Scary Video Games, agreed with this statement, stating that Haunted House could not have in mind the mise-en-scène of fear that would become possible in later decades and chose to regard games like Haunted House for "what they were". [39]

Several follow-ups to Haunted House have been published. Atari released a new version of Haunted House for the PC, Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade) and the Nintendo Wii in 2010. [23] [40] Roland Lesterlin, the producer of the 2010 game, said that they made connections with the original game such as the pair of glowing eyes representing the player. [41] Atari published another version of Haunted House, Haunted House: Cryptic Graves, by Italian studio Dreampainters for Windows on November 24, 2014. [42] [43] [44] [45] The game moved away from the more cartoonish look of the previous 2010 release. [42] Digital Eclipse made a new game titled Haunted Houses featuring 3D voxel-based graphics which was included in the Atari 50 (2022) compilation release. [46] Orbit Studio released a new version of Haunted House that was a roguelite-styled game on October 12, 2023. [47] [48]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 2600</span> Home video game console

The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridges, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976. The VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge—initially Combat and later Pac-Man. Sears sold the system as the Tele-Games Video Arcade. Atari rebranded the VCS as the Atari 2600 in November 1982 alongside the release of the Atari 5200.

<i>Kaboom!</i> (video game) 1981 action game

Kaboom! is an action video game published in 1981 by Activision for the Atari 2600. The gameplay was based on the Atari arcade game Avalanche (1978), with the game now involving a Mad Bomber who drops bombs instead of falling rocks. Kaboom! was programmed by Larry Kaplan with David Crane coding the graphics for the buckets and Mad Bomber. It was the last game designed by Kaplan for Activision, who left the company shortly after the release of the game. The game was later ported by Paul Wilson for the Atari 5200 system.

<i>Adventure</i> (1980 video game) 1980 video game

Adventure is a video game developed by Warren Robinett for the Atari Video Computer System and released in 1980 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a square avatar whose quest is to explore an open-ended environment to find a magical chalice and return it to the golden castle. The game world is populated by roaming enemies: three dragons that can eat the avatar and a bat that randomly steals and hides items around the game world. Adventure introduced new elements to console games, including enemies that continue to move when offscreen.

<i>Pitfall!</i> 1982 video game

Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.

<i>Phoenix</i> (1980 video game) 1980 video game

Phoenix is a video game developed for arcades in Japan and released in 1980 by Taito. The game is a fixed-screen shooter where the player controls a space ship and must shoot at incoming enemies that fly from the top of the screen down towards the enemies.

<i>Combat</i> (video game) 1977 video game

Combat is a 1977 video game by Atari, Inc. for the Atari Video Computer System. In the game, two players controlling either a tank, a biplane, or a jet fire missiles at each other for two minutes and sixteen seconds. Points are scored by hitting the opponent, and the player with the most points when the time runs out wins. Variations on the gameplay introduce elements such as invisible vehicles, missiles that ricochet off of walls, and different playing fields.

<i>Demon Attack</i> Fixed shooter video game from 1982

Demon Attack is a fixed shooter video game created by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The game involves the player controlling a laser cannon from the surface of a planet, shooting winged demons that fly down and attack the player in different sets of patterns.

<i>Dragonstomper</i> 1982 video game

Dragonstomper is a video game developed by Stephen Landrum for the Atari Video Computer System and released by Starpath. The game follows the adventures of a dragon hunter who is given a quest by the king to defeat a dragon and reclaim a magical amulet that was stolen. The player makes their way over the countryside, vanquishing various adversaries and gaining gold and experience. After achieving enough strength, the player can enter a shop in an oppressed village where equipment can be purchased, soldiers hired, and special scrolls obtained to defeat the dragon in its lair.

<i>Golf</i> (Atari 2600 video game) 1980 video game

Golf is a 1980 video game programmed by Michael Lorenzen for Atari for the Atari 2600. It is based on the traditional sport of golf. The game allows one or two players to play nine holes of the game, featuring various obstacles.

<i>Air-Sea Battle</i> 1977 video game

Air-Sea Battle is a fixed shooter developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari VCS. Air-Sea Battle is partially based on the 1975 Atari arcade video game Anti-Aircraft where each player uses a ground-based gun to shoot passing aircraft. The cartridge adds other variants, such as planes dropping bombs on ships and a carnival-themed shooting gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second generation of video game consoles</span> Second video game console generation, including the Atari 2600

In the history of video games, the second-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable platforms of the second generation include the Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision. The generation began in November 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. This was followed by the Atari 2600 in 1977, Magnavox Odyssey² in 1978, Intellivision in 1980 and then the Emerson Arcadia 2001, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex, all in 1982. By the end of the era, there were over 15 different consoles. It coincided with, and was partly fuelled by, the golden age of arcade video games. This peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium resulted in many games for second generation home consoles being ports of arcade games. Space Invaders, the first "killer app" arcade game to be ported, was released in 1980 for the Atari 2600, though earlier Atari-published arcade games were ported to the 2600 previously. Coleco packaged Nintendo's Donkey Kong with the ColecoVision when it was released in August 1982.

<i>Basic Math</i> (video game) 1977 video game

Basic Math is an educational video game for the Atari Video Computer System. The game was developed at Atari, Inc. by Gary Palmer. The game involves a series of ten arithmetic problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. The player can edit different game play modes to alter how the numbers in the problem are chosen, or if their questions are timed. The game was released in 1977 as one of the earliest releases for the console.

<i>Blackjack</i> (Atari 2600 video game) 1977 video game

Blackjack is a video game simulation of the card game blackjack. It was designed by Bob Whitehead for the Atari Video Computer System. The game allows up to three players to play a variation on of blackjack. Each player is given 200 chips where they can bet 1 to 25 of each round. The game ends for a player when they either run out of chips or earns 1000 chips or more.

<i>Pac-Man</i> (Atari 2600 video game) Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man

Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 hit arcade game of the same name. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.

<i>Superman</i> (1979 video game) Action-adventure game for the Atari 2600

Superman is a video game programmed by John Dunn for the Atari Video Computer System and released in 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls Superman, whose quest is to explore an open-ended environment to find three pieces of a bridge that was destroyed by Lex Luthor, capture Luthor and his criminal gang, and return to the Daily Planet building. The game world is populated by antagonists such as a helicopter that re-arranges the bridge pieces and roving kryptonite satellites that cause Superman to revert into Clark Kent.

<i>Surround</i> (video game) 1977 video game

Surround is a video game programmed by Alan Miller and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari Video Computer System. The game played similar to the arcade game Blockade (1976) which allowed players to navigate a continuously moving block around an enclosed space as a wall trails behind it. Every time the opposite player had their brick hit a wall, the opposing player would earn a single point with the winner being the first to collect ten points.

<i>Yars Revenge</i> 1982 video game

Yars' Revenge is a video game released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It was created by Howard Scott Warshaw and is Atari's best-selling original game for the 2600.

A horror game is a video game genre centered on horror fiction and typically designed to scare the player. The term may also be used to describe tabletop games with horror fiction elements.

<i>Slot Machine</i> (video game) 1979 game for Atari 2600

Slot Machine is a 1979 video game written by David Crane for the Atari VCS and published by Atari, Inc. Along with Star Ship and Miniature Golf, it was one of the first Atari VCS games to be discontinued.

<i>Space Invaders</i> (Atari 2600 video game) 1980 video game

Space Invaders is a 1980 video game based on Taito's arcade game of the same name for the Atari 2600. It was developed and released by Atari, Inc. and designed and developed by Rick Maurer. The game is based on the arcade game in which a player operates a laser cannon to shoot at incoming enemies from outer space. Maurer's version has unique graphics and offers some gameplay variations. These include a two-player mode and variations that allow for invisible enemies and moving shields, and for enemies shots to zig zag and potentially hit players.

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Atari 1981, p. 2.
  2. ↑ "Haunted House". Games. Vol. 6, no. 34. Playboy Enterprises. December 1982. ISSN   0199-9788.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Atari 1981, p. 3.
  4. 1 2 "Haunted House". How to Win at Home Video Games. Vol. 1, no. 3. Publications International. December 1982. p. 59.
  5. 1 2 3 Onosko 1982.
  6. ↑ Atari 1981, p. 7.
  7. 1 2 Katz & Kunkel 1982, p. 78.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Atari 1981, p. 11-12.
  9. ↑ Atari 1980, p. 2.
  10. 1 2 Miller.
  11. ↑ Perron 2018, p. 146.
  12. ↑ "Obituaries". The Olympian . November 9, 2002. p. C2. Retrieved January 27, 2023– via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Lapetino 2016, p. 158.
  14. ↑ Loguidice & Barton 2009, p. 2.
  15. ↑ Digital Eclipse (November 11, 2022). Atari 50 (Nintendo Switch). Atari. 1982: Atari 2600: With the impending release of its next-generation platform Atari 5200, Atari rebranded the VCS to the Atari 2600.
  16. ↑ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 27-28.
  17. ↑ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 110.
  18. ↑ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 131-132.
  19. ↑ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 111.
  20. ↑ Montfort & Bogost 2009, p. 131.
  21. ↑ Lapetino 2016, p. 159.
  22. ↑ Harris 2004.
  23. 1 2 Giancaspro 2010.
  24. ↑ "Atari's Greatest Hits". MetaCritic. Archived from the original on January 27, 2023. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
  25. ↑ Machkovech 2022.
  26. ↑ "Top Selling Video Games". Cashbox . Vol. 44, no. 6. July 2, 1982. p. 17.
  27. ↑ Katz & Kunkel 1982, p. 77.
  28. ↑ "Atari 2600 (VCS)". Electronic Games 1983 Software Encyclopedia . Vol. 1, no. 1. Reese Communications. 1983. p. 25. ISSN   0736-8488.
  29. ↑ Edwards 1982, p. 28.
  30. ↑ Edwards 1982, p. 30.
  31. ↑ "TV-Games Buyer's Guide". Video Games. Vol. 1, no. 2. New York: Pumpkin Press. October 1982. p. 42.
  32. ↑ Amrich et al. 1995, p. 31.
  33. 1 2 3 Buecheler 2002.
  34. ↑ Weiss 2014, p. 231.
  35. ↑ Taylor 2009, p. 46-47.
  36. ↑ Wiese 2009, p. 241-242.
  37. ↑ Perron 2018, p. 62.
  38. ↑ Perron 2018, p. 136.
  39. ↑ Perron 2018, p. 136-137.
  40. ↑ "Haunted House". Metacritic . Archived from the original on January 27, 2023. Retrieved January 27, 2023.
  41. ↑ Frum 2010.
  42. 1 2 Futter 2014.
  43. ↑ McWhertor 2014.
  44. ↑ Scullion 2014.
  45. ↑ Stolpe 2014.
  46. ↑ Bonifacic 2022.
  47. ↑ Romano 2023.
  48. ↑ "Haunted House - Official Release Date Trailer". IGN. September 18, 2023. Archived from the original on September 20, 2023. Retrieved October 8, 2023.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.