It's Bloodier and Gorier on film!
Since this is a game that helped inspire the Resident Evil series and other Survival Horror games, this is inevitable. Five people fighting for their lives as they are trapped in a haunted house full of evil spirits and monsters. Can they get out of there alive?
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
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The video game
- The game is considered the true father of the Survival Horror genre. Aside from its history, it's one of the only RPGs where the death of any character is permanent and, for some reason, the horror genre seems amplified on an 8-bit system. The atmosphere doesn't get any better as the game goes along. For one thing, healing is limited in the game. Despite Random Encounters and most other RPG conventions, there are no inns to rest, and no healing items dropped by random creatures. Skeletons and eternally dying victims (torn in half) will talk (or, more accurately, scream) to you.
- Then there's Yamamura, the mysterious groundskeeper and your only other ally. When you approach Mamiya's room, you're repulsed by a barrier, and Yamamura steps in to help... and his skin melts off. Graphically.
- The death scenes can invoke this because the female characters lie in their own blood unconscious while the male characters are bisected. A reminder of why considerate planning is needed in battles and puzzles instead of rushing into them.
- Some rooms in the mansion have blue ice on the floor. If you step on it without the Pick, you'll become separated from the rest of the team and slide down to the bottom of the screen. You'll usually be swept onto some spikes, but in a couple places you'll be swept onto piles of dead(?) bodies. Spikes and bodies both cause 10 HP of damage for every couple of seconds you're standing on them, but it's hard to decide which is worse...
The film
- Taguchi's fate. When he gets caught in the mansion's deadly shadow, it melts his hips and thighs, leaving behind two bloody calves. Taguchi ends up crawling on the floor, dragging behind a very gruesome stump.
- Yamamura, the mysterious groundskeeper, dies trying to keep Emi from being possessed by Lady Mamiya. His skin and muscles slowly melt and end up as a gross pile beneath his feet. Even his skeleton collapses into an undefinable mess.
The videogame and film
- There is one moment of true horror that stands out: the incinerator in the basement. The matron of the mansion went insane after her baby died in the incinerator. She started killing other children to give her child a playmate. In the game, you learn all this through the frescoes in the house. After making it through the basement where you find the skeletons of the children, you come to the room with the incinerator where it all started. Walking closer to it, you hear the child burning to death, screaming for mother. In the movie, Yamamura gives the backstory to Akiko and Kazuo. Although the incinerator doesn't contain the screams of the child, it does have a lot of ash everywhere... the ashes of the children, perhaps?
- Lady Mamiya's final form. A woman with the right side of her face burnt, spindly arms, and lots of tumor-like bumps covering her and forming a massive hunchback. The movie reveals these bumps to be the spirits of the children she burned alive as they start forming crying faces.
