Reviews VideoGame / Haunted Museum

Great comedy from Taito

Taito graced us all with Space Invaders back in the ancient days, and my generation knows them for Bubble Bobble. Shooter fans know them for the Darius series. They'd made a lot more arcade than console games, and they have a certain distinct style, a certain quirky weirdness to them, and a lot of broken English.

Two "agents" (what kind of agents? FBI? One's US and one's Japanese. Whatever) enter a museum while armed with assault rifles, because people were known to have mysteriously disappeared in that museum.

Once inside, they quickly discover why, as everything tries to kill them. The player picks which room they'd like to enter, choosing the rooms in any order, and the museum's exhibits quickly turn deadly. And cartoonish.

In the Egyptian wing, you're chased by mummies, ride a sarcophagus like a rollercoaster through a brick wall and all around a desert setting, while fighting a giant sphinx boss. Wait, how did you leave the museum and enter the desert?

Well, each exhibit in the museum, at some point, magically transports you to a world themed after the exhibit. The airplane exhibit briefly has you transported to World War II as you fire rockets at tanks on the ground from a plane. The underwater life exhibit has you firing harpoons at sharks underwater. The library has you enter a magic book about insect life, which transports you to a forest where you fight tons of bees, and finally fight a giant partially robotic bee.

It's actually very similar to an idea I've had in my head ever since I was a kid! The idea of museum exhibits being magic portals that take you to themed worlds and back again. It's awesome to see that idea finally brought to life in a game.

The enemies are everything. Fish, ninjas, toy airplanes, a giant robot, and even classic "gray"-style space aliens. It ends with you fighting an alien spaceship, and the ending shows a newspaper with a ridiculous photo of your characters slapping handcuffs on a space alien for the crime of messing with the history of humankind.

There's no blood, no gore. Everything goes boom instead.

The game is a riot. Its total refusal to take its stupid concept seriously, and its sheer Refuge in Audacity is to be commended. Besides, it's consistently creative and keeps throwing new ideas at you, which is something not enough games do.