Haunting Starring Polterguy

The Good

• Entertaining animations and graphics
• Unique concept
• Good challenge and score system
• Finding new ways to scare is fun

The Bad

• Could use more than just one family to haunt
• Controls can be frustrating and picky
• Can get repetitive
• Navigation issues can get in the way of the fun
• Underworld stages need shaking up

The Bottom Line
The Haunting is a fun little game for the Genesis. I recently dug it up in my closet when scrounging for old games, and I had some faint but fond memories of it. It has a very unique and quirky concept and while it has some issues that prevent it from being as great as it could be, it is still worth finding a cart.

The premise is pretty simple. You are a ghost named Polterguy and you have a vendetta against the Sardini family, and you are going to do whatever you can to keep them running and screaming by haunting their houses and scaring them out. You do this by possessing various objects around the house. If you see a blue sparkle on an object, then it is a "Trap" possession. This is the most common. You press the A button and Polterguy will swoop in and then swoop out, and then the object will rumble if it is in proximity of one of the folks you want to scare; attracting them. Then when they approach they're in for a scare! Orange sparkles are much bigger jumps, but don't need to be "triggered." Once the family member sights them, it will activate no matter the distance. These are best for directing them in certain directions as these scares are often much more vicious. Finally, there are green sparkles. Green sparkles allow you to actually control the object you possess a bit more directly.

The possessions are all funny and the family members reactions are humorous and well animated. Green sparkle possessions are some of the best, I remember the first time I used a bench-saw and chased the Sardini's daughter Mimi with a severed hand I couldn't help but let out a morbid giggle as she cowered in the corner and sprung a trap I had set earlier, which caused her to open the trunk of her families car to find a skeleton in the trunk; all the while my flopping severed arm still terrorized her. Green sparkles are timed with a red meter, you can either press the "A" button and end it early, or keep controlling it until the red meter runs out.

Speaking of meters, you must always keep moving. You have an "Ecto" meter, which constantly ticks down. To get ecto, you have to rack up big points. The more scares you can rack up, the more ecto you will get once your victim runs from the room screaming. After leaving a room terrified, they will leave green ecto drops that you must gobble up to keep your meter up. However, note that if you get a high score, ecto creatures will come to try and steal it from you! It is best to focus on one family member at a time, as their fear meter will decrease over time, and it will make it harder and more arduous to clear them out.

Once your ecto-meter runs out, you are sent to the underworld where you must get enough ecto back to return to our realm. However, this is the only place in the game where you can die. You have a health meter here and if the various cliche hazards such as bouncing skulls and evil hands in the wall tear you apart, the game will end. The Underworld stages get very old very quickly though. They are the exact same lay out and will often just have you going in the reverse route you went before. They do get more difficulty, but seeing a new portion of the underworld or having a different layout would have been nice as your 3rd time visiting the underworld will be rooted deeply in tedium and it only increases each time you go there. The biggest bonus is that once you get out, it always returns you to the exact spot you were in when you lost your ecto- meaning your target won't have shuffled to a new room or lost their fear level in the mean-time, which is nice.

In all, there are 4 stages. However you will most definitely still have plenty of challenge on the way. It takes some time to learn how to get high scores racked up right, and you will also want to experiment with all the various ways to haunt each new house. This is one of the issues though; some more stages would have been nice in the end, and I would have liked to haunt more than just the Sardini's. I would've even preferred if the Sardini's numbers expanded, but you only have Tony (the son) Mimi (The "Daughter." My guess is this is why Polterguy has a thing against the Sardini's, Mimi is clearly some sort of satanic demon in human skin. Just look at her portrait.), Flo (the mother) and Vito (The father.) to haunt throughout the game.

The game can also get repetitive and controls are an issue. The game is very picky about when it will let you possess objects, and you often have to be at a very specific angle which itself is an issue as Polterguy's sense of direction is quite sensitive. You can end up losing big points simply because Polterguy won't jump in an object before a family member walks out. Navigating the map is also an issue. You can pause the game and see the map and what room certain family members are in as well as where Polterguy is, however doors and entrances are hard to get through and some are nigh impossible to see as well. It also doesn't help that most of them serve as Orange sparkle scares, which will often stop you from going through to remind you and Polterguy's specific need of direction once again rears its ugly head. This means you can often waste lots of ecto just trying to get in the right door.

Later in the game, ecto-monsters become more frequent and you also have to worry with the dog. The dog is the only living creature that can detect you, and not only will its barks run down your ecto it will calm the fear of any family member in the room you are in. The dog also has another purpose later in the game, but you can figure that one out for yourself.

The Haunting is fun! Repetition, brevity, and control issues prevent it from fully realizing its fantastic concept, but it works well enough to be very entertaining. I found it interesting to see this was released by Electronic Arts and that Polterguy was even trademarked, does this mean he was intended to become a franchise? Shame he never expanded... I would love to see Polterguy return! A new "Haunting" game that improves on the concept of scaring the daylights out of various crazy families would be great. It's a fresh concept even today, and this fun little title should keep you amused for some time.