Haunted House

aka: Casa Mal-Assombrada, Nightmare Manor
Moby ID: 9751
Atari 2600 Specs
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Description official descriptions

Hidden throughout a haunted mansion are three pieces of a magical urn, and your goal is to enter the mansion and retrieve all three before you lose your nine lives! The game is played from an overhead point of view where you see only your eyeballs as you explore the four floors of the maze-like mansion. To make your mission even more difficult, there are various creatures wandering throughout. Tarantulas, giant vampire bats, and one fast moving ghost will all cause you to lose a life if encountered too closely. As a defense against the creatures, a magical scepter can be found in the mansion which will make you immune to its inhabitants.

The mansion contains many doors, some of which may be locked; to explore all the rooms, you will first need to find the master key which is hidden somewhere. The mansion is very dark, and you will not be able to see any of the objects in it (and in more difficult game variations, you can't see the walls either). To reveal objects and the mansion walls, you need to light one of your unlimited supply of matches which will light up a small area around you. Don't be surprised if a swift wind or passing creature blow out your match, though!

You are only allowed to carry one object at a time so you will need to create a strategy for exploring the mansion; to unlock a door or move a piece of the urn, you will need to put down the scepter. You win the game when all three pieces of the urn are assembled and you make it out of the mansion. The game keeps track of how many matches you have used on your mission, and the fewer matches the better the score.

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Credits (Atari 2600 version)

Programmer
Cover Artwork

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 9 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.1 out of 5 (based on 28 ratings with 4 reviews)

A scary game for back then

The Good
I liked the creepy creatures that come after you out of nowhere. You try to run-to get away-but they come at you so fast. And when they catch you, you are doomed! The audio was great for this time period.

The Bad
I think I enjoyed everything about this game for the time.

The Bottom Line
You are a blob running through the darkness, trying to escape evil creatures that will get you. You run down corridors, and into dead ends. You must find the exit to the next level or the monsters will attack!

Atari 2600 · by Tiffany Morrison (1) · 2004

The Original Survival Horror Game.

The Good
One of the classic Atari 2600 games, Haunted House could actually be SCARY with its continual feeling of being hunted and surprise encounters. The dark graphics with their limited range of view kept players stepping carefully through the four-story mansion, and running blindly in the darkness when the ghost started hunting you down. One of the biggest draws was the sound. It was a very ambient game, with footsteps in the hallways, and wind and thunder adding much of the tension to approaching creatures. The louder things got, the closer a bat and spider could be. Escape the house with the urn, and players would hear a rendition of the "Twilight Zone" theme.

The Bad
While the ghost and other creatures could pop out of anywhere, which kept things continually on the move. However, there were times where an enemy would pop out of nowhere and kill the player seconds after already doing so, which led to some frustrations. It wasn't overly common, but it would happen.

The Bottom Line
Haunted House is a four-story romp through an old mansion filled with ghosts, bats, and spiders. Players had to hunt down the missing pieces of an urn while stumbling through the darkness, and trying to deal with locked doors. Players could defend themself with an old scepter (against the ghost), but were otherwise defenseless. One of the few solid adventure titles for the Atari 2600, it reminds a lot of the classic gameplay found in "Adventure". It's a classic game by any means, with some genuine "jump" moments, and one of the deeper titles for the system.

Atari 2600 · by Guy Chapman (1748) · 2004

Possibly the scariest game on the Atari 2600 so far

The Good
I just read a 2-page article in the first issue of "Atari Age", about a family who decides to live in a haunted house and its occupants are killed one by one. This article promoted Atari's new game Haunted House, but the information in it has nothing to do with what happens in gameplay. As one of the few Atari 2600 games that I have played, it contains the one thing that I like - exploration.

The objective of Haunted House is simple. The player (portrayed as a pair of eyes) is trapped inside a four-story and cannot escape until he manages to collect the three missing pieces of an urn. Lurking around the mansion are a variety of creatures (vampire bat, tarantula, and ghost) that they need to avoid. The rooms are too dark to see anything, but the player has a flashlight in which they can use to search them and get the pieces he needs.

One of the animations that I like involve the player's eyes. Just before you start the game, you can wiggle the joystick to move the eyes around. Not only that, but your eyes move around when you get hit by a creature, as if the player is under a dizzy spell. Even though they are crudely drawn, the creatures are well animated. I like how each floor is color-coded so that you can tell which one you are on. I like how the ghost is faster than the creatures when it chases you around the room.

The sound effects make the game atmospheric. If you only hear the sound of your footsteps and the thunder claps, just go you will hear more and more of them as you try out the different variations. In all of the variations, for example, footsteps are heard as you move your eyes around the rooms and hunder claps are heard occasionally. But in the second (and most harder) ones, you hear doors opening and closing as well as other things.

Being an Atari 2600 game, I managed to complete Haunted House in less than ten minutes. However, since there are nine variations of the game, I had a go at the second one, which is a lot difficult. The game is totally dark and you can't see the walls, not even the creatures that are in a different room; you never know what's going on in each room you visit. Many times I was unfortunate enough to go from one room to the next, only to have a creature take away one of my lives as I entered, but that is suspense for you.

Those that don't think that Haunted House is scary should switch the light off and play the game in total darkness, and at the second variation. There is nothing more exciting than moving between rooms only to be intercepted by a ghost. Also, I'm pretty sure that lightning will make players jump in their seats.

The Bad
I think the game should have been harder, with a few more variations added to the mix. One of these new variations could have included a time limit, meaning that you have to find the urn pieces within a certain time or you lose the game. Also on higher variations, more than one of the same creature could have been added.

The Bottom Line
In Haunted House, the player has to navigate a four-story mansion collecting the pieces of an urn while avoiding creatures that patrol the rooms. The game has some nice animations, particularly for the player's eyes. Futuremore, the sound effects provide the game with atmosphere. The game is more scarier if you play it in total darkness.

Atari 2600 · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2012

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Cover art! Depeche Mike (17455) Nov 13, 2007

Trivia

Music

The music played when the "eyes" escape the Haunted House is the theme from the television program The Twilight Zone.

Awards

  • FLUX
    • Issue #4 - #68 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list

Information also contributed by Big John WV

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Servo.

Plex Arcade added by firefang9212. Windows, Xbox 360 added by Alaka. Antstream added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: RKL, Guy Chapman, chirinea, LepricahnsGold, Patrick Bregger.

Game added July 18, 2003. Last modified March 20, 2024.