A low rez work of genius.

User Rating: 8.2 | Haunted House 2600
By devilreyes | Review Date:
Considering the hardware constraints of the 2600, "Haunted House" stands out as one of the few games released by Atari that had any measurable depth of gameplay. The game has the player entering a house that is currently haunted by the ghost of Zachary Graves, the deceased owner of the house. To escape the house the player must find three pieces of an urn while avoiding the ghost of Mr. Graves, a tarantula and a bat. There are four levels of the house (a basement and three floors), and 24 rooms in which to hunt for the pieces of the urn. The player has a one slot inventory in which either a piece of the urn, a key or a scepter may be carried at a time. The player is also granted an unlimited supply of matches that may be lit by using the "fire' button on the joystick, to illuminate the area around the player. Matches burn for a limited amount of time, and are blown out by any monsters that enter the room with the player. At higher difficulty settings the layout of the house is invisible without the use of a match, but remains visible throughout the game on it's easiest setting.

Like most Atari 2600 games, the visuals presented in "Haunted House" are stripped down to the barest essential rendering of the gameplay elements they represent. A pair of eyes is all that is visible of the player, meant to exaggerate the darkness of the haunted house. It works, too; as the disembodied eyes give the game a sense of gloom and lend the character trapped inside the house a sense of wide-eyed terror. Looking back, it seems kind of campy, but it turns out that it was the best way to go and it has become the games most recognizable feature. Otherwise the rest of the game's graphics are straight-forward representations of what they are, and are easily identifiable as such. "Haunted House" also gets the most that it can from the 2600's modest hardware to create a general aura of foreboding without being too undone by the system's limitations. James Andreasen, the sole programmer of "Haunted House", managed to create a truly eerie game experience that worked very well with the limitations of the hardware available to him. The elements of the gameplay are put together so seamlessly that the spartan graphics and sound don't take anything away from the overall game.

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