Sega Talk #02: The House of the Dead (1996)
Development -
The orginal 'The House of the Dead' came out in September 13, 1996 in Japanese arcades, later getting a world wide release on March 4, 1997. The game was developed by SEGA's in-house arcade team SEGA AM1, which first wanted the game to be a rail shooter featuring cop characters but that idea had to be scrapped due to the fact that SEGA AM2 released Virtua Cop two years prior to the creation of this game.
Let me read a quote from Takashi Oda, the house of the dead director on how they changed the game from cops to zombies. The interview was taken from a 1997 interview by The Official SEGA Saturn magazine:
"It began in December of last year. I had finished the “Puzzle and Action: Treasure Hunt” development, and our team was talking about making a light gun game. We didn’t know what kind of gun game to make—there were a lot of different ideas at first, including doing a police-themed game. But we wanted to distinguish ourselves from the Sega R&D AM2 development team at Sega, and after talking it over with our section chief we settled on the idea of making a zombie game."
Via this interview we learn quite a bit of the work put into the game. During 1996, the use of motion capture was rather rare but The House of the Dead used approximitly 50% motion capture and 50% hand animated. The House of the Dead games were pretty violent and one way the development team had to do this was to develop two zombie models, causing the team extra work but gave the user the satisfaction of slowly shooting zombies into dead flesh piles.
Gameplay
The House of the Dead is a light gun game, thus the point of the game is to use a light gun and shoot various zombies that appear on screen.  The game gives you a pistol with 6 rounds and to reload you would have to shoot offscreen. The game used torches to represent your life, once all the torches go out, its darkness for you. The game also has you saving civilians from zombies, picking up first-aid packs and the mission to survive each mission.
The House of the Dead used the Virtua Cop aiming system, but had to be tweaked to fit the scenerio of shooting zombies instead of criminals.
According to Takashi Oda, director:

"As for difficulties with the gameplay system, our first point of reference in creating House of the Dead was Virtua Cop. That game uses something called the “lock-on sight” system, which helps distinguish for players which enemies are tough or weak, which are near, far, easy to hit, etc. But in House of the Dead, the enemies walk towards you and thus gradually became larger targets the closer they get. It was extremely challenging for us, then, to try and create a suitable game-like difficulty in a gun game where aiming is so easy…!"
Koji Ooto, a programmer for the game, adds to the quote above:
"Yeah. Because unlike Virtua Cop, the enemies here don’t have firearms. We experimented with making the zombies more resilient, so they wouldn’t die in one hit, but this seemed to confuse a number of our testplayers."
The game also had one kill head shots, which is the most effectient way to kill zombies. Before each boss battle (besides the final one) you are shown the weak point of the creature. The game also features multiple endings, paths depending on actions done within the game. Multiple endings would become a staple of the series.
Another staple of the series was naming each boss after tarot cards. The first game featured:
- The Chariot
- The Hanged Man
- The Hermit
- The Magician
Which one is your favorite boss and why?
Voice acting and story
The games story takes place in December 18, 1998, having the players play as AMS Agent Rogan , who gets a short distress call from his fiancee Sophi  Richards coming from Curien mansion. When the player arrives to the scene we are introduced to Agent G, who would later star in all of the main series House of the Dead games. We find out that Dr. Roy Curien is some psycho doctor trying to discover the nature of life and death to the point where he becomes insane.
Release/Reception
While the game released to arcades with wide acclaime and went on to become a huge hit for SEGA, being part of this huge light gun genre comeback during this period. With mainstream success comes problems. Back in the 'day' Indianapolis tried to ban violent video games and they argued that The House of the Dead was an obscene game that wasn't protected the first amendment of the United States. A US appeals court Judge Richard Posner reviewed the game and apprietally didn't think the game warranted a ban. This is what he had to say:
 “The most violent game in the record, "The House of the Dead," depicts zombies being killed flamboyantly, with much severing of limbs and effusion of blood; but so stylized and patently fictitious is the cartoon-like depiction that no one would suppose it "obscene" in the sense in which a photograph of a person being decapitated might be described as "obscene." It will not turn anyone's stomach.”
While we obviously disagree with banning violent video games, are you surprised at someone being offended by this title and do you think it caught their attention due to how popular the arcade machine was. Which was always in public areas.
The house of the Dead arcade game was ported to both SEGA Saturn and the PC a few years after the arcade release. These ports weren't arcade perfect and got unfavorable scores compared to the Arcade release. So far, The House of the Dead hasn't gotten a port on any new consoles, handhelds or computers since 1998. The best way to play it is still the arcade, while most of the other games in the series have gotten multiple re-releases.

Why do you think first game is being ignored?

Big movies of 1996: Independence Day, Twister, Mission: Impossible, Jerry Magquire and Ransom.

Big releases of 1996: Pokemon Red and Green (JP), Time Crisis, Virtua Cop 2, Resident Evil, Metal Slug, NiGHTS into Dreams, Virtua Fighter 3, Super Mario 64, Dead or Alive, Fighting Vipers
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