Haunted House box art

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Haunted House

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Haunted House

Feb 1, 1982

Main game

2.59 average rating based on 34 ratings

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Haunted House is an Atari 2600 video game written by James Andreasen and published by Atari, Inc. in February 1982. The player, represented by a pair of eyes, must navigate the haunted mansion of the late Zachary Graves to recover the three pieces of an urn. The game has been identified as one of the earliest examples of the survival horror genre.
Developers
Atari
Publishers
Atari, Polyvox
Series
Haunted House
Platforms
Atari 2600
Genres
Adventure, Puzzle
Themes
Action, Horror, Stealth, Survival
Release Dates
Feb 1982 Full Release (North_America)
Atari 2600
Oct 1983 Full Release (Brazil)
Atari 2600
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User Stats
90
In Collection
3
Wish Listed
0
Playing
20
Backlogged
How Long Is Haunted House?
No playthrough data yet
scoopings
scoopings gave Mar 6, 2022
scoopings gave Mar 6, 2022
Awesome Ideas, Disappointing Execution
This review is for the Atari 2600 version

Look: 6/10 Your usual Atari look, no striking colors unfortunately, but I liked the flashing black and white parts and other attempts at giving a scary feel. Oh, and what an overly long "death animation" type thing heh...

Sound: 6/10 Your usual Atari sounds, nothing special but also not particularly annoying.

Play: 6/10 This is honestly quite impressive in its ambition: there is a match you can light to see around, but enemies coming in will blow our your match like in a text adventure game or something heh. And I like the concept: safely retrieve the pieces of the urn and escape back out the haunted house. As always with Atari 2600 games, the manual helps. Even with the manual, I kinda felt like I had no idea what was happening, I just simply tried to navigate the house, avoid enemies, and collect whatever items I see. After collecting 2 urn pieces, and still having 8 "hit points" so to speak, I just wasn't interested enough in pushing through the confusing gameplay. Oh, and also, the invisible walls are quite frustrating. Turns out I was playing at one of the higher difficulty levels heh. But it just wasn't interesting …

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Look: 6/10 Your usual Atari look, no striking colors unfortunately, but I liked the flashing black and white parts and other attempts at giving a scary feel. Oh, and what an overly long "death animation" type thing heh...

Sound: 6/10 Your usual Atari sounds, nothing special but also not particularly annoying.

Play: 6/10 This is honestly quite impressive in its ambition: there is a match you can light to see around, but enemies coming in will blow our your match like in a text adventure game or something heh. And I like the concept: safely retrieve the pieces of the urn and escape back out the haunted house. As always with Atari 2600 games, the manual helps. Even with the manual, I kinda felt like I had no idea what was happening, I just simply tried to navigate the house, avoid enemies, and collect whatever items I see. After collecting 2 urn pieces, and still having 8 "hit points" so to speak, I just wasn't interested enough in pushing through the confusing gameplay. Oh, and also, the invisible walls are quite frustrating. Turns out I was playing at one of the higher difficulty levels heh. But it just wasn't interesting enough gameplay to be worth retrying at the proper starting difficulty.

Feel: 7/10 Like I often say, I like Halloween-y games. The flashing lights in one of the floors (or is it supposed to be the basement? heh) gave lightning vibes that added to the feel. Cool concept, very ambitious, and relatively well-done, but it's one of those games that's a bit more fun to read about than to play. This gets a slight boost because of the concept and parts of the gameplay.

Attachment: 6/10 Tho I wont forget it because of its ideas and ambition, I doubt I will be replaying it. I might replay it out of curiosity to see if I better understand/enjoy the gameplay, but meh for now. Moving on!

Completion: 2 pieces of the urn Playtime: ~25 mins

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