Sweet Home (1989)

“Her memory gets dimmer and dimmer. When I try to remember her I only see light… It no longer forms her outline.”

A manor festers in decayed squalor. Constructed through an impassioned covenant in which to foster life. Instead this zealous intention is cut short, a home now tragically denied from it’s purpose. Yet it’s empty husk lingers still, it’s maker’s unable to reconcile the death of it’s projected potential. So devoted to this initial prospect, one would rather rot with it, than indulge in an alternative to this now untenable path.

The malady that is one’s desire is found to be infectious. Pestilence forms from within an empty crib. The still-birthed dream is frozen in time and made persist in perpetuity, because attachment to it’s memory is all that is left. This preservation of one’s grief that can only be sustained through invoking further grief. To allow the pain to fade and heal is to forget. And to forget is to acknowledge the insincerity of one’s boundless conviction. An enshrined pain for the parted, reinvigorated through inflicting harm upon the living still.

Violent subjugation is found to be an ineffective response against such a resolution. The reciprocation of inflicted pain born from grief only further emboldens it’s memory. Instead the spirit of a regretted past requisites a compassionate response in order to be exorcised. A ritual, one in which to force acknowledgement in the passage of time. That this dream sought to be preserved, no longer forms the shape of that which is heralded. To accept that to exist among the living, it is all too necessary to allow oneself to forget.

(Sweet Home is renown as a historically significant game. Famously serving as an early cornerstone for the ‘survival horror genre’ it is especially revered in it’s effectiveness at evoking tension and atmosphere. The quality and direction of the work is hard to deny, even in today’s context without giving any concessions of the limiting technology of it’s time.

The narrative however it seeks to convey is a bit less regarded, and while relatively simplistic, has unique history. Developed in conjunction together with a film of the same name, and released within the same year, the paired works exist as an encapsulation of two disparate mediums attempting to convey the same story. And while it is instinctive for one to pass judgement on which is more ‘successful’, the two works are complimentary. The movie providing the quote given at the top of this review and clarity on the premise that the works seek to address, while the game unrestrained from conventional pacing of a film, is able to more effective at conveying tone and conflict. The differences between the individual focus of these two works, as well as the cohesion achieved by conflating them together is notable.

Although this game is more directly cited as the inspiration for games such as ‘Resident Evil’ the experience not too dissimilar to RPG Maker games, due to the emphasis on exploration and item management over combat. And so I would recommend this game particularly to fans of those.)

Preliminary: Hmmm with the rise of Genesis and Turbografx I keep feeling like NES games lack and it's time to move on. And I'm trying to train myself to do that even when the game is of a genre I like but it has poor quality Play, Look, or Sound. However, this one is the foundation for Resident Evil and incorporates RPG and Text Adventure gameplay?!?! Oh boy. I'm also nervous for Castlevania III, which is an absolute favorite, but I'm afraid now with Bonk's Adventure and other next gen platformers, it might not shine as much. We shall see.

Yeah, right off that bat, the Look is... lacking. And the Sound too. But a mansion in woods. FF style dialog boxes... Advanced FF vibe Look for the actual interactions. Fast-paced. Neat.

The music is quite terrible, I've already turned it down. But I'm loving the gameplay so far, basically a team made up of people with different tools, paintings that are used as part of a puzzle like in RE, and it kinda reminds me of the Phasmophobia game I played.

As much as I was convincing myself I wasn't enjoying the tedium... I was already hooked with the adventure elements >.< The RPG elements were nice but I haven't felt any urge to grind.

Wellll okay yea even with that urge, this is getting really tedious.

Day 2

I keep debating about dropping the game. I really like the concept and the homages I recognize in RE, but my goodness the music is utterly terrible and tho the Team idea is cool and somewhat well-done, it sure is tedious in action.

Look: 7.5/10 Outdated NES Look but a boost from so many rooms and concepts referenced in later games like RE and Swagman

Sound: 6/10 I mean it's trying to be creepy so I give it that. But gosh it's bad.

Play: 7/10 Tedious, and I dropped it, but some really neat ideas. Plus an RPG/Adventure/Survival Horror concept--cool.

Feel: 7.5/10 A game I wanted to enjoy more than I did. If the Sound were better, and I were in the right mood, I know I would push through this.

Attachment: 7/10 Doubt I will return to this but a part of me really does wanna push through when I'm more in the mood for an NES era tedious adventure games. Some of the adventure elements reminded me of the tedious C64 era of action-adventures, so just need to be in that kind of mood.

Overall: 7/10

Completion: Got the Mallet, burned out already

Playtime: ~1 hour

Sweet Home is a horror adventure RPG title for the famicom that you can get a translation patch for and play in English. The game (I didn't like) Is inspired by a movie (which I liked, why i played) and supposedly this game inspired Resident Evil, as legend would have it and is the widely regarded first 'survival horror' game made.

I did play the first Resident Evil game (the reboot actually) and liked it, so I figure at some point i'd have to play this.

The game follows a team of five filmmakers who enter a haunted mansion to restore and photograph the frescoes of a deceased artist named Ichiro Mamiya. However, they soon find themselves trapped inside the mansion, which is filled with ghosts, monsters, and traps. The game features a unique gameplay system that allows me to switch between the five characters, each with their own special item and skill. The game also has permadeath, meaning that if a character dies, they cannot be revived and the game continues without them. Depending on how many characters survive, the game has five different endings. This game is.. interesting. IT really doesnt have any elements of Resident evil beyond that of a video of a door before you go through it. It's sort of survival horror-y in the sense you have limited ways to heal yourslf, but you dont really have ammo management. (The movie ALSO doesnt really feel resident evill-ish beyond that of the fact its got a haunted house.)

The game actually reminded me a lot of the original corpse party. The game starts out as if it were going to be a VN, with lts of scripting and narrated intro. And that alone is certainly well worth watching. You solve item and room based puzzles as well like you do in corpse party. Actually, all the items and collecting them feels slightly like the NES metal gear., you just have several soldiers to manage. hate the menus and UI. for me it was a deal breaker

I enjoyed Corpse Party, but I did not enjoy this game. For one, there are too many bad and dated design elements. Managing your team is clunky and taxing. Assiging equipment and keeping track of which weapons beat what is also annoying and feels kinda in the way since it's not fleshed out or made well. the UI fails to explain what stats are or communicate some things well. inventory limiitations mean you have to leave things on the ground and remmber where they were. the game just feels way too back and forth and made arbitrarily slow.

You have simplifid dungeon crawler type RPG fghts and level. Its cool but gets old because there isnt really a reason to have to fight. It seems you can always run away, so fighting is a choice that I dont understand (maybe there are bosses you must defeat)

The game also seemed to stop advancing the narrative after the intro, as it seems to be mostly you wandering through a dark haunted house avaoiding combat and traps. The puzzles are not really satisfying or seem somewhat arbitrary and not too well thought out.

Due to it's acclaim by fans, I was expecting this game to be better. It's too bad because the enemy sprite art and a lot of other things look cool. The music is really quite good and somewhat different. The game is also suprisingly on par with the movie's plot as well. It has some neat ideas but it's just not that fun to play due to it's age or some elements of a clunky and taxing design. Had it been kept more simple, with less RNG battles, or more inventory space, or even letting you travel with all five people at once (you can do that in corpse party i think) But instead these annoyances exist in the game to challenge players patience.

I dropped this after about 2 hours. Since most of the game is just wandering, i skimmd through most of a let's play just to see the different areas and the endings.

This is the game that initially got me into importing, and what a weird little doozy it is. Sweet Home is a horror RPG with heavy survival elements made by Capcom. Some of that should sound similar to another Capcom franchise, and this game is absolutely a predecessor to said franchise. Much of the DNA of this game made its way into Resident Evil in some fashion, though the RPG aspect of this game remains unique to it. Lets break things into chunks from here.

Gameplay: Look, lemme level with ya. This is a Famicom RPG. If you have experienced one of these you know what I'm getting at. If you havent and you want to try this game, be ready for some clumsiness and confusion. Combat in this game is a very simple turn-based affair, and the main game is similar to the puzzle solving that takes place in RE games. What shakes this up a bit (in a good and bad way) is that your party has to be split up and reshuffled constantly. You have five members, each with different tools that are used for traversal and fighting. Only three members can be grouped at once, and you have to switch between the two teams a lot. Do I think this is a cool concept in a survival game? Yes! Does it get really tedious at times? Also yes!

Presentation/Music: While the gameplay is pretty standard for the system and era, I think that the presentation and music department is ahead of that curve. There are some really nice melodies in here, despite there only being a few songs. The fact that we get a horror based RPG fight song is pretty cool too. The graphics are very impressive as well during certain sections. The Resident Evil door opening animation even gets its start here, pretty neat to see!

Story: The story is pretty good for an RPG of this era. You will go long stretches without much happening, but there are some very good moments that play to the strengths of the setting. A surprising amount of gore in this weird little game as well. That's all I'll say, no spoilies!

Overall this is a very cool game. Problem is, no official translation. If you want to import the cart it isn't really that bad price wise, and you can either buy a translation machine (like the Retron 5) or learn Japanese (AKA never play it).