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Sweet Home |
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LAST UPDATED: 03/11/07 |
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REVIEWED BY:
FamicomJL |
"I wish people knew Sweet Home
as more than the game Nintendo
of America thought was too violent." |
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THE
DATA
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NAME |
Sweet Home |
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PLATFORM |
Famicom |
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DEVELOPER |
Capcom |
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PUBLISHER |
Capcom |
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PLAYERS |
1 player |
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RELEASE DATE |
1989 |
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GENRE |
Role Playing |
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SAVING OPTION |
Yes |
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NES NTSC |
No |
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NES PAL |
No |
THE RATINGS
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STORYLINE |
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5 /5
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GRAPHICS |
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5/5 |
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AUDIO |
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5/5 |
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GAMEPLAY |
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4.5/5 |
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CONTROL |
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5/5 |
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FUN FACTOR |
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5/5 |
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FRUSTRATION |
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5/5 |
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OVERALL |
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5/5 |
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Sweet Home. As a video game fan, what comes
to your mind when you hear those two words? In my
mind is a game that's fantastic -- one of the
greatest games I've ever played on the Famicom.
Hell, it's one of the greatest games I've ever
played. PERIOD. Sweet Home is without a doubt
almost damn near flawless, a true scare of a game
that can surprise you one minute, and
scare the shit out of you the next.
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Mamiya Ichirou is a famous painter who suddenly dies. His rare frescos
are something to admire, quite elaborate for 8-bit. You play the roles
of five characters: Kazuo (the leader who
has matches as his item); Taguchi (the cameraman); Akiko (the nurse
with a First Aid kit.); Asuka (the maid with a vacuum); and Emi (who
possesses a master key). They work together in the creepy haunted
mansion to find Ichirou's famous
frescos and take pictures of them, revealing secret messages. Little do they know that Ichirou's
evil wife, and other spirits, now haunt the mansion, leading them
through a vicious environment of ghosts and illness. There are many sickening plot
twists and turns, and in the end, we learn a SHOCKING fact about Ichirou's wife...I
won't spoil the details. What a masterful plot! The way the game plays
out is genius!
As a footnote, a movie related to the game was released at about the same time
as the game, and many people,
like myself, don't know if the movie or video game was made first.
Either way, the originality of Sweet Home is clear.
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The scenes showing your five characters walking around the dark mansion are, maybe
inappropriately, cute. But at the same time, the scenes are dark and mysterious. When
you go into a battle with a demon, the graphics become much scarier,
featuring an up-close look of your enemy. The
developers made everything look so damn creepy. Sometimes there are
living (and non-living) things that you can talk to, or look at. Let's just say I've screamed "HOLY SHIT!"
more than I'd like to admit. The graphics are great. The usual for Capcom.
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Capcom was genius in making the music in this game, and in changing the
tempo to coincide with the intensity of the scenes. The music that plays
while your characters are walking is creepy. But then
something much more horrifying comes on. When you are about to face an
enemy, eerie music plays, so you know that it's coming. Then, there's a
small pause, and the enemy flies towards you with a woosh. and while in
battle the music is intense, almost makes your heart beat faster. There
are sound effects when you use your special items and when you are doing
battle. The music playing when you're viewing a fresco is a small
amount of peace creeping through Sweet Home's maddening hell.
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Standard RPG fare here. You walk around trying to figure out the
secret messages in Ichirou's frescos. You have to figure out where
each on is located by finding notes left behind by others who had
been in the house attempting the same feat. While searching for the
notes and frescos, you also have obstacles to overcome, such as
gathering wood to restore parts of the mansion floor that have
collapsed.
You can attack, run, and use your special items. An extra
feature unknown to other games was added to Sweet Home -- "Pray" -- where, if done correctly,
can heavily damage even the toughest opponents during battle. You have to be
careful, though, as you can run out of it very quickly. There are
also level-ups, but the game never tells you how much you need to
progress, so you
just have to keep battling to get them.
One of my favorite aspects of doing battle with a enemy -- in some
cases it's a demon doll or a bunch of worms -- is that you can fight
with more than one of your characters by teaming up beforehand or
calling them to help while in battle. Each character brings a
different item to the battle and some items are more effective with
certain enemies. You'll find yourself using different combinations
of your characters' items to get through the whole game.
During a battle, one or more of your characters can be poisoned by
the enemy, and you have to quickly call your medic, Akiko, or you
will die. When you're poisoned and you have that character as active
on the screen, the whole screen will flash and a beeping will sort
of count down the seconds you have left alive.
Another feature unique to Sweet Home is that once one of your
characters have died, they are dead for the remainder of the game.
So, don't let anyone die.
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The games controls are very smooth. I've got no complaints. The only
thing that's a little hard to do is figure out to how to collect items,
but there is an option in one of the pull-down menus that will let you
pick up an item, like wood or a dagger. Figuring out how to navigate the
menus are challenging, so you'll find yourself clicking out of menus and
reentering them a lot.
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I've spent countless hours at a time playing this; it's just that
good. And I'm sure you will, too. It's so fun and challenging,
there's no way to stop playing, and thankfully, there's a save
feature!
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I haven't even talked
about the ghosts in random rooms that can grab you and take you back
to near the beginning. There are wooden planks on the ground that
can break while your partner's are standing on them, resulting in
you having to find another plank to rescue your partner. It's a challenge to
find the items you need when one of your partners die.
And learning to associate a character's name with his or her special
item is tough.
If you don't like having
to think while playing, this game isn't for you.
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Flawless. Simply flawless. What an amazing game this is! It's a shame
that people are so uptight in North America, because we should've seen
Sweet Home made for the NES, playing it ourselves, in English,
instead of having to find the Famicom version or a translated ROM. The
original Sweet Home isn't that hard to find on eBay, but you'll
be paying over $50 shipped for it; however, the price is worth it.
For cheaper, you can get the translated ROM reproduced in an NES
cartridge, which makes the gameplay much more smooth.
I wish people knew Sweet Home as more than the game Nintendo of
America thought was too violent. No doubt, Sweet Home has
inspired developers to this day.
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