Play Splatter House - Wanpaku Graffiti (Japan) Online

Splatter House: Wanpaku Graffiti came out for the NES in 1989, developed and published by Namco. It was a strange, tongue-in-cheek spin-off of the more serious arcade horror series, landing right in the middle of the console's lifespan when developers were willing to try some pretty oddball concepts.

You control a small, masked hero named Rick as he moves screen by screen, punching and kicking through hordes of monsters to rescue his girlfriend. The main objective is straightforward: fight your way through each stage, defeat the boss, and move on. A couple of its signature mechanics include finding and using temporary weapons like knives and torches, and the way defeated enemies often explode into comical, cartoonish piles of bones. The pacing is brisk, and the difficulty feels typical for the era, demanding some memorization but never feeling unfair. It plays like a goofy, slightly gruesome Saturday morning cartoon you control with your own two hands.