Sweet Home

Sweet Home

Sweet Home was an RPG released for the Famicom in December of 1989.

The game served as an inspiration for Resident Evil, most evidenced by the following elements:

• Cutscenes showing a door opening
• Similar puzzles
• The setting of the game (a mansion)
• Large amounts of blood and gore
• A limited inventory
• The partner-zapping system in Resident Evil 0 (In RE0, you could control both characters at once. In Sweet Home, you can control up to three people at once, alternating between five characters)
• One item that is unique to each character (for example, the character Akiko has a first aid kit that can be used to treat any of the characters' status ailments, and the character Kazuo has a lighter that can be used against enemies and on ropes that bar your path.)

While inspiring Resident Evil, Sweet Home had a different approach than Resident Evil in methods of killing the monsters; each fight with a monster consisted of a turn-based battle.

The game is considered one of the first video games to fall under the "survival horror" genre (although many consider Haunted House on the Atari 2600 as the first).

Probable reasons why Sweet Home never came out in the United States for the NES:

• The game was based on a horror movie of the same name that was released only in Japanese theaters
• The game featured decapitations and gory depictions of the main characters' deaths
• The game has violent themes (like the burning of children) that Nintendo of America probably didn't deem suitable for American audiences
• Nintendo of America didn't let anyone use the word "die" in American games, and the game uses a plethora of dialogue that revolves around death; the plot would most likely be severly butchered should they have tried to censor it for American audiences.
• The game sold poorly in Japan.

Screenshots:

A battle in Sweet Home. Here, the character Taro is up against a "Wisp". The player has five options in battle:

• Attack:Self-explanatory. You can equip weapons you find lying around (like knives, axes, and pitchforks).
• Tool:Use an item in battle. Some enemies are weak against certain items (exammple: bats are weak against Taro's camera because of the flash).
• Call:If you're alone in a battle and you know that you're fucked, you can call another character into the battle for help. Hopefully they aren't too far away from your location.
• Pray:Results are pretty much what you'd expect. A meter comes up and if you stop the meter while it's close to full, the enemy recieves massive damage. Praying uses up "Pray Points" ("PP").
• Run:There are times when you won't want to fight. Like when you're alone, no one else is even remotely close to you, and you get attacked by a twenty-foot living statue.

This is what the main gameplay looks like. This screenshot features all five characters. The orange stuff is supposed to be blood. Taro is the red guy, Emi is the girl with the blue thing in her hair and the key on her shirt, Akiko is the girl with the red thing on her hat, Kazuo is the guy with the flame, and Asuka is the girl wearing blue and holding a vacuum cleaner.