Retro Gaming Magazine April 2014 | Page 10

Sweet Dreams Are Made of These... MICHAEL CRISMAN Sweet Home was never localized for North America. SH is believed to be a precursor of Resident Evil. Imagine yourself as a Japanese gamer in 1989 reading about Sweet Home: an 8-bit horror film tie-in, developed by a studio whose experience creating turn-based RPGs was best summed up as who, us? Could you finish the article before the laughter began? Against all odds, Capcom pulled some Captain Kirk-level badassery out of this Kobayashi Maru and proved they ate no-win scenarios for breakfast. Sweet Home is the real deal. At least it was in Japan. Nintendo Power might have teased a US adaptation, but that was before they realized the only things to survive the censors would be the title screen, door animations, and character names. Thus it fell to fans to rescue this absurdly awesome adventure from its Pacificbound home and release it into the English -speaking wild. Sweet Home is the story of five film makers who learned nothing from Cannibal Holocaust. Equipped with only their courage, some essential tools, and a complete inability to stay the hell out of haunted houses, Kazuo, Asuka, Taguchi, Akiko and Emi explore the abandoned mansion of the deranged artist/child murderer Mamiya Ichirou, a woman so terrifying that Freddy Krueger checks for her under his bed. Your job is to wander the house and groun