A playthrough of Electronic Arts' 1993 horror game for the Sega Genesis, Haunting Starring Polterguy.
Haunting Starring Polterguy is totally unlike anything else that was around when it came out back in 1993, and beside Ghost Master on the PC about ten years later, there really haven't been many games like it since.
You play as the titular poltergeist, a teenager who was killed in an accident while riding a faulty skateboard manufactured by a company owned and run by Vito Sardini. Since Vito is all about cutting corners and making a profit, Polterguy decides to teach him a lesson and haunts his family.
The goal of each stage is to send each member of the family fleeing in terror from their home. He does this by possessing objects around the house. By jumping into and possessing furniture, appliances, and random objects, he can bring them to life to wreak havoc. Bodies go through shredders, exploding toys fling themselves across rooms, sandworms appear from the living room carpet, a disemboweled woman does a striptease in a towel - the possibilities are endless.
Polterguy can only torture these people if he has ectoplasm in reserve. It steadily drains at all times, but the family members drop more as they run from his scares. Other things, like ghosts and the dog, can drain it though, so when he runs out he has to go to a cave (is it Hell?) to collect more.
Once he's cleared the Sardini's out of four different homes he'll succeed... kind of. The ending is pretty hilarious and unexpected.
I absolutely adore this game. It was one of the first Genesis games that I ever bought, and my sister and I would sit for hours laughing our asses off at the action. The graphics are great, and the locations are all impressively well-realized. It looks more like a PC game of the time than a console one for the sheer number of animations and tiny little details going on - the houses actually look lived in. And those scare animations are easily the best part of the game. Some of them are funny, some of them are disgusting, some are both - and nearly all of them are worth watching. I have no idea how they crammed so much onto a 16megabit cart. It's quite inpressive. To see a compilation of them, check this out: • Scare Scenes from Haun...
The creativity that went into Haunting made it extremely memorable for my sister and I, and it was always a blast to play. The mechanics are simple and easy to get a grasp on... my single complaint with the game as a while comes from the very last action section. It comes out of nowhere and is incredibly frustrating. However, when the rest of the game fares so well, it makes it worth enduring the final five minutes or so.
I uploaded a video of this years ago, but it was in SD, my playing wasn't terribly good in the recording, and it wasn't as thorough in showing the game as I want it to be. So, with Friday the 13th and Halloween coming soon, I thought this would be a great opportunity to fix those issues, and hopefully introduce this awesome game to a whole new audience. It's a true classic, and an unsung hero of the Genesis library.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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