Not many people know, but today’s horror games owe a lot to an unknown japanese game released in 1989 for the NES. The game is set in a mansion deep inside the woods, the Mamiya manor, in which a group of five people enter in search of the last fresco painted by Mamiya Ichirou, a famous deceased painter. As they enter the mysterious building, the doors shut down and they get trapped inside with all kinds of monsters. Does it sound familiar? If it does, it’s because Sweet Home was the most influential game to the development of Resident Evil, the game that defined survival horrors in the 90s.

The story is centered in a group of five people that enter the manor to make a documentary, but end up confronting the ghost of Mamiya and the horrors inside. Every character carries a key item that helps in solving puzzles or aid the party in some way. Kazuo Hoshino, who lead the crew, for instance, has a lighter (that can be used to burn ropes); Akiko Hayakawa is a nurse that can heal status effects from members of the party; Ryō Taguchi, the cameraman, can photograph objects to help solve puzzles; Asuka is a maid with a vacuum clear that can clear rubble out of the path (I’m still not sure why they brought a maid); and Emi Hoshino, Kazuo’s daughter, doesn’t really do anything, but has a key that can open a lot of locked doors. Trapped inside the mansion, they have to solve puzzles to continue in their path and, in their search for Mamiya’s last fresco (and a way out), they dive deeply into her tragic story.

Surprisingly, the game could be described as a horror JRPG, not as an action or adventure game. While the gameplay is centred in solving puzzles with items and exploring the haunted mansion, which could easily be the body of a classic adventure game, the battles are turn based and very alike JRPGs battles of the time, like Dragon Quest. They are very simplistic, as there aren’t many options, but they definitely follow the JRPG template. You can either attack with the equipped weapon, pray (which is like using magic, but without any options, you just pray, spend magic points and do more damage), use your items or run away.

Resident Evil was originally supposed to be a remake of Sweet Home. Shinji Mikami, creator of the Resident Evil series (or Biohazard if, like the creator, you prefer the japanese name), was approached by Tokuro Fujiwara, Capcom’s general manager at the time, to remake the game in 3D. Mikami wanted to make a really scary game, but he changed the direction of the project when he perceived that shooting ghosts would be something difficult to make it work. He decided to use zombies, inspired by the Dawn of the Dead movie. From that point, the project started to create life on its own, scrapping the haunted house idea for a house full of undead. It still remained with elements of the game, especially the mansion setting. The transitions with doors opening were very characteristic as well, but many gameplay elements were changed. For example, the JRPG elements and turned based battles were abandoned.

One interesting gameplay element that Resident Evil (and later survival horror games) retained from Sweet Home was the scarcity of healing items. Even being a JRPG, Sweet Home didn’t feature a world with shops and inns and, in addiction to that, the enemies didn’t drop any kind of loot or money. You had to find healing items within the mansion, called Tonic. A Tonic would completely heal the party, but after you used the last tonic in the game, you couldn’t heal anymore and there are only 21 of them in the whole game. This added a layer of horror to the game, a pressure to complete the adventure without infinite grinding, a common characteristics in JRPGs at the time. Also, if your character dies, it’s dead for good and there’s no Phoenix Down to get it back to life. The player had to make his moves carefully and the damage the enemies would cause could be really scary, which made the atmosphere more tense. The same was done in Resident Evil and later survival horror games. The fear the enemies cause is greater because they can do lasting damage, not only because of their visuals. You can’t kill 200 zombies in the first area of Resident Evil to breeze through the rest of the game.

Something really interesting about the game is that it was developed around the same time as the Sweet Home movie, which featured the same characters and story. A trailer of the movie even promoted the game. Sweet Home was supervised by the film’s director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (do not confuse him with Akira Kurosawa, the legendary japanese filmmaker). There are similarities between game and movie, but some differences too. The game has more kinds of enemies. The movie has ghosts, but in the game you’ll find zombies, swarms of maggots, etc. The movie wasn’t as influential as the game, being more of a common horror movie in Japan, which is a curious example of a game based in a movie and being more successful.

It’s interesting to note that this is the game that helped to popularize survival horrors, as there’s a whole niche of amateur horror games made in the RPGMaker engine that use this kind of top down vision and RPG elements to make horror games. As they’re mostly made in this or the last decade, they can use technology to make things even scarier than it was possible when Sweet Home was out. This comeback to the roots have produced interesting indie games, like The Witch’s House, which also happens in a mansion in the woods.

Sweet Home is a landmark in the history of horror games. While the gameplay is vastly different from games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, it’s an interesting game and certainly more than a historical curiosity. There are two ways to play it today. You could either buy the original NES game if your japanese is good (the game was only released in Japan because of its graphics imagery) or you could find the rom with unofficial translation online and play it with an emulator, which is the best option for english speakers.