BA3: Contextual Studies

Sweet Home

Sweet Home is often considered to be very first  survival horror game. It was developed by Capcom (ironically) and was made years before Resident Evil 1 or Alone in the Dark 1. 

It is considered to be one of Capcom’s main game related influences for Resident Evil alongside Alone in the Dark and as it is purely Japanese, I feel it fits perfectly into our project. 

Sweet Home was originally a Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and released in 1989. IMDB say that “A TV production crew are making a documentary about the infamous painter Mamiya Ichiro. When they start filming at his old home, they come under attack from the ghost of the painter's wife”.

The plot is already very similar to that of Resident Evil’s, ‘group go to house, house becomes creepy, strange things start to happen’. It’s textbook Japanese/Eastern horror and terror. 

Sweet Home, the game, was released on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) also in 1989. It was developed and published by Cacpom and was released in Japan only. The game was actually supervised by Sweet Home: the film’s director Kiyoshi Kurosawa so it was obviously full of film to game cross over's and influences. 

Sweet Home, Resident Evil &

Horror/Terror

Linking back to some earlier research where I found an article written by IGN about Resident Evil and it’s influences, it stated Sweet Home was one of the biggest. I have never played the game myself and unfortunately don’t own it so I am relying on videos to draw my conclusions and references from. 

I am going to use, and reference, this YouTube video (and the rest of the play through videos) as my source as I wasn't able to play the game myself: 

• One of the key things I realised upon beginning the video of the play through of Sweet Home was how the beginning is almost identical to the start of Resident Evil. A group/team encounter a large, and what seems to be, abandoned building. They are forced to enter for whatever reason and find horror/terror entities on the inside. With Sweet Home, it’s a ghost. With Resident Evil, it’s zombies (and other things). 

• The music in Sweet Home, despite being in 8bit, is also very creepy which adds to the horror/terror. Resident Evil also has similar creepy music playing as the player progresses through the story.
 

• The gameplay settings are very similar too, as I mentioned, there is a team of players in both Sweet Home and Resident Evil 1 of which the user gets to chose a character to play. This character has a different plot/storyline and will affect the way the game turns out in the end. 

• From what I have seen, Sweet Home makes use of the gameplay feature in which players need to find specific items to progress through the story. This is a great way to inflict horror/terror into a player. I know this from playing Resident Evil many times, I remember the panic of not having an item when you need it, you are scared to have to go back around the mansion to find it in case you take damage or use precious ammo – supplies are always rare and limited. 

• One minor but funny observation I made while watching the play through of Sweet Home was where the characters opened a door. The game is from a birds eye perspective and uses a fixed camera for this very reason (plus the game is old and this is all they could ‘manage’ back then). When the characters open the door the game goes into a semi 3D perspective where the door is in front of the player on the screen, it then proceeds to open slowly with an intense creak. This is exactly the same in Resident Evil. Despite the fixed/static cameras the game goes into a first person view to open doors. This is incredibly scary, I remember always being in fear, anticipating what would be on the other side of the door I had just opened as it was making such a big deal about the door. 

• Sweet Home was released on the NES and games of its time had not moved into the 3D realms. This lead to many games having a birds eye view, as if the played was sitting in the roof watching everything happen. I would like to make a study and say that this is similar of the fixed camera angles in Resident Evil. 

 

Horror/Terror Conclusion

The conclusion I am going to draw from this is similar to that of my Alone in the Dark conclusion. It is this…HOW SIMILAR ARE THESE GAMES?! It’s wonderful to see such influences being taken from generation to generation and seeing just how the survival horror genre was born. 

So far I have found eastern and western mixtures of influences all thrown in to the cooking pot that is “survival horror”. What I plan to take from Sweet Home is it’s apparent plot and settings that are almost identical to Resident Evil. I will do another blog post showing the images I have chosen from my research that I will use in my presentation to show the influences, their western or eastern backgrounds and how they have bought horror and terror into the survival horror genre.