Splatterhouse

Splatterhouse is Namco's 1988 horror brawler, and it is exactly what the title promises: parapsychology student Rick West wakes in a mansion of meat, straps on a sentient mask that transforms him into a hulking thing with arms like industrial equipment, and spends seven stages walking left to right through rooms that are trying very hard to out-gross each other.

It was the first arcade game handed an M-style advisory, but the shock always sat on top of a competent side-scroller: a three-hit combo, a jump kick, a pipe and a cleaver as found weapons, and stage bosses that include one of the arcade era's genuinely memorable faces (the upside-down fetus-thing of stage four among them). The mask heals you when it feeds - punching enemies restores Rick's health, tying the gore mechanically into survival rather than decoration. The West mansion's set pieces borrowed openly from Evil Dead and the era's video nasties, and the game founded a franchise that ran through console sequels and a 2010 reboot.

• ▸The Terror Mask: power-up, guide and health-drinking horror icon
• ▸Stage bosses built for shock - and for real difficulty spikes
• ▸Found weapons (pipe, cleaver, shotgun) with limited durability
• ▸Punch-to-heal: the gore is the life system