Haunted: Halloween '85 (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
260A playthrough of Retrotainment's unlicensed 2015 action-platformer for the NES, Haunted: Halloween '85.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Haunted: Halloween '85 is a "retro" platformer/beat 'em up that received a full physical release for the NES back in 2015. Though it was created specifically for the NES, it also was ported to the modern consoles (Switch, XB1, PS4) and PC (Steam). In this video I'm playing the NES version - if you're interested, check it out at http://www.retrotainmentgames.com I bought the game directly from them and I can attest to the quality of the cartridge's build and its packaging. I'm usually not a fan of homebrew stuff, but this is excellent!!
So HH85 puts you in control of Donny, your average, everyday American kid circa 1985, whose town of Possum Hollow has been taken over by some sort of evil force. Ghosts, werewolves, killer jack-o-lanterns, and all sorts of other gnarly dudes are turning your friends into freaky ghouls and messing up the town. It's a most heinous situation.
In order to rescue your buds and your town, you've got to make your way through the halls of Possum Hollow Elementary, the woods, the mall, the cornfields, the main road through town, and a graveyard to take on the big bad behind this mess.
The gameplay is simple - along with jumping over pits and avoiding enemies, you'll be punching everything in sight. You can string combos together, and you can pull off an uppercut by hitting down+B. It definitely lands on the easy side for an NES game, but it really feels a lot like a game that you could've bought on your NES back sometime in the early 90s, and it's fun without being frustrating. If you can handle Double Dragon, you'll do just fine here.
The graphics and sound clearly have seen a lot of care and attention. The backgrounds are impressively detailed given the low color count, and some of them are super moody. I loved the skyline that dominates some of these stages, and there are some neat visual tricks to see, like the bit in the mall when your running behind the movie theater screen. It feels American-made - if you've played games like A Boy and His Blob or Bart vs. Radioactiveman, you've got a good idea of the general graphics style here. The music comes across as modern, using all sorts of trippy effects that didn't become commonplace until Famitracker gave hobbyists a way to produce tunes for the Nintendo. I can't say as the soundtrack was really my cup of tea, but it's impressive nonetheless.
I had a great time with Haunted: Halloween '85 (and heads up, the sequel is even better!). It was cool to pick up the old rectangle controller to play something that came out twenty years after the console had been discontinued, and the game fully commits to its Halloween theme, which was awesome. I have my copy sitting on the shelf right next to Monster Party, the Castlevania games, and its sequel, Haunted: Halloween '86. It seems to feel right at home there.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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