Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Did any of you spend the Halloween evening at home on the couch instead of out looking and acting silly? Maybe you've been drafted into the all-important supply side of the trick-or-treat candy distribution chain. Or maybe you didn't have time to put a costume together, or you didn't know of any parties, or it was too cold outside for the spandex outfit you bought.

Whatever the reason, we figure some of you were at home playing games this Halloween. Did any of you do any totally spooky Halloween gaming? Did you boost the Splatterhouse download numbers?

GameDaily has put together a cool gallery of different Nintendo-themed carved pumpkins, just in time to celebrate the holiday today. We suggest you take a break from nibbling on chocolate and other candy goods to check them out. And, yes, our favorite is at the top of this very post.

A batch of videos leaked last week to inadvertently reveal a new horror game from Hudson, The Calling. Although Hudson has since requested we take them down, the footage reminded us just how effective games can be at creeping us out. And, since it's, uh, the month of Hallowe'en (look, we're trying to be topical here), we thought we'd open the floor to discussion about games that scare you.

I'll get started, then. Because I am an absolutely ridiculous, quivering coward, I couldn't even finish Shadow Man when playing it alone. Yes, I know it's not a typically scary game and I'm pathetic, but I recall being especially unnerved by the faded face of my character's dead kid brother flashing on screen and whispering at me. Honestly, I daren't even pick up a Silent Hill box now, and I won't be offering to review Fatal Frame IV.

What games have you ended up playing from behind the sofa, or even switched off?

Theresa Murphy's intentions were well-meaning when she planned out this costume, dressing up as Kat, half of the WarioWare series' ninja-sister duo. There must have been some misstep during the creation process, however, some supernatural treachery, that produced this absolutely creepy paper mache head. Our best guess is that a dying killer snuck into Theresa's house and performed a voodoo ritual to imbue the mask with his evil soul, all while she was distracted by a Geico TV commercial.

Gone are our memories of Kat as a cute minigame ninja. In their place, we see a black and white scene of Kat pulling herself out of a well, her fingertips crusted with blackened blood and her skin sallow. She tramps toward us, and the only thing we can hear is the smack of her wet, sock-covered feet on hard ground. Our eyes are wide with horror, screaming, but we cannot move.

The internet has made it easy to find cheats for games, but we miss the tips pages from game magazines, when the discovery of a new code could inspire you to go back to an old game. These codes aren't exactly new, but oldness is the essence of the Virtual Console! We're bringing back the classic codes every week on The VC Advantage.

Today is the perfect day to look at some of the spookier games on the Virtual Console, and then help you face your fears and take them on. It would certainly have been a good day to talk about Ghosts 'n Goblins games, as well, but ... we already did that. Uh, as part of our Halloween special, here's a link to that old VC Advantage! It's ... uh, back from the dead!

Luckily, awkward backlinks aren't the only thing we can present for our Halloween edition of The VC Advantage. There are still some gruesome games we have yet to cover!

And that means that it's now totally scary time! Turn out all the lights and stuff! We're making weird "oooooo" spooky noises, but you can't hear it, because we'll have written this hours ago by the time you're reading it, and also we're not in the same room as you!

Splatterhouse (TG16)
Hard mode: What's scarier than a game in which the main character dies, over and over and over again, forced to relive the same horrific period of a few seconds before he's ripped apart yet again by disgusting, nightmarish monsters? Probably a lot of stuff. Dentistry comes to mind. Loneliness. But what's scarier in the context of video game alterations caused by input of preprogrammed button sequences? Probably still some stuff. To access hard mode, hold Select at the title screen until the word HARD appears.

Castlevania (NES)
Hard mode: Yes, it's another hard mode, but this one seems pretty notable. We had no idea that Castlevania even had one of these, and we doubt anyone else ever would have were it not for cheat devices and ROM hacking-- because you access Castlevania's hard mode by completing the game, and that is impossible. Of all the games to put a hard mode in. Also we heard that if you finish the hard mode, Koji Igarashi will ride a Medusa head to your house and give you a million dollars. And nobody will ever know if that's true.

Kid Chameleon (GEN)
Level skip: Kid Chameleon isn't really that scary, but it is about dressing up in costumes. And that is the true meaning of Halloween (also, candy, which is delicious, when eaten.) To skip straight to the last boss, find some blogs above the flag in the Blue Lake Woods level and jump to the last one. Then press down, right, jump, and special.

[Codes via GameFAQs]

GAME Watch is referring to D3 Publisher's Oneechanbara R as Oneechanbara Revolution now, solving the mystery of what the R means. We sort of assumed that it was "Remake," ourselves. Does this mean that the new Oneechanbara game takes significant steps forward toward becoming more than a ridiculous novelty game?

Probably not. The title is probably just a reference to the Wii, once called the Revolution itself. Oh, well. Let's not let the supposed terribleness of the games bring us down. Today is the best day of the year for browsing a bunch of screenshots of bloody zombies, and GAME Watch has obliged with a large collection of new screens.

Their post also reveals that the game contains not just the cowboy-hat-and-bikini-clad Aya, but also Saki, the other playable character from the first Oneechanbara game, just in case you'd like to choose which underdressed girl with whom to slash monsters.

Happy Halloween to those of you who are into costumes and candy! To the rest of you, have a delightful Wednesday. Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, and the one we'd be most likely to hold a party in honor of (if only the cats would keep their costumes on.)

So we thought that today would be (a few days later than) a good time to discuss possible ideas for a Halloween Wii party. How could you add a layer of spookiness to a Wii-centered get-together? We would attach all the Wiimotes (securely, with wrist straps) to some fake disembodied arms and force all our guests to play that way. Or we could sit around and make up spooky alternate plots for Virtual Console games! Uh, or we could play Pac-Man ... and, uh, Samurai Ghost. Those have, you know, ghosts.

What kind of ghoulish twists can you think of? And before you admonish us, we realize that people don't need to play games all the time and can have social gatherings without them. It is just a fun thing to talk about.

Yesterday, we saw some various gaming costumes that reminded us that Halloween is just around the corner. Will you be dressing up this year, and if so, will you be adopting a game-related theme? It's always fun to see someone pull off a good gaming costume.

We're off to a party this year, but finding round, pregnancy-friendly costume ideas has thus far proven a challenge, since the man of the house isn't too thrilled with the idea of his lady slapping on a fake mustache and taking advantage of the belly to do a Mario-drag thing. Or maybe it's just that he doesn't want to go as Peach. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

The New York Times called this one -- a slimmer, sleeker, and we can only guess happier Manhunt 2 will hit shelves, appropriately enough, on Halloween. The ESRB issued a new rating for the game, lowering the Adults Only tag to Mature, which clears the game for release.

The game's fate in Europe, where it was banned in several countries, is as yet unknown, but we expect to hear some news on that front soon.

The entire debacle, though cleared up, is still disheartening. With the number of adult gamers increasing all the time, and comparisons between game and film content demonstrating the vast difference in standards, we hope that someday, something in the system will change. For now, however, it seems publishers and developers, and indeed, all of us, are at the mercy of the ESRB and the standards of Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.

[Via Joystiq; image found here.]