Monthly Archives: April 2012

New screenshots of The House of the Dead 4 including SPECIAL

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The Japanese Playstation website posted brand new screenshots of the PSN version of The House of the Dead 4 a week ago display the first chapter “ESCAPE” and the two chapters from SPECIAL. This game is actually looking pretty good for a perfect arcade port of the orginial game. Tomorrow, the House of the Dead 4 will officially be released on the Playstation Network servers. Get your PS Moves ready, because a old friend will be waiting for you in the source. Click below to view the screenshots

Source: Japanese Playstation Blog
http://www.jp.playstation.com/software/title/jp0177npjb00198_00thod4extendedcut.html

Forum has a new make over. TYPE OR DIE!

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I took the time to redecorate the forum with the help from ShadiNeko, the webmaster of SegaBits. This forum was made for the fans of The House of The Dead franchise by Sega Corporation and to gather one big community together. Let’s show SEGA some love for HOTD franchise like Nightsintodreams.com and The Sonic Stadium did for Sonic and NiGHTS. Discuss anything on HOTD with other fans by sharing high scores, thoughts, fan work, etc. Don’t forget to leave feedback on the comments below. Also before joining the forums, don’t forget to read the rules on the Announcement Boards. Tell your friends and lets show SEGA we mean business! DOGS OF THE AMS! Time they made a move!

HOD Arcade History: Sega NAOMI

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After the success of The House of the Dead on the Model 2 arcade board in 1996/97, AM1 went on to develop two games for Sega’s new arcade system called “NAOMI” (New Arcade Operation Machine Idea). A sequel and a spin-off title to The House of the Dead in 1998 (The House of the Dead 2 and Zombie Revenge). The “NAOMI” was basically a prototype of the Sega Dreamcast due to both systems having the same hardware. The Sega NAOMI has twice as much system memory, twice as much video memory, and 4X as much sound memory.

There is a key difference between NAOMI and Dreamcast lies in the game-media. The Dreamcast reads game data from GD-ROM optical disc, while the NAOMI arcade-board features 168 MB of solid-state ROMs or GD-ROMs using a custom DIMM board and GD-ROM drive. In operation, the Naomi GD-ROM is read only once at system powerup, downloading the disc’s contents to the DIMM-Board RAM. Once the download is complete, the game executes out of RAM, thereby reducing mechanical wear on the GD-ROM drive.

NAOMI Specifications CPU: Hitachi SH-4 CPU with graphic functions and 128-bit SIMD @ 200 MHz (360 MIPS and 1.4 GFLOPS) Graphic Engine: PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC) Sound Engine: ARM7 Yamaha AICA 45 MHz (with internal 32-bit RISC CPU, 64 channel ADPCM) Main Memory: 32 MByte Graphic Memory: 16 MByt
e Sound Memory: 8 MByte Media: ROM Board (maximum size of 172MBytes) / GD-ROM Simultaneous Number of Colors: Approx. 16,770,000 (24bits) Polygons: 5 Million polys/sec Rendering Speed: 500 M pixel/sec Additional Features: Bump Mapping, Fog, Alpha Blending, Mip-Mapping, Trilinear filtering, Anti-Aliasing, Environment mapping, and Specular Effects.

The “NAOMI” also ran other games licensed by other companies such as the one of the greatest fighting game of all time, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes.

Moving along with HOD, here’s a little fact about The House of the Dead 2. The arcade version of the game on the Naomi system had more violence and a high extent of blood. The graphics were even more detailed than the Dreamcast version. Here’s a video of THOTD2 running on the NAOMI.


Another spinoff to HOD was also made for Naomi called “The Typing of the Dead” which is a parody to the 2nd game where players must type their way to survive. AM1 trolled us hard back then lol.

Afterwards, The House of the Dead 2 ended up as one of the most well known arcade game in the late 90’s. Spawning many spinoffs and definitely very well known for it’s bad voice acting. Suffer like G did?

Fans of the Dead: Gallery of Kate Green

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Kate Green, the newest AMS recruit and one tough lady when she’s behind the wheel. The House of the Dead 4 is a few days away from release. You all may know who Kate Green is when she was introduced in the HOD series back in 2005. In this edition of FotD, fans of HOD 4 shows some love for this sassy wise cracking AMS agent.

Kate: Your paying for my dry cleaning once we’re out of here.

Tips and Tricks for HOD4 Demo by Kori

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Hello my AMS friends, I hope your enjoying The House of the Dead 4 Demo on your PS3 and prepping up your skills for the full game on April 17th. Today, I want to share my tips and tricks from my experience with the demo.

* Perfect Headshots: There are four headshot ratings ranging from “Good” to “Perfect” Your goal in the full version of the game is to get many perfect headshots as you can than the other ratings in order to obtain a good grade in the final result. A quick way to obtain them is to wait until a creature gets close and prepares to attack like the lab coated zombie for example. Be careful not to get hit or you’ll lose your perfect streak and that also goes for not aiming at their heads.

* Finding items: In the demo, you will be able to find items to increase your score. The items are contained in “Danger” panels, grey box containers, and yellow boxes attached to the wall by near opened slides.

* Alternate Path: There’s a moment where you are surrounded by a group of creatures and game will tell you to throw a grenade at them to clear some space. I recommend not using it for there is a red switch you can shoot in the far left. It will take to a new path to explore. Once you’ve pass the Mickey and labcoat creatures, you will encounter Zobio like creatures. Shoot the door on the left. Inside contains coins and a frog.

* A Secret Room: Before you enter the elevator hall towards the end of the demo, there are two slide doors. Throw a grenade to your right inside of it. After destroying the remaining creatures, you should be able to access the secret room containing 3 coins and a hat.

I hope these tips help you through the demo. Good Luck AMS Agents.

HOD Arcade History: Sega Model 2

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Ever wonder how gameplay and graphics in arcade video games were amazing back in the early mid 90’s? Sega had gotten that covered with there popular arcade board system, the Sega Model 2. The Sega Model 2 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1993. Like the Model 1, it was developed in cooperation with Martin Marietta, and was a further advancement of the earlier Model 1 system. The most noticeable improvement was texture mapping, which enabled polygons to be painted with bitmap images, as opposed to the limited monotone flat shading that Model 1 supported.

The Model 2 arcade system was very successful and featured some of the highest grossing arcade at its time such as The House of the Dead.

Hardware Description
Main CPU : Intel i960-KB @ 25 MHz 32bits RISC
Co-Processors : Fujitsu TGPx4 MB86235 FPU 32bits 16M flops
Co-Processor Abilities : Floating decimal point operation function, Axis rotation operation function, 3D matrix operation function.
Memory RAM : 8 M-Bits + 1 M-bit
Memory ROM : 720 M-bits (max.)
Video resolution : 496×384 24Hz Horizontal sync, wave, non interlace.
Scroll Surfaces : 2 Surfaces, Horizontal line scroll, 16 colours x 123 colour palettes / 32,768 colours
Window Surfaces : 2 Surfaces, Horizontal line scroll, 16 colours x 123 colour palettes / 32,768 colours
3D Graphics Engine : Built in floating decimal point unit.
900,000 vectors/sec (max.) 300,000 polygons/sec (max.)
Polygon Surfaces : (at least) 2,000,000 pixels/frame (60 frames/sec)
1,024 colour palettes x 64 luminance tables, 16,777,216 colours.
Texturing Information : Perspective Texture, 16 shade mono texture
Map size : 1024x2048x2 (sheets)
Micro Texture : 128x128x8 Sheets
Translator Map : 128 shades x 256 sets
Transparent 1 shade, checker board, texture antialiasing.

To demonstrate the hardware’s use, take a look at this playthrough of The House of the Dead.

The House of the Dead 4 PS3 Trophies Revealed

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The House of the Dead 4 is only one week away finally hitting home consoles after seven years for fans of the series to get their hands on the thrilling arcade game. Exophase reveals the complete trophy list to obtain while playing The House of the Dead 4. There are fifteen trophies in total, can you collect them all?

Pandora’s Box
See all 4 endings of The House of the Dead 4.

Top Agent
Get RANK 2 or above in Final Result.

Another Pandora’s Box
See the true ending of HOD4 SP

Bonus Explorer
Find a secret

Cut The Wire
During CHAPTER 2, cut the wire and let the enemies fall.

Despair
Clear CHAPTER 4 on any difficulty .

EAT THIS!!!
During CHAPTER 1 Boss encounter, throw a grenade and damage JUSTICE.

Emptiness
Clear CHAPTER 3 on any difficulty.

Escape
Clear CHAPTER 1 on any difficulty.

Fight Begins
See the good ending of HOD4 SP .

Get the Bus
Shoot and destroy the BUS.

Hope
Clear CHAPTER 6 on any difficulty.

Lost
Clear CHAPTER 2 on any difficulty.

Reunion
Clear CHAPTER 5 on any difficulty.

Who’s Next?
See the bad ending of HOD4 SP.

Source: Exophase and HOTD fan Craig Anderson

The House of the Dead III Boss Tips: The Wheel of Fate

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“I am Curien… I shall destroy everything and resurrect everything…”
The Wheel of Fate’s weak point is the glowing white
symbol in the center of its chest. Not only is this weak
point very small, but your bullets will just ricochet off
when the Wheel of Fate has its back turned or when
its wheel gets in the way, so it’s going to be tough to
land hits.

Because the Wheel of Fate has so many different attack
patterns, you’re going to need it all in order to survive:
speed, accuracy and precision timing of your reloads.
You also have to be able to tell what attack is coming
next just by watching the Wheel of Fate’s movements,
and be prepared for that attack.

The Wheel of Fate has five attack patterns. At first, it
will switch between Attack Patterns 1, 2 and 3 at random.
When its health drops to half, though, it’ll use its light
sphere attack. When its health falls to one-quarter or
less, it releases its lightning bolt attack.

[1]Throws rings of light at you.
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While the Wheel of Fate charges up energy, it curls itself
up and conceals its weak point, so you won’t be able to
get any shots in. Just steel yourself and get ready for your
chance to attack.

Once the Wheel of Fate starts firing its rings of light, it’s
time to start shooting. These rings will approach you from
the center, arcing left and right.

First of all, aim for the center and quickly fire all six of your
shots. Then immediately reload and take care of any rings
you missed. If you get the chance, also try to hit the Wheel
of Fate itself, which will be far back in the center.

[2]Body-slams you.

During this attack, the Wheel of Fate will approach you
directly, so it should be easy to target. But even if you
land all six shots perfectly, you still won’t be able to drive
the Wheel of Fate back.

You’ll have to alternate quickly between shooting as fast
as you can, reloading, and shooting as fast as you can again.

To avoid having to reload needlessly, wait until the Wheel
of Fate faces your way, and then get your shots in all at
once when it draws near.

[3] Flies around at high speed.

This attack will test your marksmanship. You’ll have to
try to hit the Wheel of Fate’s tiny weak point as it goes
zipping around at high speed.

The Wheel of Fate’s wheel will obstruct its weak point,
and the boss will turn its back on you sometimes, too,
so there won’t be many opportunities to get your shots in.

So that you don’t waste the precious few chances you
do get by being out of bullets, avoid shooting repeatedly,
and track the Wheel of Fate’s movements carefully with
your eyes.

If you’re having trouble tracking it while it’s moving
around so fast, you could try just targeting the times
when it pauses for an instant, but be prepared to take
some damage.

At the end of this attack, the Wheel of Fate will try to
hit you with a body slam.

At the last instant of its approach, it’ll be at point-blank
range, so it’s a great chance to do some major damage.
So even if it gets really close, keep shooting and don’t
give up.

[4]Shoots light spheres at you.

While the Wheel of Fate is busy making its light spheres,
try to get as many shots into its weak point as you can.
Reload when it starts shooting those spheres at you from
its wheel, and take care of them quickly as they come
flying toward you.

Because the light spheres move fairly slowly, you’ll probably
be tempted to get in some shots at the Wheel of Fate itself
during the intervals, but if you press your luck like that, you’ll
quickly end up taking unnecessary damage from the light spheres.

So ignore the Wheel of Fate for now, and just concentrate on
the light spheres. You can go back to targeting the Wheel of
Fate’s weak point once you’ve wiped out all of the spheres.

[5]Fires lightning bolts at you.

Once you get this far, you’re almost home free.
At the beginning, focus all of your attention on firing at the
Wheel of Fate’s weak point as many times as you can until it
releases its lightning bolts.

Once it does, reload just as you are turning around and start
shooting those lightning bolts down immediately.

There’ll be a lot of lightning bolts to deal with, so start shooting
in areas where they’re closely clumped together to pare down
their numbers a little. After that, take care of any lightning bolts
you missed one by one.

Sure, there’ll be a lot of lightning bolts, but they won’t be
very fast. If you stay calm and just keep shooting the ones
closest to you, you won’t have all that much trouble shooting
them all down.

Once you’ve wiped out all of the lightning bolts, you’ll turn
to face the Wheel of Fate once more. Start firing at it again
with everything you’ve got and make victory yours!

Kori’s tips: In Time Attack Mode, each shot in The Wheel of Fate’s chest during his attacks will give you +2 secs each shot.

The House of the Dead 4 Demo is now available to PS+ Members

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Today, Sega has released the House of the Dead 4 demo for PS+ members to try out before buying the full game on April 17th. The demo will feature the first chapter “Escape” as James and Kate blast their way through the creature infestation and fight the first boss “Justice (Type 0053)” Tell us your thoughts about the demo on our Twitter, Facebook, or comment below. The demo will be available from 4/10 – 4/24.

Here’s a play through of the demo

A.M.S. Agent Profile: Lisa Rogan

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Lisa Rogan

Height: 5’8″ (172 cm)
Weight: 110 lbs (50 kg)
Gender: Female
Age: 20
Nationality: American

The daughter of the top agent of the now-defunct AMS, Thomas Rogan. Motivated and tenacious, Lisa is often told how much she resembles her father. She does not seem to take this as a compliment. It has been two weeks since contact was lost with her father. Saying she must follow her mother’s wishes, she accompanies her father’s old partner, G, to the EFI Research Facility.

Appearances: The House of the Dead III, The Typing of the Dead II