The House of the Dead
The House of the Dead, also referred to as Curien Mansion, is a horror-themed light gun shooter video game franchise created by Sega in 1996. Originally released in arcades, it utilizes a light gun on the platform, but can be played with standard controllers on consoles and a mouse or keyboard on home computers. For the PlayStation Network releases of III and 4, they can also be played using the PlayStation Move controller. There are six House of the Dead games originating in a first-person light gun rail shooter format. The main series all have common traits including special agents pairing up to take on hordes of biologically engineered undead (referred to as 'creatures' in the wider series and as 'mutants' in Overkill). The games are divided into chapters, each of which culminates in a boss battle against usually massive, terrifying creatures. The bosses in the first four games as well as the sixth are all named after the Major Arcana of occult tarot. Gameplay elements differ among the different games in the series, with each having different characters, firearms, and types of enemies. In many of the games, there are branching paths (determined by one's actions) and unlockable bonuses,