The Haunted Hoard: Nightmare in the Dark (Arcade)

When discussions about horror-themed arcade games you can play around Halloween crop up, The House of the Dead and Splatterhouse tend to be the names that come up, but I believe SNK’s Nightmare in the Dark deserves just as much attention for that particular niche. It not only nails the horror aesthetic players would be looking for, but it brings a very different style of play than other games within the niche, even if the gameplay seems to be heavily inspired by the game Snow Bros.

 

Nightmare in the Dark begins with a gravedigger coming across ransacked graves. Rather than panicking the populace of the nearby village, the gravedigger sets out to deal with the problem himself, coming across all sorts of ghouls, monsters, and undead creatures who attack him on his path to find the grave robber. Two players can play simultaneously, both playing as the somewhat pokey gravedigger in 2D single screen platforming stages. Any drops at the bottom will have the player or monsters who fall into them appear at the top of the screen, so the only thing you need to worry about while playing is the layout of the stage and where the monsters are standing on the floating level geometry. However, the platform layout isn’t just to make you jump around as you go about destroying the undead creatures, as it plays a vital role in exactly how you can wipe the creatures out.

The gravedigger’s only tool for combat is a little lantern that he can use to hurl small flames a little bit in front of him. These flames don’t immolate the undead on contact, the player instead needing to stun them with the first flame and then pile on more and more fire until the monster is so overwhelmed by the flames they are converted into a giant orange ball. The gravedigger can then pick up this unusual orb and carry it around for a while, but if you aren’t quick to use it or don’t lay on enough fire on a monster building up to it, the flames will die down and the monster can revert back to their freely moving form. However, if you do toss this big orange ball before it dies down, you’ve essentially unleashed one big bowling ball that not only kills the creature inside it, but any other monsters it hits as it rolls around the tiny level. The best strategy becomes getting to a part of the level where you can toss this ball for maximum devastation, some stages conducive with sloped ramp or multi tiered designs but others have little ball traps or walls that will prevent you from getting to certain monsters unless you can bait them away from their safe spots. Even though every level has a timer, you can take monsters out the slow way if need be, balling them up one by one. If you can bowl over a bunch with your fireball though, you can earn extra points and upgrades to things like your speed as well as your lantern fire’s efficiency and range.

 

The monsters involved definitely determine how much of the action will play out, the different types demanding different approaches. Ghosts can float freely through the level so while they’re easier to lure into your fireball’s path, they can also catch you unaware or ignore the ground your ball will roll across. Zombies and skeletons move about rather plainly, but the skeletal ostriches charge at you rather quickly, meaning your slow gravekeeper shouldn’t be on the same level as them unless you’re ready to halt their charge with some embers from your lantern. Hunchbacks leap around more than other monster types, evoking the Fleamen from the Castlevania series, and mudmen can slink through the ground before popping back up, making them hard targets to hit as well. The monster mix means sometimes you might want to ball up something simple to take out the more mobile and troublesome foes, but other times you’re left with no choice but to go for the harder enemies. If you do get hurt while trying to burn the baddies, you thankfully have three lives before you’ll need to pop in a quarter. Losing a life does have you spawn relatively close to where you fell so if you were busy burning some monsters you can get right back to it, and there’s no progress lost if you pop in a quarter after losing your set of three lives, the game even kind enough to reset the level timer so you almost never have to worry about timing out in Nightmare in the Dark. You do lose your upgrades on death though, so there is still an incentive encouraging you to not get reckless.

The level designs are all gorgeously detailed as are the creatures, plenty of love put into making sure the game looks as spooky as possible. Despite kicking off in a graveyard, your adventure takes you through thirty levels spread across five stages, the stages including things like an underground cave and a haunted forest. The backdrops all manage to be moody but exaggerated, the deep purple of the graveyard stages’ sky helped by an enormous full moon and towering headstones. The misty forest and dark caves surprisingly use a bit of light to break up their otherwise typical designs, sunbeams and a glowing exit making these background images more than just walls of basic detailing.

 

The bosses definitely have a lot of effort put into their design as well, from the very animated Frankenstein’s monster you face in the first area to the enormous skull cart that dominates the play field, the big baddies feel diverse and pack different tactics to try and take you down. You can’t hurt them directly with your lantern though, needing to ball up the monsters they call in for back up instead, and this mostly works out to be a case of avoiding challenging attacks from the big guy as you wait for little ones to hurl at them. However, the final boss strains this a little, teleporting around and having periods of invincibility that are difficult to identify. It’s quite easy to chuck a ball at the last boss and find it did not do any damage for no clear reason, and if there’s any part that’s going to demand plenty of attempts it will be this slow-going finale. It’s not such a sour note that it hurts the brisk regular levels and challenging boss fights before then though, so Nightmare in the Dark manages to let you enjoy its atmosphere and action before it wraps up with a foe who is a bit less fair than most.

THE VERDICT: With its strong horror atmosphere and fun arcade action, Nightmare in the Dark definitely deserves to be in the conversation of best arcade games to play around Halloween. Single screen levels ask you to plan out the best way to bowl your fireballs into the enemy hordes, and while your gravedigger is a little sluggish, the enemies test him well and the player can usually respond to their approaches if they’re attentive enough. With impressive boss battles and brisk but tactical action along the way, Nightmare in the Dark manages to be a quick and enjoyable platforming adventure despite having a final boss that feels like it unfairly breaks away from the conventions of the gameplay featured elsewhere. Despite that last fight, most of the game does a good job of designing stages and creatures that test its Snow Bros. inspired action.

 

And so, I give Nightmare in the Dark from the Arcade…

A GOOD rating. While at times you might wish the base speed of the gravedigger was a little higher as power-ups disappear before you reach them or certain bosses and baddies threaten to run right into you, Nightmare in the Dark rewards you for being smart about how you move and not throwing yourself into the path of the skeletal ostriches or putting yourself above the jumping hunchbacks. Identifying how you can use the level layout for maximum undead destruction is what makes this game more than just burning every baddie in front of you with your lantern, and the stage and monster design continues to add new variables to consider so things don’t get stale. The speediness of stage completion certainly makes up for the poky pace of the protagonist, and big bosses pose a greater threat with their unique attacks and new ways of dominating the level space. The final boss’s vulnerability and attacking speed could certainly be tidied up so there’s less time where he can’t be hurt, but most of the action in Nightmare in the Dark adheres to its established rules well and tests how you can use them against foes who can fly or otherwise work around the tactics that could have gotten stale without the new wrinkles to the battles.

 

With its undead enemies and moody backdrops, Nightmare in the Dark definitely fits the bill of a game perfect for Halloween, and it’s certainly a plus the game turned out enjoyable to boot. It never received a home release nor did it achieve the same renown as The House of the Dead and Splatterhouse so it’s not too surprising it avoided attention, especially considering the game was something SNK scooped up rather than developing it internally. Developed by AM Factory and published in its home country of Japan by a company that went by both Eleven or Gavaking, neither of the two companies survived long after making their one and only video game Nightmare in the Dark. While SNK giving it a Western release ensured it didn’t die with those companies, perhaps it’s fitting this lesser known Halloween appropriate game has a strange story behind its creation. It’s just a shame that odd development history kept it from finding a wider audience.