REVIEW: Scaring You Out of Your Seat - Haunting (1993)

AHHHHH! I remember this game like it was yesterday. You get to be the poltergeist and jump into objects to scare a family out of their home...multiple times. But dude, the slimeballs deserve it! Let's jump into the review.



Haunting was released in 1993 by Electronic Arts for the Sega Genesis. (Man, do I miss those old cartridge games.) Being able to play as the poltergeist, "Polterguy", gave this game it's own original twist. Instead of investigating the haunted house, you were haunting the house. With clever ideas and awesome '90's slang this game sticks out in my memory like a sore thumb.

The graphics aren't bad considering it's an older game. In fact, back in '93, the graphics were pretty awesome. The animations of the objects coming to life when you jumped into them were hilarious. Each item was something new a different and every level had new items to try out. There were about 400 items in the whole game, now that's a lot of ways to scare people!

As you go around trying to scare people, jumping into objects takes away ectoplasma which is noted in your "ecto" bar. Every time you successfully scare a family member out of the house it rains sweet delicious plasma. However, if you fail to make it rain and run out of your plasma you end up in the Underworld. Dun, dun duuuuun. The underworld is the only place you will ever see the dreaded Game Over screen. Polterguy's health in the underworld is represented by a character portrait. Every hit you take the worse the portrait looks. It slowly rains ectoplasma from the ceiling and on your way to the exit make sure to pick some up. Once you make it to the exit, it's back to scare some pants off of people! Oh, and watch out for the family dog, that little bugger is the only one who can see you and boy does he cause some trouble!


I love this game and it is dear to my heart. I have played it on ROMs, but nothing beats the feeling of having that old Sega Genesis controller in my hands to scare some hu-mans.  If you still have a working Sega, you can pick up a copy of the game pretty cheap on Ebay. In-fact.... that's where I'm headed to right now and I suggest you do the same. Otherwise check out a ROM version and play it on your computer or phone. It's a great game and you won't regret it later!

I give this classic game 4 bits out of 5.