Sega teases walk-in VR return for House of the Dead arcade series
Sega is bringing its zombie shooter House of the Dead back as a walk-in virtual-reality arcade game.
Sega Amusements teased the project in a YouTube Short captioned "something is reawakening". The game is titled House of the Dead: Reawakened, Video Games Chronicle reported.
The short clip keeps details hidden. It shows an arcade cabinet, the large stand-up machine found in amusement arcades, fitted with a tall vertical screen inside a tomb-style display. A light gun with a thick tethered cable sits in front of it. Virtual reality, where a headset places you inside the game world, does the rest.
The full machine is stranger. It is built as a miniature facade shaped like a Gothic manor. Its centre is an 85-inch display showing the mansion's front door. Two 43-inch vertical displays flank it as shuttered windows.
Players do not just stand at the machine. They step through its door to enter the VR play area inside. The set-up supports one player alone or two players together in cooperative play, each wearing a VR headset.
Each headset has its own 2.1 channel audio. Players shoot with haptic recoil gun controllers, meaning the guns kick or vibrate in the hands when fired. The game runs across three missions and was built in Unreal Engine 5, a widely used set of tools for making games.
Sega has dressed the outside for theatre-style scares. Animated lighting, a working clock tower and environmental audio surround the manor front. The front door and shutter screens are designed to open for a jump-scare reveal.
For newcomers, this means no console or home headset is needed. You enter a small haunted house, put on the headset, pick up the gun and play through short, sharp missions with a friend or solo.
The series has been quiet in arcades for several years. The last main entry, House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, was released in arcades in 2018. Sega plans to show Reawakened in full at the IAAPA Expo in November, the trade show run by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, Video Games Chronicle reported.
