| Haunted House | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Atari |
| Publisher(s) | Atari |
| Programmer(s) | James Andreasen |
| Platform(s) | Atari 2600 |
| Release | February 1982 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Haunted House is a 1982 adventure video game programmed by James Andreasen for the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed Atari 2600) and published by Atari. The player controls an avatar shaped like a pair of eyes who explores a mansion seeking out parts of an urn to return to the entrance. The game world is populated by roaming enemies including vampire bats, tarantulas, and a ghost. Haunted House was among the first games to use player-controlled scrolling between large portions of the visual space.
Haunted House received positive reviews from contemporary video game publications such as The Space Gamer and Electronic Games while others, such as How to Win at Home Video Games, noted the game's difficulty and lack of intuitiveness. The game has seen several releases across consoles and formats as part of Atari compilation packages as well as follow-up games, such as Haunted House (2010) and Haunted House: Cryptic Graves (2014), and Haunted House (2023).
Video game critics such as Christopher Buecheler of GameSpy have called Haunted House one of the earliest examples of the survival horror video game genre due to its elements of creepy themes, limited item management, and a variety of monsters. Other studies of the genre have suggested that the game lacked the specific elements that later games like Alone in the Dark (1992) and Resident Evil (1996) had to establish it as a unique game genre.