House of the Dead 1 - No Continues - 101,860

Here is a very high scoring run on SEGA's amazing zombie light-gun arcade game House of the Dead 1, cleared on one credit, and rolling the score over too!

This is played on the Model 2 arcade emulator, allowing upscaled resolutions, and using a DolphinBar with a Wiimote for aiming. It works almost as well as the original gun.

House of The Dead is the first in SEGA's successful light-gun game series, known at its time for the great gory graphics and having many branching paths based on your game play, or if you shoot certain parts of scenery (usually arrows). And before anyone says, I intentionally get hit at 03:29 to take a higher scoring route.

Getting a 1 Credit Clear is quite an achievement in House of the Dead 1, despite it giving you lots of extra lives throughout. It is difficult because the amount of extra lives awarded is far less once you get to the third stage, and that there is a maximum lives cap of 5 by default. If you rescue all of the humans, you get access to a secret room on the final stage, which gives 4 more lives, and lots more points too!

The next achievement in House of the Dead 1 is to score high, clearing the game with over 62,000 points gives you Rank 1 and most importantly, the best ending. Once you can do this, all there is left is to try and roll the score over.
The scoring system in House of the Dead 1 is simple, but scoring high is hard to do while not taking hits. Most enemies give 80 points, but 120 more points for every head shot. Most of the enemies just require one head shot, so they score 80 + 120 = 200. Some enemies take two head shots, so 80 + 120 + 120 = 320 points. It can be very difficult to shoot all of the enemies in the head, but there are techniques that can be used per enemy type, I try my best in this run.

Stage 2 and 3 bosses also award 120 points per head shot.
The stage 2 boss has a set amount of shots that he can take, so the strategy is to let the boss get close and then shoot the head quickly. This is a lot harder than it looks, but with some practice, it can be done well.
For the first form, either you can shoot his head a certain amount of times, or you can leave him alone until the second form.
The stage 3 boss is different, you have to shoot the head to stop it from attacking you, but then you have a short period of time to get some extra shots in, these shots give no damage to the boss, but add 120 per each successful head shot. Sometimes the amount of time to get in extra shots is longer than other times.
Scoring well on both of these bosses is required to get the 100,000 score.
Some enemies don't seem to award any points at all once they have thrown their projectiles, and sometimes when fighting Hangedman on stage 4, he doesn't award any points at all after being defeated!

Every human rescued awards 400, and every life up when on maximum lives awards 300. Bonus lives at the end of the stage give no points.
Losing a life takes away 100 points, but losing a life from a projectile usually takes away 200. Getting hit straight after losing a life, while this doesn't take another life off, it still reduces your score even more.

To get the score display, after inserting the coin, pull the left trigger 3 times, and then the right trigger 2 times. If the machine is set on freeplay, you have to wait until the title screen is shown with the house in the background, then press the triggers and then start. This is a feature in the whole series and is strange why there isn't a score display by default, they are arcade games after all!

If you like this video then check out my House of the Dead 4 video-    • House of the Dead 4 - No Continues - ...  

00:00 - Intro
00:53 - Chapter 1
07:08 - Chapter 2
15:50 - Chapter 3
23:46 - Chapter 4
29:32 - Ending