Sega Reveals House of the Dead Reawakened: A Haunted Manor VR Cabinet for Two Players

Just in time for Halloween, Sega has lifted the lid on House of the Dead Reawakened, the VR arcade game it teased at the start of the month. Sega Amusements International has now shown the full cabinet, shared a new video and confirmed that the game makes its global debut at IAAPA Expo in Orlando, 17 to 20 November, on stands S4602 and S4803.

When we covered Sega’s House of the Dead Reawakened teaser, all we had was a 30-second clip and a couple of guns. Now we know it is a proper attraction piece, and it looks wonderfully over the top.

A haunted house you walk up to

The cabinet is a gothic manor, complete with animated lighting and a working clock tower. According to Sega’s product page, two 43-inch vertical screens act as the shuttered side windows and a huge 85-inch screen stands in as the locked front door. During play the windows blow open and the door bursts wide, so the crowd watching gets a peek at what the players are fighting inside.

What we know about the game

• Two players, solo or co-op, across three missions with a range of weapons.
• Built in Unreal Engine 5 and shown through DPVR E4C commercial VR headsets.
• Gun controllers with haptic recoil and magnetic auto-calibration, so there is no setup between players.
• 2.1-channel audio for each player.
• Designed to run without an attendant, which matters a lot for VR in a busy arcade.

Sega has clearly thought about the operators too. Its manufacturing and R&D director Nigel Allison says cable damage tops the list of VR complaints, so Sega worked with DPVR on a steel-armoured headset cable that has been load-tested to 130kg and comes with a 12-month warranty.

Early tests sound promising

Sega says it has been running secret location tests and previewing the game to big operators. Patrick Michael, its head of external development, says they have seen “players re-join the queue for a second, even third go, straight after finishing.” Sega also points out that the series’ 30th anniversary is next year, with the original House of the Dead arriving in arcades in 1997.

There is still no word on price or when production starts, and Sega has not called it a sequel to 2018’s Scarlet Dawn.

Our take

We will always miss sitting in a big cabinet with a light gun and a mate, but this is a smart way to bring House of the Dead back: a show-piece that pulls a crowd even when nobody is playing. If the VR holds up as well as the manor looks, this could be one of the stars of IAAPA. Bring on Orlando.

Would you queue for House of the Dead in VR, or is it light guns or nothing for you? Tell us in the comments.