Evil Night

Evil Night (エビルナイト), also known as Hell Night in certain countries, is a horror-themed rail shooting game developed and published by Konami to arcades in 1998.

The story follows Henry Jones, Alicia Sevigny, and Joe Hamilton, three people who venture into a zombie and ghost-filled mansion to rescue their kidnapped friend Liv.

The game offers three-player cooperative play, with a shotgun and two pistols featuring charge-up bullets. There are also branching paths and multiple endings based on the player's performance.

Evil Night's design, presentation, and poor-quality voice acting have been compared to Sega's The House of the Dead rail shooter series. Like the other four Konami M2 arcade titles, Evil Night was never ported to consoles.

Plot
Three people — Henry Jones, Alicia Sevigny, and Joe Hamilton — search for their kidnapped friend Liv in an old mansion. They battle ghosts, zombies, giant snake, and a chainsaw-wielding butcher.

Depending on the routes taken, more backstory is implied. A journal reveals that a group of researchers or archeologists discovered an ancient ruin beneath the mansion; they sought discovering a certain room's purpose. Henry, Alicia, and Joe also find medieval paintings of Liv.

In a library, Alicia finds a mysterious black book. Discovering an underground passage to the catacombs, the group battles a ball and chain-wielding zombie and a giant lizard-like creature.

Henry, Alicia, and Joe reach an underground ruin, where a demonic creature threatens them. They later find Liv being held captive in the graveyard. The creature — a descendant of Liv — plans to use her in order to achieve immortality. He transforms into a flying horned beast. After her friends defeat him, Liv uses the book Alicia found to destroy him with a spell.

Endings
Depending on the player's performance and how many items they have collected, the ending will differ. There are currently three known endings:


 * Normal: Henry, Joe, and Alicia reunite with Liv, who, while leaving, looks over her shoulder as the cemetery gate closes. The camera cuts to the foot of the previously-defeated final boss stepping into the ground, implying that he survived.
 * Good: While reuniting with her friends, Liv accidentally drops a spell book, which sets the mansion ablaze. Before the credits roll, Liv narrates: "After that day, we never heard that voice again." This ending is achieved by collecting the third hidden key.
 * Bad: As they reunite with Liv, the final boss transforms the protagonists into zombies. Liv, who appears to be in a demonic trance, returns to the slab in the cemetery where she was restrained.

Gameplay
Evil Night's gameplay is similar to The House of the Dead. Players battle approaching enemies with light guns, with the camera traveling a predefined path. If damaged, a player loses one life; when all of their lives are gone, the game is over. Lives can be restored by collecting first aid kits.

The biggest difference is that Evil Night supports up to three players at once. Players 1 and 3 use handguns, which hold six bullets and must be reloaded by shooting outside the screen. Furthermore, pointing the gun's muzzle up charges a strong "penetration bullet" that can kill multiple enemies in one shot. Player 2 wields a pump-action shotgun, which boasts four high-damaging bullets and widespread range.

Evil Night is divided into five levels, called chapters. The first four levels are non-linear, with branching paths taken based on the player's decisions. At the start of Chapter 1, one of three paths may be selected. Other paths are influenced by shooting locked doors or gates are shot, or collecting hidden silver, bronze, and gold keys.

In addition to the keys, there are two collectable books that add to the story. Evil Night has multiple endings which are based on the player's performance and the items they've collected.

Reception
Fans have compared Evil Night with The House of the Dead. Some have named it "a decent The House of the Dead copy." Its gameplay has been praised, though its voice acting has been criticized for being cheesy and out-of-place, similar to SEGA's The House of the Dead 2. On GameFAQs, the game has a rating of 4/5 stars based on three reviews, in which the most recent review was written on April 30, 2014.

Legacy
Because of the Konami M2's notoriety for hardware failures, Evil Night has disappeared from most arcades as of 2017. However, as of 2019 the game is playable on the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME).

Notably, two arcades in the Philippines and Indonesia removed the game in 2010 and 2013-2014, respectively. Four locations in the U.S. State of Illinois are currently listed on Aurcade, though most have since closed. Reportedly, the Japan Game Museum (located in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture), has a playable Evil Night cabinet.

Despite this, Evil Night still has its fans who fondly remember playing the game in their youth. A low-key online movement was started in 2017 to remove the game from its current obscurity; a TV Tropes page and an unofficial Facebook page have been created.

The full soundtrack was first obtained in mid-2017 and was uploaded on YouTube in December 2017.

Trivia

 * The game is known as Hell Night in Japan, sharing the same title with a survival horror game for the Sony PlayStation released by Konami in 2000--no doubt confusing players in the Asia-Pacific region.
 * Some consider Evil Night to be the spiritual successor to Crypt Killer, another three-player light gun game by Konami that was released two years prior; the Player 2 shotgun is similar, and the runes stage is very reminiscent of Crypt Killer 's ancient-themed levels. Henry Jones, the player 1 character, is likely a reference to the Japanese title of Crypt Killer, which is Henry Explorers.
 * Evil Night has always been compared to The House of the Dead series of light-gun games. Coincidentally, Evil Night and The House of the Dead 2 were both released in 1998, with some considering it to be a "mockbuster" of the latter.
 * The players enter a dilapidated mansion and fight the monsters within it.
 * The players have to rescue a woman just like in the original The House of the Dead.
 * The final boss resembles the Magician in its first form. During its second form, it attacks using fireballs similar to how the Magician utilize pyrokinetics to attack the players.
 * The Bad ending has players turning into zombies, just like how Sophie Richards turned into a zombie in the bad ending of The House of the Dead.
 * Besides Evil Night, four other games were developed for the Konami M2 hardware: Total Vice, a police and crime-themed rail shooter; Tobe! Polystars, a flying shoot 'em up with a polygonal art style; Heat of Eleven '98, a soccer game; and Battle Tryst, a fighting game.
 * The first full playthrough of Evil Night was posted in YouTube by the end of May 2012. It only consisted of Course C. In April 2017, roughly 5 years later, a walkthrough on Course A and B was done. This followed with the first known footage of the Good Ending and the Name Entry screen.
 * Unknowingly, there was an Evil Night walkthrough already posted in a Japanese video-sharing website. It was recently discovered in July 2017 and posted the first known footage of the Bad Ending.
 * The same Japanese video-sharing website has a solo shotgun walkthrough.
 * A full captured card walkthrough was uploaded in November 2018 followed by a full shotgun walkthrough in May-June 2019.