The House Of The Dead 2 is a game that offers a lot. If you’re in need of stress relief, pumping undead flesh full of lead is one of the finest ways to get it. If you need to bond with your fellow man, a second gun is ready and waiting for co-op fun. Down in the dumps? You can’t stay sad after hearing this game’s unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Chances are, if you’re looking for something out of a game, The House Of The Dead 2 has it in spades.

Where Time Crisis offers twitchy duck-and-cover gameplay via the foot pedal and Virtua Cop has a sublime scoring system, The House Of The Dead 2 just chucks loads of enemies at you. That’s not to say there’s no nuance to the design – saving civilians is a worthwhile pursuit that rewards the player with extra lives – but it’s easily the most action-packed lightgun game of its era. But while the enemies are mindless fodder, the bosses require skilled marksmanship to bring down and are the best in the series. We’ll never forget being chased around the Coliseum by the chainsaw-wielding Strength, nor the hellish hydra that was The Tower.

We are, of course, gushing. But if you find a cabinet out there (and they’re still out there – we took the pic above at an Essex arcade in 2013), you should definitely stop and play it.

It’s been a long time since we last looked at The House Of The Dead in Retro Gamer, but you can read our Complete Lowdown by picking up a digital copy of issue 50.