One of my favorite games (of all time, no less) is Disney’s Haunted Mansion. I originally played it on the GameCube back in 2005 and loved it. It was my favorite game on the system, and it brought my gaming out of hibernation after being MIA for a chunk of years.

Within the past year, I acquired the game (on disc) for both the Xbox, as well as the Playstation 2, and last week I decided to pop in the Xbox version. That’s when I found that the information I’d read stating that the game worked on my Xbox 360 was false. It wasn’t supported, so I moved over to the PS2.

As soon as it came up on the screen I realized something: this game looks nothing like I remember.

Please note: I am not a graphics snob. A game doesn’t need to be 1080p and 60 frames per second for me to enjoy it.

That being said, I also forgot how wobbly the camera was. I adjusted the settings (no inversion for me, thank you), and it helped, but there was still all kinds of sway in the camera. And the game is dark. Not in tone, but in appearance.

Was it always so dark?

I was super shocked. I had such different memories of the game. I was now playing something that looked completely different to me. Muddy, muddy, muddy graphics and a camera that felt like I had to fight it more often than not.

But I trudged on. I did my best but I felt like a stranger in a strange land. What was I doing? Was it always so hard to see the environment? Did the Beacon of Souls always attack this way?

(This photo looks so much better than the game actually looked on my PS2.)

To be fair, sucking the souls into the Beacon of Souls was just as smooth as I remembered. So there’s that.

Wheee!

After about an hour with Haunted Mansion, I put it down. I still love the game (from habit?), and I know I will pick up where I left off (sooner than later), but I felt like I couldn’t trust my initial memories of it. Which was a bummer.

Then I decided to put on Dr. Mario. Just to see if my (more recent) memories of that could be trusted.

I played a bunch of it. And it was just as excellent as I always felt it was.

At least some memories can be trusted. :)