STRENGHT

 Each time Sega logo appeare on screen is easy to think on Sonic, but in fact Sega had an awfull lot of iconic games and characters even before the blue hedgehog was born. One of theyr most iconic serires was born along side Resident Evil, but in arcades instead of consoles: The House of the Dead. 

Palisades Marketing was born just when The House of the Dead 2 was released on the Dreamcast soo they decided to start with an action figures serires completelly based on the zombie creatures of the game. The first serires consisted in two "standar" enemies; Johnny and Ken along side a couple of smaller monsters, and a couple of big bosses monsters; Hierophant, boss of stage 2 and Strenght, boss of stage 4.

Hierophant cost a fortune by now soo i only got Strenght who is actually taller than Johnny just by a little bit, but is deffinetly much much wider and heavyer and can stand on his own perfectly thanks to his huge feet. He is articulated on the neck, shoulders, wrists, waist and legs, all cut joints with one direction movement except the shoulders that are ball joint, soo his arms have the best movility while the rest of the body is very static but thats mostly thanks to his huge frame.

The sculpt is....well, Plaisades - or better SOTA sculpture and design - took some artistic libertys with this creature. In the game he is muscly but mostly lean and athletic, but here he is like Hulk muscly, he is HUGE, his hands are gigantic as well as his feet and back, tough thanks to this he stands out nicelly. If they used the original style of the game he would looks kinda...generic, but in here they manage to highligth the masive musculature the character was supposed to have.

The rest is accurate to the game: the bandages, the ripped shorts, the corset. The bandages have a pretty nice texture as well as his skin, given how big his muscles are the skin sculpt got a lot of attention and looks really good with the open cuts too. Like with Johnny, this is not the original version but an alternate one with the sack that cover his face torn, revealing his face underneath traped in an iron cage, something that happens on the game halfway the battle against him.

The paint is simple, just a light blue for the skin but the color looks pretty nice alongside the venomus green of the wounds and blood and Palisades actually used a brush this time to splater the green blood around those muscles. The face is a little hard to disscern tough thanks to the metal cage and the pants and bandages are lacking some darker tones to make them looks old. They have just a solid color and thats makes them looks pretty unnatural. Even with this, the color is much better than Johnny´s.

Thanks to his masive size, he dosnt comes with a smaller companion creature but only his main weapon, a masive chainsaw. The sculpt of the chainsaw is really good and the paint as well since yellow color of the base is full of dirt and blood, this tiem actually looking like an old and used artifact. The blade reads "BLAME" and is made with soft plastic and that makes the weapon really light soo Strenght can hold it without loosing balance. He can even hold it above his head like Leatherface.

Put the chainsaw on his hands is a little tricky tough thanks to the lack of articulation on his elbows but aside of that, his other accesory is his base, with the logo of the game on a red brick piece with ivys and skulls. This base is extremelly good looking tough really small for Strenght and totally useless.

Just like Johnny, the paint is the weakest part of the figure but still is a much better looking figure since his color palette is much more easyer to the eye and much more cleaner giving a better chance to see the great details on the sculpt. I also like a lot the half shown face and the sculpt is terrific, this zombie is really wicked looking, i dare to say he is actually quiet sexy.

Sadly, this figures didnt sell well back then soo Palisades canceled a pretty good looking second serires with figures already painted soo in the end, this are the only figures in existance of The House of the Dead, making them treasures at least for me and i hope i can get the other two i am missing before i die.