Survival horror is a style of game that first appeared in 1993 when Infogrames released a classic PC game called "Alone in the Dark."

PC games are not big in Japan, and neither was survival horror when Capcom's Shinji Mikami took it several steps further with his "Biohazard" series. "Alone in the Dark" had crude-looking settings and characters that were roughly hewn out of limited polygons. Working on PlayStation and Saturn, Mikami created beautiful pre-rendered settings.

Survival horror is a style of game in which players guide a character through a 3-D environment filled with monsters and murderers.

These games may be set in a single house, as in the case of "Alone in the Dark," or in an entire town such as the one in Konami's "Silent Hill." The games may be slow-paced or fast. In some survival horror games, players must conserve ammunition, often avoiding enemies rather than attacking them. In others, players use bladed or magical weapons and kill everything they see.

All of these games have gore and atmosphere-chilling atmosphere.

"Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem" ("Eternal Darkness"), Nintendo's brilliant first entry into the survival horror genre, boasts a unique blend of the above-mentioned attributes.

While the bulk of the game takes place in a large house, the game includes segments with characters in Persia, Cambodia, and colonial America. These segments are shown as interactive flashbacks, with the player leading the characters through an adventure that ends with a grisly "Twilight Zone" sort of cliffhanger.

But we will get to the history lesson in a moment. Let's begin with the present.

"Eternal Darkness" begins with Alexandra Roivas (Roivas is "savior" spelled backward) having a nightmare in which she finds herself trapped in a room filled with twiggy-looking zombies. The good news is that Alex has a shotgun; the bad news is that the zombies keep coming.

Fortunately, Alex can wake from this dream. That will not be the case with the nightmares that make up the rest of this ghoulish game.

Alex, a really fetching young blonde with an intense stare, is summoned to Rhode Island to identify the mutilated corpse of her murdered grandfather. After identifying the old guy by his ring, she decides to stay in her deceased grandfather's house.

One thing leads to another, and soon Alex has found a hidden room, a book with a skeletal seal, and the meaning of insanity.

Sanity, or the lack thereof, is a big thing in "Eternal Darkness." As Alex and other characters explore their worlds, the level of their sanity is displayed in a vile of green liquid. When the liquid runs out, they have disturbing hallucinations in which they sink into the ground, or their heads explode, or their limbs fall off -- you know, the usual, everyday imaginings.

You can always tell the hallucinations in this cheerful little game. They are the scenes in which the heroes shriek, "This isn't happening!"

As it turns out, Alex is part of a historical chain of guardians that protect Earth. It's not a very happy life -- their sanity is always on edge, and there are plenty of zombies and monsters constantly trying to kill them. On the other hand, Alex and company learn magic, have the unique ability to heal themselves, master cool weapons, and are never alone.

Nintendo is a company that seldom does things unless it can do them right. And in the case of "Eternal Darkness," Nintendo has done things very right indeed.

The settings are well mapped out, visually interesting, and creepy. The characters look good. You would never mistake them for real people, but they look good.

The art in this game is nowhere near as nice as the art in the new version of "Resident Evil" that Capcom recently released for GameCube. But "Eternal Darkness" is still a nice-looking game.

What it lacks in art appeal, "Eternal Darkness" makes up in terms of gameplay. This is not a game for hardcore survival horror players. In fact, if "Eternal Darkness" has a flaw, it is that the game skews a bit easy.

That is a minor flaw, however. The puzzles in this game are a bit on the obvious side and the monsters are a little more vulnerable than monsters in other survival horror games, but they are still tough enough to give players a bit of a fright.

"Eternal Darkness" will almost certainly be remembered as one of the best games of 2002 and definitely as the best game this summer. It's a chilling game, certainly not one for children, but it is a great game for the appropriate audience.