The existence of video games based on movies is not a surprising one. Creating a product that has a known name attached to it means that it will sell no matter what. That mentality has led to hundreds upon hundreds of titles that were basically garbage. Younger folks who didn’t grew up in the 8/16-bit era are nodding their heads, but they can’t imagine how bad things really were back then compared to now. Movie-licensed material was basically the perfect reason to avoid buying these hastily made cash-grabs. Every once in a while, something much better would pop out, like Batman: The Video Game, or the one reviewed here, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Just keep in mind that “much better” in the realm of movie-licensed titles isn’t something to brag about…
The purpose here is to reach Count Dracula; a quest that will have the hero of the tale, in this case Jonathan Harker, travel through an assortment of treacherous environments, filled with monsters and traps. As it is loosely based on the movie of the same name, players will visit locations such as Transylvania, Dracula’s castle, and an abbey in London. In some ways this is Castlevania’s brother from another mother, as it has the same and even faster pace, with arcade-like action at the forefront. The mechanics are nice and simple. Jump around, avoid pointy surfaces, kill baddies with the standard melee sweep, or some finite projectile weapons – great for those who just want to press ‘Start’ and play.
It’s super important, especially in the NES era, for a game to have great controls, and luckily controlling Harker is a piece of cake, not to mention a tad funny, as you wouldn’t expect an otherwise realistically portrayed character to leap higher than Mario or Sonic. Perfect? No. Turning around takes a few milliseconds more than it should, which is weird since this is a fast-paced platformer, not a Prince of Persia-like cinematic one. This can be a bit of a problem as Bram Stoker’s Dracula frequently requires split-second manoeuvres, and most levels are filled with things that can eat the small health bar very fast. Annoying, but in all honesty, it is also easy to adapt to after a while.
The whole thing is divided between a handful of chapters, which are in turn divided between two stages – ‘Daytime’ and ‘Night time’ – with the second one being darker visually, but also bringing forth enemies and traps that stayed dormant during the daytime. It’s important to note that Daytime levels begin as such, but soon transition to Night time, so in practice you are given a grace period where you can run towards the end as fast as possible, and “skip” parts that would otherwise be more lethal.
Unlike Castlevania, which leans more towards the combat side of things, Bram Stoker’s Dracula mainly focuses on the platforming, with Harker spending most of his time jumping from platform to platform, and with enemies being there just to make his life harder – especially those who pop out of nowhere the second you get near them. Who thought that that would be entertaining exactly?! There’s also a timer, but at first most will forget of its existence. In the later stages, however, the clock is basically your main adversary. Oh, and by the way, when death comes and the whole thing restarts from a checkpoint, the timer remains as it was the moment Harker lost his life, which means that if there were 10 seconds left…Harker has 10 seconds before losing another life.
It should be mentioned that this is one of the few dark and gloomy titles in the NES library that actually look good. No pixel has been wasted in the menacing forests, gloomy caverns, and candle-lit dungeons Harker braves, with the weird, and spooky assortment of tunes complementing the overall oppressive aura – pretty cool for a humble 8-bit piece of software. The only disappointment are the enemy sprites who are generic to a fault, with only Dracula’s brides, as well as his own various forms managing to be memorable.
Now, you’ve noticed by now that nothing mentioned here is really that original, and it’s true; this is “just” a platformer. It doesn’t do anything bad, but it doesn’t do anything new and exciting either. Like many movie-licensed titles before it, this is rental material. A decent rental, sure, but nothing more than that. The strong atmosphere and its pick-up-and-play nature are good enough reason to go back to it every once in a while, but there’s nothing more here to keep you glued to your seat for more than an hour or so. For NES afficionados only.
