Bram Stoker's Dracula (NES) Playthrough

Описание: A playthrough of Sony Imagesoft's 1993 license-based action-platformer for the NES, Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Played through on the hard mode, and I show all of the secret areas and Van Helsing's hiding spots.

Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie based on Bram Stoker's classic gothic horror novel was a pretty big deal when it hit theaters. It made a big splash again the following year when it was released on VHS, and that happened right around the time that the video game tie-ins began to hit the market.

And there were a ton of them! The 16-bit version landed on the Genesis, SNES (   • Bram Stoker's Dracula (SNES) Playthrough -...  ), and Amiga. The 8-bit version made the rounds on the NES, Game Boy (   • Bram Stoker's Dracula (Game Boy) Playthrou...  ), Master System, and Game Gear. The Sega CD game received a platformer/beat 'em up with FMV backgrounds, and for Dos PCs, there was a first-person shooter.

The 8-bit version is my favorite of the bunch. I had the Game Boy game as a kid, and between the difficulty and the soundtrack, it had me hooked for a good few months. The NES version is essentially the same game, and popping it in brought the memories flooding back.

Jonathan Harker has to forge a path through seven stages, each broken into daytime and nighttime sections, while doing things like collecting items from ? blocks, rescuing Van Helsing from claustrophobic spaces, killing Dracula and his succubi, and not falling into spike pits. Or water. Or acid. Or fire. You know the drill.

The platforming is fairly run-of-the-mill, but it's smooth and fast, and the controls and the flow of the action remind of Alien³ for the Genesis (   • Alien³ (Genesis) Playthrough  ), which was also developed by Probe. Dracula mercifully ditches that game's harsh time limits and labyrinthine stage layouts, but it's still far from easy. You can only play the later stages on the hard mode, and the enemies and hazards have a knack for pouncing on you the instant your focus begins to waver. That ending was hard won, but I enjoyed working for it.

The real star of the show, in my opinion, is the soundtrack by Jeroen Tel. It goes for ambiance over melody in ways that you don't often hear on the NES, and it impresses me in how it manages to evoke a sense of dread with just a few arpeggiated square waves. The harsh dissonance won't appeal to everyone, but it's difficult to deny what an accomplishment it is for the hardware (though I think it sounds better still on the Game Boy).

Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't an all-time NES great, but it is an enjoyable way to hop around like a Transylvanian Mario, flinging rocks at bats and flying ladies in nightgowns. If you like a challenge, you'd do well to try this one out.

(The Transylvanian wilderness sure is weird, though. I'd never seen trees and mountains both above and below the skyline until now.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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