Friday, October 19, 2012

"Bram Stoker's Dracula", 1993.

I remember the gag about the novelization of the film this game is based on -- Fred Saberhagen's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was anticipated to be a popular license for the kiddie set -- five strains of weak platform game adaptation appear to have been made based on it. This ad promotes none of them specifically, but all of them generally -- a deft act if you can pull it off. "Available for all Nintendo and Sega platforms."
PLAY IT IF YOU DARE
Few have faced Dracula and survived. Now it's your turn! Based on Columbia Pictures' blockbuster thriller, Bram Stoker's Dracula goes straight for the jugular. Photo-realistic graphics, camera rotation, digitized scenes from the film and an awesome digital soundtrack on the CD version plunge you deep into cold, dark dungeons crawling with spiders and packs of bloodthirsty rats. On every platform you'll experience thrilling game play and battle your way through the treacherous mountains and forests of Transylvania to Castle Dracula. And just like in the movie, the evil Prince of Darkness will rise and attack as a bat, a wolf, even an old man. But whatever form Dracula takes...make no mistake, he must be stopped!
Available for all Nintendo and Sega platforms.
My recollection is that Sony Imagesoft didn't have much associated with it that had any play value, surprisingly given the dominant role Sony was poised to assume in the following two generations of home consoles. Maybe they were just salting the fields of their competition, while coming to an understanding that their CD-ROM add-on for the SNES was never going to happen.

3 comments:

  1. Piers Anthony got the job of writing "Total Recall", meaning Piers Anthony wrote a movie based on a Phillip K Dick short story. Has the world no justice?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I remember watching Piers Anthony on TV shilling his novelization of that movie, which was only slightly less surreal than watching Williams Burroughs shill for Nike shoes in an ad directed by David Cronenberg around the same period.

    Anthony did some good work as a young man; he just spent a long time as a dirty old one. The trick -- you might say where he succeeded where Dick failed -- is in keeping on the scene long enough to get the plum gigs without dying or going crazy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Google celebrates 165th birthday of - Bram Stoker. Doodle depicts the story of Dracula.

    ReplyDelete