Description
A playthrough of Sony Imagesoft's 1993 license-based beat 'em up for the Sega CD, Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The Sega CD version of Bram Stoker's Dracula was part of the glut of titles that Sony published in late 1993 to coincide with the VHS release of the popular 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film. Rather than taking the route of the action-platformer as Probe (https://youtu.be/SPUbmL6MN6o) and Traveller's Tales (https://youtu.be/ZpyRW_Winow) had for the cartridge-based games, for Psygnosis's CD title turned the movie into an 80s-style beat 'em up with digitized graphics and lots of FMV.
Playing like an updated take on https://youtu.be/MykZwvCPPi0, you steer Jonathan Harker, the 19th century kung fu master, through a whirlwind tour of the film's major locations, punching bats and roundhouse kicking vomiting zombies, before ultimately taking on Dracula at his castle in an effort to save Mina. Aside from the occasional hazard to leap over and a short horseback sequence, there's not much to it beyond walking toward the right and aggressively flailing at anything that moves, but I had a blast with this one.
The presentation doesn't contribute much to the gameplay, but it has all of the multimedia glitter that you could ask from a CD game made in 1993. The cutscenes taken from the movie look good for the time, the FMV wallpaper used for the backgrounds looks fancy and moves smoothly with your movement, and the soundtrack is loaded with synth strings and organs endlessly blaring ominous tones. (Please note that I had to mute the boss music to avoid being flagged by YT's copyright scanner. Sorry about that!)
It's not what I would call a classic, but Bram Stoker's Dracula does a really nice job of dressing up its arcade-style brawling action with a horror theme. If you enjoy simple, challenging gameplay, I'd recommend giving it a try.
(I also included a short clip of the game over screen at 1:03:31.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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