Bram Stok­er’s Dracula
Psyg­no­sis, 1993

Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la shows fangs with lazy underbite

What do Drac­u­la, Sony and gam­ing con­soles have in com­mon? In 1993, Sony was one of the few multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies that had own­er­ship of well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dios. Sony owned Tri-Star Pic­tures, which released the 1992 film Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, based on the leg­endary hor­ror sto­ry. Sony, known as Sony Image­soft at the time, had a strict hold on their movie busi­ness, which allowed them to devel­op games based off their releas­es on the box office front. Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la is one of those exam­ples that snuck onto the SNES.

Based on the movie, you play as Jonathan Hark­er who must res­cue his fiancé Mina Mur­ray from Drac­u­la’s clutch­es. Good old Drac­u­la believes that Mina is a mod­ern rein­car­na­tion of his pre­vi­ous love Elis­a­be­ta who was dri­ven to sui­cide by Drac­u­la’s ene­mies while he fought against the Ottoman empire in 1462. Deter­mined to have Mina by any means nec­es­sary, Drac­u­la begins his bat­tle against Hark­er with VERY high stakes involved. The graph­ics of the game are stan­dard 16-bit, but Sony gets cred­it for pair­ing details for each lev­el with rec­og­niz­able scenes from the film. Although the graph­ics made the game pre­sen­ta­tion campy, I thought the graph­ics stayed on task and did a ser­vice­able job. 

Con­trols to get Hark­er around are the usu­al fare for side scrollers on the SNES. An ambi­tious but under­ex­plained mechan­ic is Hark­er’s abil­i­ty to use var­i­ous weapons that he can pick up along the way from Dr. Van Hels­ing, who shows up to help. The con­trols, while stan­dard, aren’t the best; they need some work. Pre­ci­sion jump­ing and slash­ing is hit or miss when I least need it to be. 

The game music is OK, but the prob­lem is it’s repet­i­tive. If Sony owns the stu­dio that released the movie and its music was per­fect, why not use that same sound team to work its mag­ic for the game? This is not an imme­di­ate rea­son to avoid play­ing it, but Sony Image­soft could have done more for the game, espe­cial­ly if it is based off a box office hit. My griev­ances for this game are small but even the small details in its devel­op­ment can deter­mine its suc­cess or fail­ure. Sony did not give prop­er sup­port in cru­cial areas of the game’s development. 

Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, despite lack of atten­tion to detail in some areas, is a good game that pays trib­ute to the orig­i­nal work. The con­trols could use some work, and the sound­track could be bet­ter, but the game works as a decent tie-in to the movie adap­ta­tion. It’s some­thing you may be able to sink your teeth into.