Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (SNES)
Bits Studios, 1994
A Creature this pitiful should have shuffled off the mortal coil
Mary Shelley, in her gilded coffin of prose and man and madness, must have rolled over in her grave when this abomination based on her greatest work was released. As if the ’90s didn’t have enough terrible movie-to-game ties, along shambles the vitriolic cash grab that is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The plot is tied directly to the 1994 movie directed by the inimitable Kenneth Branaugh and starring the legendary Robert De Niro. Victor Frankenstein, a medical student, brings his creation to life through science. The Creature, which is soundly rejected as an abomination by society, wanders the Earth attempting to find Victor and exact revenge.
The original story is compelling. The video game version is not. As someone who read Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus previously, I have exposure to the story and the characters. The game does nothing to tie the movie or the story to the game. You start the game as a being with no explanation of who you are or what you’re supposed to be doing. The struggle is immediately and painfully obvious once you’re dropped on the scene of a tired brown village. As I later learned, I start as the Creature, and I’m supposed to be fleeing the village. The villagers assume the Creature is a demon and are trying to kill him while he’s on the way to find and kill Victor. That’s the gist of the story, but I had to piece that together while watching other playthroughs. That was atrocious in 1994 and is still atrocious today.
Equally terrible are the gameplay and graphics, which go hand in hand. There is nothing redeeming about playing as the Creature. He animates terribly and plays just as terribly. He moves slowly through every motion and looks horrible while doing so. His shuffling gait starkly contrasts with his spry yet stale jumping, and his abilities to swing a weapon 
are subpar at best. Of special note, the platforming elements are absolutely garbage. Egregiously, there is no map to indicate previously visited areas or locations of interest. That’s necessary if you’re asking me to backtrack and solve hidden item puzzles in a large playfield. In an age where Super Metroid had been recently released, there is no excuse for this type of ludicrous oversight. Sure, this is a quick movie tie-in, but the least you can do as a developer is take notes from a master of the craft and at least halfway attempt to steal basic concepts such as a map.
And about the only redeeming factor is the music. The tracks are repetitive but they’re 1990s house music and gothic meanderings so it’s tolerable. But that can’t save the otherwise mediocre product that groaned out of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece novel.
The obvious draw of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is, in fact, the Creature but you wouldn’t know it from the way this plays overall. There is nothing here, except for the soundtrack, that is worth bothering with and even then, that’s questionable. Much like De Niro’s choice to play the Creature, the biggest question of this whole travesty is why?