Nosferatu (SNES)

This looks a bit... crap. Why is the castle covered in jam? Why is the text in camo?

Dracula gets all the chicks! No really, he's going around kidnapping them.

But our hero isn't happy about this. See, his girlfriend has been nabbed by the crafty count, so he's come here alone and unarmed to get her back. This kid has balls.

Right off I'm impressed with how slick this game is. The backgrounds are atmospheric, the characters animate fluidly, the music is ambient and creepy (with lots of weird breathing). This feels like a game I should have heard of before.

The gameplay is based on the original Prince of Persia, with our hero leaping chasms, triggering floor panels, mantling ledges etc. But it has Castlevaniaesque monsters roaming the halls to get in your way.

The camera switched to a new angle as I walked into this room, but the enemies outside are the same ones I left out there, still roaming around like the stupid monsters they are.

These chests are sneaky. You'd expect to open it, and get everything inside like other games. But instead you have to search over and over until you can be certain it's entirely empty.

I've found a crystal in one of them, which so far has only been good for getting smashed out of my hands when an enemy attacks. But I'm sure there's a good reason for collecting them. Probably.

This guy crawled out of the mess on the ground when I tried opening the crate, so I gave him a smack. There's actually a decent array of combat moves available to you. Punches, uppercuts, spinning kicks, dodges, slide kicks. Though it can be hard to pull some of them off.

Okay, I don't get it. I've try pushing it, jumping at it, ducking, kicking it. I tried to crawl, or roll or hang off the edge of the wall. And the time limit is so strict I haven't got time to waste here.

And when the time runs out it's game over. Because I got stuck at a wall. Son of a bitch.

You only have the one life, but at least you seem to have infinite continues. Which in this case put me back right at the very start of the game.

Now I've got to race back to that damn wall as fast as possible to give myself a chance to figure out a way to get through the gap.

AHA, you can slide under it! I've learned a new move!

And then I get crushed by one of these. Instant kill, back to the start of the game again. Son of a BITCH!

I tried going across here, but these things kept dropping out of the ceiling and attacking me. I couldn't seem to get rid of them or react fast enough. I guess I wasn't supposed to go this way. Also game over etc.

I think I'd at least crossed a checkpoint by this point though, so I wasn't thrown back all the way to the start for once.

And then I got outside the castle and had an epic fight with a werewolf boss. It had two forms, each with it's own life bar that needed to be knocked down separately. Dying would have of course sent me back before the start of the fight, there are no lives in this, no second chances to come back with full health and finish the job.

I hate boss fights.

He knocked me to within an inch of my life... but I managed to beat that asshole werewolf!


And I somehow didn't manage to grab a single screenshot of any of it! Despair!

All I have is this picture of my dude being killed immediately afterwards by an eye.

Oh well, maybe she'll like being a vampire.


This game annoyed the hell out of me, but I just can't hate it. It's too well made, too slick and pretty. I'd recommend it to any Prince of Persia fans looking for something cruel to play, but I'm done with it.