Keanu Reeves vs. Kaiju Renfield: Remembering ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ on Sega Genesis
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was genuinely one of the first and strongest movie obsessions of my life. Even as a kid who started watching horror pretty young, I saw it way too young. Well, a good chunk of it, at least, before my mom walked in on me and my dad watching it and was horrified. I’m pretty sure it was the scene where Keanu Reeves’ Jonathan Harker is accosted by Dracula’s brides, and I was no older than four or five. We had taped it off of Pay-Per-View or HBO, and after witnessing that scene, my mom taped over it even though I’m positive I did not yet know how to use a VCR. But I was a spooky kid from the earliest age. I wore out my tape of Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf and Mad Monster Party. I grew up in an age where monsters were marketed to kids in a way that’s tough to even conceive of now. I had Big Frank, a Frankenstein’s Monster designed for very young children to open up, dissect and put back together. I had Monster Face, even though he terrified me. By the time I was in first grade, I owned all the major Universal Monster movies on VHS, and I had their tie-in toys and coloring books.
Looking back, I love that those films from the ’30s and ’40s, not even any family friendly versions of them, were marketed so strongly to kids of the ’90s. One day in third grade, I was sick and my dad went out and rented me Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I was already a Dracula nut, but finally seeing that film in full when I was a little older (all of eight) truly kicked off the obsession for me.
From that point, all I wanted to do was watch the movie again and again. Of course, my mom remembered how that had gone when I was little, so it was one of the few specific films that felt off-limits. Thankfully, that led to me asking for the novel that Christmas and it became my favorite novel, which I still try to re-read every year. It also led to another miraculous find, in the used games section of Electronics Boutique: it led me to find the Bram Stoker’s Dracula video game for Sega Genesis.
I’m willing to bet most people are unfamiliar with this game, either because they weren’t born yet or because they never played it, as it was not exactly popular. But that’s okay, because it gives me the great joy of explaining it to you. I didn’t have the means to watch the movie over and over, but that inaccessibility led to the discovery of one of my childhood favorite games. I could play Bram Stoker’s Dracula over and over, even though the game was, let’s say, a loose adaptation of the film. Even still, it’s remarkable how much of the design of the feature is intact, particularly a few specific characters, especially considering the fact that it is a very unique looking movie that you’d think would be hard to emulate in just about any format.
Before I jump into frothing at the mouth about this game, I should mention the important disclaimer that I’m only talking about the Sega Genesis version. I am aware that the game was slightly — or maybe even drastically — different on each platform, but I only ever played the Genesis version. Now, for those of you who are so very young (under 30) Genesis, Super Nintendo and their ilk were the last gasp of 2D side-scrolling game consoles before the 3D wave of PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and so on took over. Being that this is a 2D animated side-scrolling game in which you are bombarded with hordes of enemies as you navigate various locations and inevitably fight some kind of boss at the end of every level, there’s not a lot of wiggle room in that template for any kind of direct adaptation of the film.
Within that template though, and bending the world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to fit the approach of a Castlevania clone, it’s absolutely gangbusters.
In the game, you play as Jonathan Harker, and you play as him from beginning to end, rather than simply being imprisoned in the castle while the Count makes his way to London. You start out on the journey to the castle, in the village, presumably in a tavern. Here, you fight your way through everything from bats, spiders, rats to knights and either zombies or possibly just drunks. From there, it’s onto the forest where the spiders get bigger, there are wolves, and also more drunk zombie knights. The game just keeps throwing enemies like this throughout its entire duration. We’re not talking about John Wick Keanu here, either. All due respect to my good buddy Jonathan Harker, but it’s hard to imagine that Keanu winning a fight against any one of these things.
But I really want to talk about the stage bosses because that’s where the true joy of this game lies. There’s a perfect combo happening here, with this being in the most basic terms a riff on Castlevania while also being a tie-in to a huge studio film. The bosses you fight in the game are all characters you will recognize from the film, but they’re also all giant. Most of them are at least three Keanus high. What I am telling you, and I really want this to sink in, is that this is a video game where you play as Keanu Reeves and fight a kaiju Tom Waits.
Yes, you also fight a giant Sadie Frost and several giant Gary Oldmans. Weirdly, Monica Belluci and the other vampire brides are only just above normal height. Dracula is where the game really soars as an adaptation — no surprise, I guess — and kind of highlights why this is probably the only Dracula film that would ever work as a game of this type. In a Dracula game, it’s hard to fight the same guy over and over again. Castlevania invented an entire mythology of creatures to ensure you weren’t just fighting Dracula the whole time. But in a traditional Dracula story, sure, you’ve got the brides, Renfield, and Lucy, but they only take you so far. Dracula’s the guy. However, Bram Stoker’s Dracula sees the character go through so many different transformations, all of them entirely unique from one another, and every single one of them pop up as a boss in this game. That’s perfect. That way, you do fight Dracula over and over, but it feels fresh every single time, because it’s like a completely different character. It’s great for fans of the movie, too, because you know all of these different looks the character adapts throughout the movie and there’s a lot of fun in anticipating which one you’re going to see next.
We’ve got creepy carriage driver Dracula, old Dracula, young Dracula, wolf Dracula, bat Dracula, and we’ve even got that excellent Devil Armor Dracula from the beginning of the movie, which is possibly one of the greatest character designs ever committed to film. If you felt it was underutilized in Coppola’s movie, the game has you covered. There’s a terrific intro sequence with Vlad in the armor, illuminated by lightning, surrounded by silhouetted, impaled victims. Okay, not really. He’s surrounded by the silhouetted poles, yes, but adorning them are just flags where bodies would typically be. It really emulates the movie’s prologue sequence, in the tamest way possible, and in 16-bit graphics.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was not well received, but that has simply never stopped me for games like this. I was raised on licensed games. Hell, I’ve worked on one. On Genesis alone, this game sat comfortably beside the likes of Alien 3, Predator 2, Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition, T2: The Arcade Game and who knows how many Batman, X-Men, Spider-Man etc. games. I adore tie-ins like this. These are the things that truly make a film feel like a cultural moment. The fact that Bram Stoker’s Dracula had not only this, but a comic book, novelization (yes, separate from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the novel) and even a pinball game still brings a smile to my face just to think about. Especially considering the fact that we live in a world where even the some of the biggest Marvel movies don’t get any of those things anymore.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula remains an absolute favorite film to this day. It was one of the defining movies of my youth. Its popularity now might not be what it was then, but that legacy will always live on and be tracked through the weird crap that it spawned, like this game. I love this stuff. I had a blast with this game throughout my childhood and I still think it is equal parts hilarious and genuinely great, conceptually. It’s such a specific relic of such a specific time, when even when the film wasn’t made for children, kids like me could load up the game, immerse ourselves in 16-bit Transylvania and kill Dracula whenever we wanted. Then we’d just have to blow on the cartridge to bring him back to life and do it all over again.
