In the early and mid '90s, virtual reality was everyone's dream, the big technological trend. My God, could you imagine a piece of equipment that could make you feel like you were transported to different locales, different time periods? Or, the big one, equipment and the programming that could place you inside your favorite TV show or movie? It's the 1990s, the future, and the future has always promised two things: flying cars and virtual reality! The future is now!
I think it was that kind of thinking that led to the early '90s "motion picture video game" style of video games. Popular on the PC, which was quickly forced into every home "because it's the future!," motion picture video games never really impressed people. They were touted as the next step in video games -- the bridge towards placing you in a video game, like VR! -- but they were hardly video games! A majority of them made you sit through clips and told you what buttons to push and a little meter in the corner reacted to it. Instead of placing you within the video, it was basically the video game equivalent of Simon -- you had to punch in the correct pattern of buttons or else it would be "game" over. This wasn't the future! This sucked! And a lot of the motion picture games would lag as they loaded, so they were nearly impossible to "play." (An example: there was a noir-based shooting game called "Who Shot Johnny Rock?" which required you to react quickly to hidden assassins. Problem was, you'd recognize an assassin, scroll your target over to aim, and the damn video would freeze as it loaded, favoring the assassin who then shot you and then game over. Fun, right?)
To a young kid who grew up on 8-bit Nintendo and loved video games, the Sega CD's arrival was exciting. This is it! A player's total immersion into video games! This was pre-internet, folks, so nobody knew what a flop the system would be. Sega CD was damned pricey and I couldn't buy one and none of my friends had one. But did it flop -- it debuted in late '92 and was in mark-down aisles by '94. How do I know '94? Well, I remember watching the movie Brainscan, thinking how cool it looked to have a totally immersive video game -- that came on CD, not a big, clunky gray cartridge -- one that was like real life, not some video game about an Italian plumber who eats mushrooms and kills turtles. Then I remembered...the Sega CD. Yeah, the Sega CD looked like Brainscan, it looked like the future, the ultimate in gaming experience. Soon afterwards, I bought a Sega CD and a ton of video games (because they were practically all in bargain bins.) Finally! So long, onion-ring collecting hedgehogs! Hello, a video game experience that's so intense it blurs reality and gaming! The future was here...
...and it sucked. The Sega CD's massive disappointment and suckiness is well-documented, of course, but in addition to those "motion video" video games and their lagging I talked about above, even their traditional side-scrolling games were disappointing. Games like Bram Stoker's Dracula or Cliffhanger had such clunky controls that they were impossible to play. Those motion video games were either pointless or dumb or so nonsensical that they weren't worth the effort. (And that's not even touching upon how many of them had local car dealership commerical production value and/or -- usually and -- the acting caliber of an Unsolved Mysteries-type reenactment.) But one game always interested me. One game always stood out as not only being interesting to me, but actually fun: Dracula Unleashed, which the packaging boasted as "the first interactive gothic horror game."
Dracula Unleashed is meant to be a sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula. The plot involves the American Alexander Morris arriving in turn-of-the-century London to investigate the suspicious death of his brother, Quincy. (Quincy would be the guy played by The Rocketeer in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film -- the one who died while fatally wounding Dracula with a Bowie knife.) Alexander's investigation is slowed down when he meets a woman, Annisette, and begins a relationship with her. He continues to make contact with those who knew Quincy -- familiar characters like the Harkers and Arthur Holmwood -- when a series of grisly murders begin to occur around London. Murders...of the vampire kind! It looks like Dracula's back, and it spooks the ones surrounding Alexander, impeding his investigation, all while he's swept up in the mystery which involves Annisette.
The way you play the game is you control each of Alexander's moves. Each distance he travels is measured by time, which is crucial -- arrive at someone's house too late, you're likely to be turned away by their servants and therefore could miss out on a critical piece of information. Arrive at the newspaper stand too late, you might miss out on a piece of the puzzle. Arrive at a shady part of town too late? You might find a vampire biting a game over into your neck. Not only is it important to visit particular locations at particular times, but the game has a whole variety of objects you'll need to gather and have in hand to unlock certain parts of video and advance the story. There's a whole variety of ways to screw up in this game, but I find it an overall enjoyable game that's not frustratingly unplayable like a lot of these "movie" video games that the Sega CD and PC loved.
The acting is surprisingly decent as far as these games go -- it can be a bit theatrical at times, but not terrible -- and I think they did a good enough job on the sets and wardrobe -- I can't imagine the budget for this being all that high, but they make the most of it. The makers create a good atmosphere that evokes the feeling of a Victorian-set horror tale -- and I'm a bit of a sucker for horror set in that period, they go hand in hand to me since all of the classics are based on novels from that period. (So, it's a bit of a disappointment to me that I couldn't get into Showtime's series Penny Dreadful.) There was a company several years ago who released the game onto DVD, and it's nice to have in good video quality (as well as extras such as a making of and outtakes). I prefer to play the game on Sega CD, though -- it's easier to navigate and access the items the character carries.
I still think this game is fun, with a lot of neat little details that you'll appreciate if you're a fan of Dracula or horror stories set in the time period, and it's a clever continuation of the Dracula story. It's a game that I still like to haul out and play every now and then and people should be a little more open-minded about it (and the Sega CD system in general).
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