The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Dracula
Enjoy the rare game where you get to play as the villain… and where two players are far better than one.
RELEASE DATE: 1983
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Imagic
BEST VERSIONS: Intellivision
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Potentially playable
The Intellivision was home to some pretty unusual console games, and Dracula is certainly a game unlike anything else I’ve ever played. Unlike most games about the world’s most famous vampire, you don’t play as a hero trying to slay Dracula – you are Dracula, and your mission is to lure victims out of their homes and suck their blood. And what’s more, the game isn’t some sort of Pac-Man knock-off where you’re running around a maze and chasing victims down; it’s more like a 2.5D beat ‘em up in the vein of Double Dragon with a little bit of strategy and timing mixed in. (And yes, this game predates Kung-Fu Master and Renegade, making it the earliest example of the genre I’ve encountered!)
It’s also a game where you need both Intellivision controllers or, if you’re playing on an emulator, some clever remapping to a modern gamepad.
The basic idea is this: as Dracula, you’re supposed to go out night by night and kill enough victims to keep your blood meter up before daylight comes. On the first stage of the easiest difficulty level, all you have to do is nab a few victims either by attacking people on the street or by luring them out of their apartments – though you have to be careful, because if they see you murdering innocents on the street, they’ll hide in the safety of their homes instead. Once you have your requisite number of victims, a white wolf will appear and chase you off to the graveyard, where you slumber until the next night. One way to avoid the wolf is to take the form of a bat, which allows you to easily outspeed him.
As the difficulty level progresses either through the levels or the challenge mode you select, however, you will notice that taking the form of a bat will attract a purple vulture who’ll try to snatch you. And eventually, a policeman will begin walking the streets, stunning you with batons and generally making it harder to be Dracula. Even worse, the policemen must have a garlic-heavy diet because you can only freeze them temporarily them when you suck their blood. The only way to kill them is to find another victim, press a different button to bite that victim and turn them into a zombie, and then use the second controller to make the zombie attack the policeman. The zombie will only exist for 10 seconds, but at least counts as a bite once he expires.
The game technically has two multiplayer modes, but I’d include the single-player mode as a third since it’s really fun to have a friend control the Zombie while you continue your reign of terror as Dracula. One mode alternates play where you’re essentially taking turns playing the single-player game to see who can score the highest. It’s a bit of a snoozer, and it’s also confusing since the second player controls Dracula with the second controller and the Zombie with the first.
The other mode is far more fun – one player is Dracula and the other plays as the victim. In this mode, there are no zombies, and the victim scores points every time Dracula takes a bite, whether he succeeds or not. On each day, the two players change roles, and it becomes a fun challenge to see who’s the better Dracula and who’d be more likely to survive an encounter with him.
The graphics for Dracula are decent for an Intellivision game and the sound gets the job done, but what really makes the game work is its psychotic emphasis on being the bad guy. It’s actually quite rare to play a game from this era where you’re encouraged to be a villain and kill innocent people, and it’s also unusual to see a game from the early 1980s that has the 2.5D perspective of a late 1980s beat ‘em up and realistic environments like city streets. As with most of Imagic’s games, Dracula was unique for its time and truly ahead of the curve for where gaming was heading. It’d be awesome if this game could get a modern remake with some expanded mechanics.
Playing Dracula today isn’t terribly easy because it was only released in one compilation – the 2001 Intellivision Rocks CD-ROM for PCs and Macs. Even in that version, you have to play with a tortured keyboard mapping to control both characters. You’re far better off playing the game on the original Intellivision, complete with its awkward controller.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!