Nosferatu (SNES) - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)
Nosferatu is the 219th episode and the 7th episode of Season 18 of The Angry Video Game Nerd.
Transcript[]
(The Nerd is watching a short promo for tonight's Halloween marathon on the Cinemassacre TV Channel.)
Announcer: Tonight's Halloween marathon continues! (scream) Ass Souls! Tonight at 9.
The Nerd: (drinks Rolling Rock) Well, seen that one before. Yeah, I'm gettin' tired of the same old horror movies. You know what, I'm gonna go see that new Nosferatu movie. Yeah! There's a new Nosferatu which is a remake of the remake. I'm very curious about that, so, gonna go check it out.
(The Nerd gets up and leaves his room.)
(Later...)
The Nerd: Uhhh, yeah, so it's not out yet. It comes out on Christmas. Christmas day! Of all the days of the year to release a horror film, why pick Christmas? What were they thinking? Well, gonna have to wait to see Nosferatu. But at least for now, I can play the game. That's right, the game.
(The Nerd picks out a Super Nintendo game from his shelf and inserts it into the SNES.)
The Nerd: Yeahh, Nosferatu on Super Nintendo. (An RPG like box appears on screen showing two dialogue choices) I'm sure you have one of two possible responses: "What's Nosferatu?" Well, um, it was the ancient Romanian word for "the insufferable one", but never mind that. It was the title of the 1922 German silent horror film, which happens to be the oldest surviving adaptation of Dracula. But if you already know that and you're thinking: "Holy shit! There's a Nosferatu game?" Well... see for yourself.
(The game begins. A woman's scream is heard in the background and gameplay is shown.)
The Nerd: Holy. Shit. Fuck my fuckin' nuts off, this looks amazing! For a 16-bit game, the graphics are very impressive. I hope I'm not making this assessment preemptively, but, I will say... this game is awesome. If you're at all surprised by just the fact this game exists, well, so was I. It was released in 1995 in North America, but it wasn't until after the turn of the millennium, when I first heard of it. If it was in Nintendo Power, I must have missed it. Its obscurity has some similarities to the classic film. As the story goes, the filmmakers didn't get permission to adapt the Dracula novel, so they changed the names. For example, Dracula was renamed Orlock. But a court ruled against it and ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed... though obviously, some managed to survive, because then, how the fuck are we looking at it? Though the game was never destroyed (not yet), it does feel like an unofficial Dracula. You can clearly tell from the cutscenes and especially the game over screen, that it's meant to be Dracula.
(Dracula evilly laughs.)
The Nerd: Some speculate that the reason they couldn't call it Dracula, or chose not to, was because of Konami having already established such a well-known franchise with the character. I mean, it's so famous I don't even think I need to say the name of this franchise, but I will: Castlevania. Or, Devil's Castle Dracula. I'm pretty sure the character was public domain by then, and it's worth noting that there were other Dracula games such as Bram Stoker's Dracula; you know, the one with Fred Fucks? But the Nosferatu game has the same type of premise: a guy goes into a castle to fight a bunch of monsters, ultimately to face a final vampire boss. But if there was any game it copied, it would be Prince of Persia, with its detailed character animation and controls that attempt realism. Ya have to painstakingly climb up walls, rather than just effortlessly hopping around. I wouldn't call this a platformer game, it's more like a cliffhanger game. So, what I'm saying is, Nosferatu, at its best, is Prince of Persia, and at its worst, is Lester the Unlikely, but, let's not go there.
The moves do take a while to figure out. Even if you look them up or somehow have the original manual, it takes a lot of practice. I actually ran the timer out before I even had a chance to try all the moves. And even then, sometimes the attacks just don't wanna connect. I have to address the fact that your only method of attack is punching and kicking. You know - I always find it amusing when you punch the ever loving fuck out of a monster. I mean - that takes some serious nerve; to just go up to that thing and punch it? He even raises his fists. Goes into a fight stance like, "Come and get it! Gonna hook you up with some combos!" Even in Doom, the reason you would ever punch demons, is because you ran out of bullets! But this guy, he came here, by choice, without any weapons. I mean - you can see, in the opening cutscene, he arrives at the castle unarmed! I figured along the way you would pick up weapons, right? A cross, a silver dagger, some holy water? But no. There are NO weapons AT ALL. Who would have thought a vampire hunting game would be all hand to-hand combat? And this guy doesn't seem to be a mutant or have any superpowered abilities. He's just some ordinary-looking dude! DAMN! Don't ever fuck with him!
When you beat the stage boss, he shows off some moves, like you won the round. Were they tryin' to make a tournament fighter or a beat 'em up game? And then at the last minute it got turned into a horror-themed adventure? Not to mention, the stage two boss... is... a pair of apes. What kind of theme are we going with here? I don't think they even knew what time period the game takes place. The game over screen has a photograph. At first, I didn't think much of it, but after dying so many times and having to constantly look at it, I started wondering: Why the hell would there be a photo? I mean - wait a minute, t-the date on it says 1990! Is that when the game is supposed to take place? I thought maybe 1890. In the cutscene, he's riding a horse. It definitely implies this is classic Dracula time period, but no. The Ninja Turtle movie came out the same year this guy's riding a fuckin' horse into a castle! And besides, that is one sorry ass game over screen. A guy and a girl smiling in a photo? Not a tombstone, or a pile of bones, or blood dripping letters that say "You're dead"? No, just a vacation photo that could be somebody's goddamn profile pic. Myspace, yeah! Uhh, isn't that what the kids do these days? Huh, no? I'm a little behind guys.
Who made this game?
(The Nerd takes out the SNES cartridge out of the console and looks at it.)
The Nerd: Gonna move my thumb away, yep. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna move my thumb away.
(Moves thumb away. It's revealed that SETA made this game.)
The Nerd: Ah. SETA. Yeah-yeah, it couldn't have been LJN, because, I already did all the LJN games, finished them all off in my episode 200. So, um, SETA! Uhhh, who did that? Oh... oh, oh no.
(The Nerd looks through one of his shelves and pulls out The Wizard of Oz for the SNES. It's revealed that SETA also made this game.)
The Nerd: Aughh, NO! NO!
NOW, we know the extent of what we're dealing with here. Check this out. You often come to a low clearance, where ya have to pass through a narrow space. You're probably thinking, "Ya just duck and crawl, right?", or "Do a slide, like Mega Man." Well, you'd be right that you slide, but it's not that simple. You don't just press Down and A, no; you have to get a head start, and then run by doing a double tap on the D-pad, and then you slide by pressing Down and Y. It may seem fine enough to deal with except, the run doesn't always work. You're probably familiar with other games that use the double tap to run, like Battletoads, and the Ninja Turtles beat 'em up games. But, this is like a broken version of that. Is it supposed to be two slow taps, two fast taps, or fuck it, try three taps? It doesn't matter! It only works when it feels like it, and that's unacceptable, because there are tons of spots where you NEED to run. Whether it's a running jump or a running slide, you have to do it again and again and again, so it must be reliable! But it isn't! Oh, and then there's times when you run by accident. Like if you're tryin' to walk real slow or inch yourself to a certain spot, it might trigger the run. Then, I realized something. It just hit me like a 10 ton pile of shit.
There is NO reason the double tap should be necessary at all. Couldn't run be its own button? Like L or R? Those do nothing! And what about X, or A? Those are dead buttons too! The game... ONLY USES Y and B! Attack and jump. You can reassign the buttons, but it doesn't matter, because there's only two! All the other buttons go to waste! It seems this game was designed for the NES. But this was in 1995! It wasn't like Super Nintendo just came out! In fact, PlayStation was out by then. I already said they didn't know what genre game they were making, but they didn't even know what CONSOLE they were making it for!
I'm startin' to think this game might not be as awesome as it first looks. Man. Such potential. Great style, great design. I mean, who doesn't love a good spooky adventure where you're going through a bunch of haunted scenery, fighting creatures of the night? But it's ruined by one minor peeve after another! Certain monsters drop crystals on the floor, but you have to stand in the most precise spot to pick them up. It's like tryin' to pick a penny off the floor. It's not worth it! What are these crystals for, anyway? Well, to increase your attack power and shit. But, it doesn't matter. As soon as the next thing hits you, you lose them! Let's say ya open a treasure chest and get an item. What would be your next instinct? To walk away, right? You got the item. Done. But no. I found out there could actually be more items in the chest, so ya have to keep grabbing until you've got everything. Who would think to do that? In Zelda, when ya open a chest, there's only one item. That's it! You don't keep digging into the same chest. But some chests, have no items at all. Instead, a shitty ghost that pops out and hits you! That's a cheap shot; a gotcha trap!
But everything I've mentioned so far, is just petty poopy. The REAL shit is comin' up. Theoretically, it's a short game, with only six stages. But you know what other game has only six stages? Ghosts N' Goblins. And that's one of the hardest, most ball-bustin' motherfuckers ever. With Nosferatu, it doesn't really get that hard until stage three, and as far as I'm concerned, that's where the playability runs out. The problem, is they give you only one life. When you die, it's game over and you go back to the last checkpoint, wherever that is. They're REAL stingy about these checkpoints. After a long, punishing stretch, you'll come to a doorway, which would seem like the perfect logical place for the checkpoint, but, nope. Well, that's one way to make six stages feel like a hundred: by turning them into endurance rounds, forcing the player to repeat the same parts over and over and over, until they've mastered it.
I'm playing on the normal difficulty setting by the way, and, I CANNOT pass stage three. Not without a code. And I tried for hours. I gave it my best. You know, this gave me that same experience as all those tough ass games you've seen me play over the years. It's so familiar to me now, I recognize it, like a sickness coming on. "Oh, here's the sore throat phase." "Here comes the runny nose." You've gone through it so many times, you know the feeling. And here's how I would describe what I'd call, the three phases of Angry Nerd gaming.
Phase one, is the confusion stage. What am I supposed to do? Where do I go? This is when you learn the game, and the only way to do that is by dying a lot. You will attempt leaps of faith, or, more like faithless leaps of death. You will run into dead ends, and have to find your way around the maze. You will get stuck, until you realize, there's a hidden path. The classic cryptic bullshit. And you might even fall through the goddamn floor! So, essentially, what you're doing in phase one, is having a free-for-all fuck up fest until you've memorized the entire layout of the stage, up 'till the next checkpoint.
Phase two, is when the element of chance creeps in behind you and kicks you in the ass. This is the part when you think nothing major can go wrong, because by now, you know what you're doing. You have the knowledge and the practice, but for some reason, shit doesn't work. Let's say you have to make a running jump to grab onto a wall. Three simple actions: Run, jump, grab. And if just one of those become unresponsive - Look see, just like that. It didn't grab, but I know I was pressing up. The biggest wild card for me was this section, where you have to pass over a spike pit, while hopping across three crumbling platforms, and being chased by some obnoxious creature that swings from the ceiling. It even laughs at you when you die! It seems self-explanatory enough: just hop across the platforms. But sometimes the jump fails, and he gets stuck in this crouching position like, what the hell? I was hitting the jump button! Sometimes you try to jump, and he just falls into the pit! And even when you've made it across, there's still a chance, it'll happen again. I've tried holding left while tapping B, tapping left while holding B, every possible combination to hack the controls, and just when I thought I had it figured out, it stopped working. It's all random luck of the controls, and whenever I did pass this section, I always ended up dying somewhere else! You're expected to have a perfect marathon, which is basically like trying to flip a coin, and have it land on heads multiple times in a row. When you fail, you get mad, and wanna try that same part over again, immediately, while it's fresh in your mind! But no, you have to start over, and redo that whole stretch. And that brings me to phase three.
Phase three, is when boredom and fatigue sets in. This is the stage of the sickness when you're wondering, "When is this gonna be over?" You're so exhausted from playing the same parts over and over, that you start playing shittier, because you're rushing. Your patience is gone! This is when you can barely even stand to look at the graphics anymore. Those colors and patterns are burning into your eyeballs, and that music has fucked its way into your mind.
(As the stage three theme plays, the Nerd makes noises, matching to the tune of the main melody due to having hearing it a hundred times.)
The Nerd: (laughs) Ah, as you can see, I lost my fuckin' mind. Yeah, I-I-I hit my breaking point. I realized there was no way I was passing stage three, even if I spent allll day. So that's when I tried the code. This allowed me the opportunity to play every stage... and fail on every stage.
(Cut to a montage of the protagonist dying in multiple ways such as falling from too high of a height, eyeballs, spikes, and the spike pit.)
The Nerd: Fuck! Auah! Ohh, fuck! (drinks Rolling Rock)
(Cut to the protagonist struggling to beat a boss.)
The Nerd: Fuck! FUUUCK! FUUUUUCK!
I've shown you everything worthwhile. There's not that much variety.
So, here's the final battle with Dracula, or Nosferatu, whatever. He switches back and forth between his human and bat forms. And, I have to say, I had my doubts, but it turns out that you still don't get any weapon, even at this point in the game. The whole mission comes down to a bare fisted slugfest against the king of vampires! It's one thing for this guy to go around punching monsters, but to actually kill, to KILL the undead prince of evil with his bare fucking fists, makes him the most unbelievably BADASS character of all time! Jeez! Holy SHIT! Can you kill a vampire in hand-to-hand combat? Is that part of the lore? Did they ever establish that in the original Nosferatu film?
(Cut to a scene of a man reading an excerpt from a book. It reads, "Vampires can be killed by a fist to the balls or a kick to the dick.")
The Nerd: Come to think of it, this battle goes exactly how you'd expect. I mean - look at this. I'm getting my ass handed to me. And, it's pretty rare to see your life bar bigger than the final boss's, and STILL impossible to beat him! I managed to sneak in a combo every now and then, but it takes two combos to drain only HALF of one crystal! HALF!
(sighs) You know what, fuck this game. This is one of the most DECEIVINGLY shitty games I've ever played, because it's ALMOST awesome! It has a great style in that Castlevania sorta way. Let's not say Castlevania, because it only makes me wish I was playing Castlevania. It has awful, unpredictable controls, not enough checkpoints, no extra lives, cheap traps! If you have anxiety, this is a game that a doctor would tell you to avoid. It's one of the most nerve wracking pieces of shit on the Super Nintendo! By all definitions, this IS Nosferatu! The INSUFFERABLE one!
(Suddenly, the scene changes to the style of a black and white horror silent film. The game cartridge comes alive, escapes from the SNES console, and flies off.)
The Nerd (silent): You piece of shit!
(The Nerd gets up, flashes a middle finger in silhouette form, then walks over to the flying cartridge.)
The Nerd (silent): Fuckin' bastard!
(The Nerd punches the cartridge three times, sending it flying out of the window.)