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Game Title: Nosferatu
Platform: SNES
Developer: Seta Corporation
Publisher: Seta Corporation
Genre: Platform
Age Rating: ESRB: K-A Kids to Adults
Release Date: October 7th 1994 (Japan), October 1995 (North America)
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Game Score: 5.5/10
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Summery:
Your main fear with importing Nosfertu on the SNES is dealing with the clumsy controls.
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Now many gamers have heard about and/or played Nosfertu: The Wrath of Malachi for the PC which was a decent First Person Shooter which played much of a game to Bram Stoker's Dracula novel didn't it. Well how about a Nosfertu platform game on the SNES system which was released on the Super Nintendo game system that never ever got a release in Europe. Nope...well too bad cause this game was developed by Seta Corporation, the same company that also made the extremely awful Wizard of Oz game on the same console. Well this game can't be that bad right?
In Nosferatu for the SNES you play as Kyle who had his girlfriend Erin kidnapped by the menacing beast himself. You'll have to traverse through 6 Stages to arrive at the showdown with Nosfertu and rescue your girlfriend before it's too late. The introduction is impressive with it's good writing and also the character animations that are very slick and super smooth even for a Super Nintendo game.
Nosfertu is a rotoscoped powered platformer that plays much like the original Prince of Persia games where you guide your hero across various areas such as tombs, castles and dungeons. Throughout the six levels you fight off against different ghouls and also spending the majority of each stage doing some climbing, pushing walls and jumping across platforms to avoid traps such as spikes, blades and other things that can attack you.
The control is mostly the same as Prince of Persia and the best parts of the game is when your solving puzzles that involve moving walls around to use as floors for climbing onto. You'll slowly get the hang of the deadly obstacles like avoiding zombies that swing by to knock you down or jumping your way past gaps before the brick you stand on breaks and takes you to your doom. Most of the platforming control works well accept for one major obstacle, sliding to get through middle gaps. Before I mention that I would like to note that this game only uses two of the SNES buttons. One button punches while the other button Jumps, with these controls it becomes a pain to get used to later on in the game. Back to sliding, in order to pull that off you'll need to get a running start and then press down + the attack button at the same time while your running. You can't let go of the direction your character is currently running otherwise you'll stop. Most of the time you'll end up bumping your head, or if your timing is slightly too late when sliding through a gate it kills you instantly when it comes back down.
Now it's on to the game's biggest problem and that's the fighting controls. As I already mentioned that one of the two buttons is the punch button and also the main character you play as only relays on his fists. He never uses a whip like the Belmonts in Castlevania, never uses a sword or a holy cross to drive certain beasts away, instead it's his martial arts that he relays on. You start off doing basic three hit combos but however you'll find treasure chests where you'll Crystals that increase and restore your Life, Hourglasses that extend your time and most importantly Crystals that add up your attack combos. You need these Crystals to be able to deal more damaging combos but however if you get knocked down you'll lose a Crystal. Worst of if you die in the game (and trust me you will a lot) all your Crystals you got so far are gone which leaves you with little to no chance against some of the tough enemies later on in the game. Most of the time some enemies can charge in at you and your punches can't save you. Shifting from side to side against the enemies is also a nightmare. You shift by using the D-Pad while the attack button is held down which might be useful for dodging some attacks but some enemies are quicker so you can't relay on it too much. Most of the game you're ill-equipped to deal with the challenge with the fighting in the game.
The only thing that the fighting works great on is the boss encounters that you'll get at the end of each stage. Most bosses have a simple pattern to follow and you'll breeze some of these fights or the most part except for the fourth boss who can literally hammer you down if you mostly go all out.
After you manage to even pass the first stage the game becomes more difficult. There's floating eyeball monsters that constantly knock you down, fat ghoulish monsters that can charge stright at you causing you to fall to your death, floating axes that you can't do anything about aside from trying to avoid being slammed down to the spikes by them, the list of troubles goes on. Anytime you die you start of back from the beginning of the stage, there are checkpoints yeah but however the game doesn't really announce that you passed through a checkpoints as the game goes by a floor to floor progression. The only you'll know that you've gone through a Checkpoint is that if you've past the second floor on a stage and then got a time extended upon starting your third floor. Even on the Easy difficulty setting the game is still hard. Only experts who have played through either Prince of Persia or Another World (Out of this World in US) multiple times should ever decide to play this game.
One thing that really stands out for the game is the graphics. Using the rotoscoped graphics engine Nosferatu's details are impressive including the cutscenes which are absolutely superb for the system. Character animation as well as the monsters are very smooth and the details in the levels have an impressive dark atmosphere toward it. The music tracks that are mostly consist of technical beats adds some of the ghoulish elements to the game as well.
Overall I think with some tweaks to the controls and the sometimes unfair difficulty then Nosferatu could be considered as an underrated SNES classic, instead the game provides a difficulty factor that may frustrate players for their time they spent playing through this game. For me I was unfortunately gone through the game, only to receive the Bad Ending cause I died so many times. Yes, this game has two different endings depending on if you've beat through the game with minimal deaths for the good ending. I honestly would not have thought that there was a Nosferatu game on the SNES that missed it's release in Europe. However after playing it for myself on Emulator then I'm going to say that it's not worth the asking price on second hand auction sites. Your main fear with importing Nosfertu on the SNES is dealing with the clumsy controls, obstacles that can easily insult in you dying over and over, and whether or not you can get the good ending after enduring the entire punishment.
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The Good Points:
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Outstanding rotoscoped graphics even for the Super Nintendo
Good variety of platforming and puzzle elements
The Bad Points:
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Very Clumsy Fighting controls that can easily result in dying as well as some annoying obstacles
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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