Kid Dracula (Game Boy Review)
October 30, 2024 5 Comments
Kid Dracula
aka Akumajō Supesharu: Boku Dorakyura-kun
Platform: Game Boy
Released January 3, 1993
Designed by Yukari Hayano
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED*
*Okay, TECHNICALLY Kid Dracula did sort of get re-released once. In 2000, Kid Dracula was added to Japan’s Nintendo Power flash cartridge service. So it really should be classified as NO MODERN RELEASE.
Is it a remake, a reboot, or a sequel? “Yes.”
I just reviewed the Famicom-exclusive Kid Dracula. I almost skipped reviewing the Game Boy version after my experience playing the original for the review didn’t live up to my memories of playing it in 2019, with Castlevania Anniversary Collection. I’m happy I didn’t skip it, because it sure was an interesting game. This is the only Kid Dracula that the whole world got. But, even with the global release, this was it. The end of Kid Dracula as a franchise. Why is that? Well, I’m guessing most people never bothered trying this, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Kid Dracula suffers from what I like to call “Avenging Spirit Syndrome.” A quality Game Boy release that they put about two seconds worth of effort for the box art on, so nobody bought it. Have a look.
Are you f*cking kidding me? Go through all the effort of developing and manufacturing a game only to have the box art look like how it does on the left. Compare that to the visually striking Japanese cover art that looks like a game that actual effort was put into. We’re a shallow species, and when people see a cover that’s phoned-in, they assume the game is too. That’s not unreasonable, by the way, so do not half ass your cover art. Shameful. Absolutely shameful.
Box art has nothing to do with gameplay, of course, but it really pisses me off because I’m almost certain that cover art drove a stake in the heart of Kid Dracula as a franchise. The Game Boy version, which is part remake, part sequel, slays the NES original while also making some bonkers mistakes. Honestly, the box art tracks, because there were some infuriating decisions made when developing Kid Dracula. Like, hey, who wants post-stage mini-games with so much text that it takes forever just to get to them? Seriously, these are supposed to be the fun little side-game stuff, but the game won’t sh*t the f*ck up and just keeps going and going and going and GOD DAMMIT WHY IS THIS GAME SO F*CKING INFURIATING IN SO MANY NON-ESSENTIAL WAYS?!
If a mini-game requires this much text to explain, maybe you shouldn’t f*cking include it in a Game Boy game! This particular mini-game is basically the Game & Watch disaster “Judge.” AKA the Game & Watch I ranked 51st out of 52 possible games. After painfully explaining the rules to rock-paper-scissors a half-sentence at a time (because that’s all they could fit in the teeny tiny text box), the rules KEPT GOING. You see, it’s not enough just to have the correct throw. No, if you get the right throw, you also have to press a button to club your opponent over the head. If you throw the wrong thing, you can also block. If you hit your opponent when you lost or had a tie, you get a foul. Sometimes, the opponent blocks you, causing this trash fire to drag on even more. You have to get five hits to your opponent’s two, including fouls. This is supposed to be the fun side distraction?
I’ve never seen a platform game from this era with as much downtime as Kid Dracula on the Game Boy has. The levels aren’t that much longer than the time it takes for you to (1) see the cutscene after beating the boss (2) see the new power you earned. Steps 1 & 2 are the only ones you can skip if you want extra lives (3) go through the “welcome to the bonus round” text. At this point, you can opt out of steps 4 through 11, BUT, if you need lives (4) see the text that painfully explains to you every single time what four games could potentially happen based on which crystal ball will have which bonus game (5) the animation that shuffles the crystal balls, which takes a while but goes slow enough that you can clock it (6) you have to choose one of the four crystal balls (7) the idiot telling you what mini-game was selected (8) the introduction and rules to the mini-game (9) actually playing the mini-game, some of which are timed, and some of which can hypothetically go on forever (10) the post-game wrap-up telling you what you won or didn’t win (11) then being sent BACK to the post-stage menu where it takes two screens to say the words “what would you like (next screen) this time?” and if you have enough coins to play again, you have to repeat steps 4 through 11 (12) seeing a completely pointless and non-interactive map screen. THEN you get to actually play Kid Dracula again. Un-f*cking-real! Below is a slideshow of all the screens it takes to get through steps 3 through 7, and that’s not even close to the whole process of getting back to the game!
The worst part about all of that is Kid Dracula is a mostly really good game. Right from the start, you can use the “change into a bat” ability, and you get the walk-on-the-ceiling power-up early too. Instead of large stages, Kid Dracula is mostly broken-up into bite-size chunks, complete with an animation when you reach the end of one. Many levels and set pieces from the original game also return. The extended “bullet train” roller coaster sequence is back. The ship is back. The vertical jumping sequence up a narrow tube is back. The speed, jumping and movement physics from the Famicom game are mostly intact. Many bosses return too. This is probably 55% – 60% remake. However, there’s enough surprises for people who already played the first game to not get bored replaying the same stages and bosses in the black & white version. Hell, the first boss had a gag that made me literally laugh out loud. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it.
And that’s not to say the levels are a complete retread. The first stage, once again a homage to Castlevania, has this brief section with tilting platforms. Kid Dracula does just enough to remain fresh, at least when it wants to be a platform game instead of the world’s most agonizingly slow mini-game collection.
The same combat that I found to be underwhelming in the Famicom original is back and more-or-less unchanged. Enemies can sometimes be too spongy and your attacks are never as good as you wish they were. The ice attack (and in fact, the entire ice stage) is gone, and in its place is a powerful short-range attack where you make three bats fly in a circle around you that sacrifices range too much. Later in the game, it surprised me by awarding me to two new powers instead of just one when I finished a stage. In addition to the bomb, I got an umbrella that can be used to shield you from some bullets and environmental hazards. It can also instakill some smaller enemies just by walking into them, but it doesn’t destroy them. It just sort of rudely causes them to fall off the screen. This version of Kid Dracula leans much more heavily into tight squeezes, spiky floors/ceilings, and timing-based platforming than the Famicom game. But, that’s for sure a plus in a game where the combat is still pretty ho-hum. I don’t think I’d describe the original Kid Dracula as “exciting” but the Game Boy version certainly is.
Oh hey, this looks familiar.
The bomb attack from the Famicom returns, only this time, it’s also used to break through walls, and this leads to the worst part of the platforming aspect of the game. I bet anyone who has already played this knows what part I’m about to talk about. Near the end of Kid Dracula, there’s moving walls where you have to charge-up a bomb (which is done by holding the B button) and use it to ping one single block of this moving wall at a time. The catch is, when the holes you’ve made scroll off the screen, they’re gone forever. Because you have to hold the button to charge, and because the bombs only destroy a single block with no splash damage and you’re two blocks tall, you have a VERY small window from which to get through the walls before your progress is lost and you have to start over. It took me quite a while to make my way through this small section. One wall is hard enough to get through, but then you have to get through two, and then three. It took me so long that my hands were hurting from this one area alone, and then a boss fight happens that involves a similar play mechanic. This idea should have been killed on the drawing board OR the bomb should have done two blocks of damage. By the way, the initial bullet that blows up is really tiny and you’re going to need to jump too, so timing and aiming this is pretty tricky.
Kid Dracula on the Game Boy is deeply flawed in many ways. I have no clue what they were thinking with some aspects of it. It’s often so obviously ill-suited for a handheld device. There’s no saving, either. Passwords only. Now granted, if not for the downtime, this could probably be finished in about thirty minutes to forty-five minutes for a first time player. So what? It’s Game Boy! None of that matters to me in 2024. If this gets a re-release, I’m far more likely to play it on my TV than I am as a handheld. For all its flaws, Kid Dracula is clearly one of the best original Game Boy releases. The boss fights that nearly sank the Famicom game ended up being the element that had me convinced this is the better Kid Dracula game. Don’t get me wrong. The combat is still middling, but the OOMPH that I felt was missing from the TV version is here, along with added gags that land much more frequently. The best bosses from the NES game are here. The bad ones are either improved or removed.
The new stages are easily better than the ones they replaced. The ice stage was awful on the NES. The challenge was based entirely around sliding to your death. The forest works better.
Kid Dracula for the Game Boy deserved to be a hit, warts and all. It does an even better job of telling jokes and being a satire than the NES game did. The personality is dialed-up, but it never comes across as trying too hard. The quiz boss from the Famicom is gone, which tells me they figured out that it didn’t work as they intended. I assume they were aiming for Mel Brooks “going off the rails” type of subversion, but it didn’t land because it wasn’t funny. What would have made more sense was to swap to an entirely different gameplay style. ANYTHING but a quiz. A tennis game would have been funny. Or hell, Kid Dracula slaps on a pair of ice skates and a game of Blades of Steel breaks out. That’s a joke. A quiz isn’t, because it’s not a Konami thing. Thankfully, there’s nothing remotely like that on the Game Boy. There’s so many twists that I didn’t expect, especially with how the boss fights play out, that I just shook my head in disbelief. They really did a great job of subversion of expectations. On a Game Boy game! Whoa!
This was a boss in the first game. It’s a set-piece in the second. So nice.
Sure, they had more time and a few years to reflect on the original, but still, it’s the Game Boy. I didn’t expect them to trounce the NES version to the degree this does. Kid Dracula is one of the most underrated games on the entire platform, even if the post-level mini-game crap is annoying. Nice job on the cover art, gang. Bravo. You screwed us all out of a franchise. This is one of those ideas that Konami should get an indie dev to revitalize. Parodius too. Gaming has caught up to the idea of tongue-in-cheek games. Every Mario RPG is basically Nintendo roasting itself. Konami was light-years ahead of their time, and now, they’re so far behind the times that it’s actually just kind of sad. So, I’ll leave you with thought: it only takes one game to change that. Dracula arises once a century, and hey, there hasn’t been a new Kid Dracula release in the 21st century. I’m just sayin’.
Verdict: YES!
Indie Gamer Chick 
“Every Mario RPG is basically Nintendo roasting itself”
This is one of the main reasons why I love Mario RPG games. The writing in these games is legitimately hysterical! By the way, this was a great review!
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