Kid Dracula, aka Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun (Famicom/NES Review)

Kid Dracula
aka Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun
Platform: Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System)
Released October 19, 1990
Directed by Shiro Murata
Famicom Exclusive
Included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection

If you’re unable to play this, just put on Castlevania and hum the theme song to Sesame Street.

After playing the completely charmless, unlikable Castlevania Adventure, I needed a game that is all charm and impossible to not like. Kid Dracula is to Castlevania what Parodius is to the Gradius franchise: a satire of their own games. Despite being included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection, gameplay bears little resemblance to Castlevania. Actually, Kid Dracula plays more like Mega Man: a platforming shooter where you gain extra abilities as you go along. Unlike Mega Man, ‘Lil Drac is totally linear, and there’s no ammo for your new abilities. You need only to charge-up the B button. The first level is a direct parody of Castlevania, with set pieces and art assets that will be very familiar to fans of the franchise. Even the music is a friendly remix of the first level’s theme from Castlevania III. After that, Kid Dracula does its own thing. This could have easily been a Count Duckula game for as little as it has to do with Castlevania.

Every stage in Kid Dracula has a gimmick section at some point. Here, you’re riding a bullet train? Either that’s a tiny train or Kid Dracula is HUGE.

If you want to know what to expect, the closest comparison to Kid Dracula is Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti. You can read my full review in Namco Museum Archives: Volume 1 – The Definitive Review. It’s funny how much the two games have in common.

• Both games are hyper-cute satires of horror-themed games made by the same publisher as the original game that’s being mocked.
• Both were Famicom exclusives released in back-to-back years (1989 & 1990).
• Both debuted globally in retro collections released in back-to-back years (2019 & 2020).
• Kid Dracula was shot in a Ford, while Splatterhouse was shot inside.. wait, wrong comparison list.
• Both are not as good as you want them to be, but you can’t help but enjoy them.
• Both games were probably just good enough to launch sub-franchises, but it never happened.

At least Kid Dracula got a sequel, but only on the Game Boy. This is probably the next IGC Review.

Now, obviously the point about how neither game is quite as fun as you want it to be is the most subjective. But, of the two games, I think Kid Dracula is clearly the winner, and it’s not really that close. Kid Dracula has superior level design and enough gimmicks to keep the game fresh for the whole experience. The first time I played it was with the release of Castlevania Anniversary Collection, and I was totally stunned by its quality. In a positive way. I remembered it as a nearly-flawless and highly idealized NES platformer. In replaying it, boy was I wrong. Not only did flaws stand out quite a bit during my replay, but I realized the gameplay is good, but not great.

I really like Kid Dracula, but the word “unforgettable” doesn’t apply to it. By the way, Kid Dracula is a surprisingly tough game. It looks like a kiddie game. It is NOT a kiddie game. There’s some stretches during it, like the subway stage pictured above, where Kid Dracula shows its teeth. The final level is even harder. By golly, this really is a Castlevania game!

A lot of that comes down to Kid Dracula’s attacks. The combat just isn’t as fun as it probably should be. You can shoot straight ahead of you and up, but not diagonally. Each time you beat a level, you gain some new power, most of which are attacks. Almost any basic enemy killed by a charged-up attack will drop coins that are spent on a randomly-selected bonus game after a level. Enemies can be a bit spongy, and attacks like “SEEK” which is a cross between Contra‘s spread gun and Operation C’s homing gun, rarely does enough damage to kill an enemy. I didn’t get a lot of coins my first play through because I used SEEK and often had to finish off enemies with additional non-charged bullets, which never pay off with coins. While Kid Dracula’s combat never gets dull, it also feels like the offensive game never heats up. Enemy placement is predictable and there’s often not enough to give the game stakes. There’s no “OOMPH” to it as I say, which is strange because Konami usually does OOMPH very well.

I recommend springing for Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which has an emulator optimized just right for this. Minimal slowdown or screen-tearing. On MY emulators, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak, and I had constant slowdown. I would love for a Super Mario All-Stars or Mario Advance-like mandate on remaking a lot of the more famous NES games. Retain pixel art, but beef it up to 16-bits and no slowdown. Kirby’s Adventure, an NES game I can’t enjoy at all because of the non-stop technical issues, went on to become Nightmare in Dream Land, one of the best Game Boy Advance titles. It’s a damn shame we never got GBA-enhanced versions of Kid Dracula, Contra, or Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. They would have been awesome.

Kid Dracula’s biggest strength, besides its personality, is a pitch-perfect pace. The level design is fantastic, with “events” spread out fairly evenly. It’s like they included every platforming trope just enough to check it off a list. There’s a desert stage. There’s a slippy ice stage that sucks ass and is the worst part of the game, easily. There’s a giant climb up a tube into space that’s really good. There’s an underwater stage that uses the concept of moon jumps to build the challenge around, and it just works. Eventually, you gain two platforming special powers that the game immediately utilizes in the level design. Really, it’s three, since the ice power allows you to freeze enemies which can then be used as platforms. I never once used it for that reason. In fact, I only used the ice power at all because the start of the final level has a boss that’s immune to all other bullets except the charged-up ice gun.

“Hey, weren’t you in Mendel Palace?”

The other two powers are the ability to turn into a bat for a few seconds and the ability to walk on the ceiling. Jeez, in 2024 I’ve played a lot of ceiling-walking games. There’s the Jetsons and.. uh.. the other Jetsons. There’s M.C. Kids. And uh.. okay, it’s THREE games and not “a lot.” But it’s four now. But, walking on the ceiling is always fun, and Kid Dracula does it pretty well. You even fight a boss doing it, and it’s one of the better bosses. My biggest knock on it is there’s apparently no way to cancel it once you activate it. I think the only way is to let the timer run out, which you can see in the status bar.

If anything, I think they under-utilize the ceiling stuff.

The bat is more problematic. It has a curling stone-like movement to it, and grazing any wall overrides it and turns you back. That wasn’t exactly game breaking, but rather it just slowed down the process of changing back and forth because you can’t be too close to a wall when you activate it. I was constantly having my attempts to switch to bat mode canceled. On the other hand, there’s a few tight squeezes where you need the bat, and I never died during any of them. Not even on my first playthrough of this review. This could have gone SO badly, as Konami proved themselves with the dam stage in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I suspect they learned a lesson making that game.

Thankfully, there’s enough clearance to not make it ticky-tacky. This is Goldilocks-levels of tightness. Narrow enough to make you sweat it. Wide enough that you don’t need to be perfect. Collision detection is mostly good too. There’s a few eye-rolling damage moments, but they’re few and far between. Yea, they learned their lesson from that damn dam stage.

So the level design and style swaps are really good, but Kid Dracula rarely sticks the landing when it comes to the boss fights. While they never stink (well, one might), most lack a certain something to put them over the top. And the one that may or may not stink is not even a real boss. You encounter the Statue of Liberty, who hosts a game show where the first to buzz in with three correct answers wins. This is one of those things that crosses the line from “genuinely quirky” to “trying too hard” like someone getting drunk and wearing a lampshade on their head.

I’m fairly sure the questions happen in the same order every playthrough too. Yea, this doesn’t work for me. If you don’t read Japanese, you’ll need a translation ROM hack or just play Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which has an English ROM.

Thankfully, that’s the only instance of something like that. The rest of the bosses are, you know, bosses. The first one is actually censored in Castlevania Anniversary Collection, and you can read why at Cutting Room Floor. The rest are actually fairly cliched as far as gaming bosses go. It never gets as wacky as the bosses in Parodius. Again, they’re not boring, and a couple manage to stand out. But they’re not spectacular, either, and even after replaying the game a few times, I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe there wasn’t enough pizazz to them. Or maybe they were onto something with the Statue of Liberty and should have leaned harder into weirdness. I couldn’t figure it out in two full playthroughs and half of a third on Castlevania Anniversary Collection. But that’s Kid Dracula’s story in general. It’s really good. It’s not great, or at least as great as you want it to be. Good thing it’s charming, because without this, I think it’d be just another above-average NES game.

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At the same time, it’s a game that deserved to touch-off a new branch of Castlevania as a series. Why couldn’t Kid Dracula become a franchise all by itself? They tried! There’s a Game Boy game that I’ve not yet played (I’m rectifying that right now), but then they just gave up on the Kid. He didn’t even get a Super Famicom game, even though this concept is BEGGING to be made into sixteen bits. It won’t happen now. If there was no outcry for it after Anniversary Collection, it will never happen. And, after replaying it for the first time in five years, I’m at peace with that. Because, enjoyable as it might be, it’s also stiff and awkward handling. I never got a real feel for the jumps. I never really loved the attacks. I was also genuinely surprised by how little of the game I remembered five years later. All I really remembered was liking the game a lot, but nothing stuck with me. Not even the trivia bit. But, after playing it again, that makes sense. It is largely forgettable. That tells me that Kid Dracula is all charm but little substance. It makes for a good afternoon with your NES, but it’s not sustainable as a franchise. I get it now, and even if I want more, I’m also fine with what we got.
Verdict: YES!

THE INDIE GAMER CHICK CASTLEVANIA REVIEW SERIES
 Castlevania (NES) Dracula’s Curse (NES) Adventure (GB) Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
Super Castlevania IV (SNES) Dracula X (SNES) Rondo of Blood (SuperCD²)
Chronicles (PSX) Circle of the Moon (GBA)  Kid Dracula (NES) Kid Dracula (GB)
ROM Hacks (NES) Konami Wai Wai World (NES) Wai Wai World 2: SOS!! Parsley Jō (NES)

According to my parents, I was scared of Count Duckula’s opening and would make sure the channel wasn’t going to show the “scary duck.”