Nerdicus SNES Review #10 : Adventures of Dr. Franken

Title : Adventures of Dr. Franken

Publisher : DTMC

Genre : Platformer

Players : 1 Player

Release Date : 1993

Estimated Value (as of today's date) : $4-$7

Every now and then, a game comes out where you just have to ask yourself, "What the hell were they thinking?" As the 16-bit era grew, one of the most common games to come out were platformers, and publishers were desperate to make a dent in the industry and come up with some unique concepts. But sometimes....scratch that....most of the time, they came up with absolute garbage.

And here we have one such example. A little game called the Adventures of Dr. Franken.

Yes, that's right. A platforming adventure starring a cartoony, sunglass/short-wearing version of Dr. Frankenstein's monster named Franky. How original. And what's Franky's goal? Well, that's easy. It's to find the scattered remains of his girlfriend. That's right! Your girlfriends body parts are scattered around the world in which you have to find in order to put her back together.

Why is she in pieces, you ask? I forgot to mention..you wanted to go on vacation but it's too expensive to pay for 2 people so HE DISASSEMBLED HIS GIRLFRIEND.....WHAT THE HELL!?  How disturbed do you have to be to come up with something like that? And this is supposed to be a kids platformer.

In each of the 20 levels of this forgettable game, you are tasked with finding four pieces of your girlfriend's particular body parts. Sounds easy enough, but when you are playing one of the most frustratingly annoying platformers on the SNES, you're going to want to turn this game off almost immediately.

Enemies are way too strong, and are able to kill you in a few hits. It doesn't matter if your health bar looks full, because each hit drops it by 1/4. Not joking. And killing them is usually a pain. You've got a few attacks, including some flip kick, a stun shock thing..I don't know it's like you're hurling some kame-hame-ha at the enemies. The bad thing is that depending on what button your press determines where you attack. It doesn't matter which you face, it's all about the button being pressed. Who the heck designs a game like that?

Levels are boring and repetitive, and the fact that there aren't even any boss fights leaves little to look forward to. The time limit doesn't help either, considering you get lost all the time, and most objects are hidden behind walls that you would never guess you could walk through.

There are two good things about this game. One being the graphics, as visually it's actually really well done. The animations are great, and Franky actually looks pretty cool. For Frankenstein's monster anyway. But the major thing that gives this game bonus points (very limited bonus points, but still), is the music. The music is INCREDIBLE. You've got a few classical pieces in here that are turned into 16-bit techno remixes. The are absolutely epic.

Other than that, not much can be said about this pretty pitiful platformer. It's fun for the first 30 seconds, then it's just a downward spiral into frustration. There are plenty of other decent platformers, that you don't need to hurt yourself by playing this one. Unless you have some sort of obsession with Frankenstein, then go right ahead.

But seriously, if you don't have money for plane tickets, don't chop up your girlfriend and send her pieces around the world. That's not cool.

Final Score (out of 5) :

Until next time. Keep on Gaming!