SNES Review 136: Warlock

So when I was young I liked a bit of horror much as I do now. I can remember really enjoying a film called Warlock which came out in 1989 but I am sure it was a few years latter when I originally saw it. The films story concerned an evil 17th century warlock who flees to the 20th century pursued by a witch-hunter. If you haven't seen it then think Terminator but with an evil Wizard instead of a killer robot and your not a million miles away. There was all kinds of creepy things in it like the Warlock befriending a boy to then kill him and use his fat to make a flying potion which just stuck with me for a long time. So why the heck am I talking about a 1989 horror film in a SNES review? Well basically because there was a Warlock game, but was it based on this film or just a game with the same name you might be asking. Well despite being called Warlock its sort of closer to being a Video Game adaption of the films sequel Warlock Armageddon, it doesn't follow the exact same story as that movie though it merely focuses on elements of the sequel, such as druids and runestones to tell its own story. Warlock is a side-scrolling action video game which was released in 1995 a full two years after Warlock Armageddon was released, it was made by Realtime Associates with the Snes version being published by LJN and the megadrive one being published by Acclaim Entertainment. I know sometimes I start comparing SNES and MegaDrive games but in this case I have yet to play the MegaDrive version so wont be doing that.

I know the mention of LJN probably already has people cringing but in fairness they only published it, and I think everyone probably knows a lot about them but maybe not as much about Realtime Associates. Realtime Associates is an American video game developer founded in 1986 by David Warhol and a group of ex-Mattel Electronics employees originally to create games for the Intellivision system. They published over 90 games for various systems, including but no limited to the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Super NES, Genesis, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, and Game Gear. They are probably best known either for being the developers of the NES version of Maniac Mansion or for being responsible for the Playstation and Saturn Versions of Crusader No Remorse. They did make original titles but I think there mostly known for porting things to various different platforms.

I so wanted to like this game the film was such a major hit for me but yet when I tried this game all I was left with was a whole pile of issues with it, for a start it is not terribly clear what you are supposed to be doing. There is also the fact that the story in the game is a right jumble by the time this came out you had two Warlock films to pick and choose story elements from and yet here it looks like they picked tiny bits from the second one and didn't even bother to sow them together with anything of much worth. You have to find the 6 runestones before the warlock, a lot of this is told mostly with scrolling words at the start and a little animation of druids.

Well I am always saying that the Game play is the most important thing so hey lets get down to talking about it. Well it is pretty darn hard to control your character, the worst thing for me is that when you attack, you stop moving, which totally slows down the pace of the game. You want to be running about throwing magic bolts all over the place but instead the game is totally full of this kind of boring stop and start mechanic. Add on to this that when enemies appear on screen well with the ones who rush towards you, you basically need to nail them straight away to stand a chance so if your making a real effort to progress you find yourself inching forwards slowly bit by bit. Add on to this the fact that the jumping feels tricky and that with harder enemies that don't instantly die well your just not manoeuvrable enough to get out of there way so it becomes a war of patrician hammer them as much as you can while getting hammered hoping that they die first. With the enemies who throw energy bolts at you if you get used to it you can time it right to jump them so in these cases things actually work a little better. If I was going to try to describe this to someone from this well I guess I would kind of go for a description of Castlevania the shit edition.

I will do a quick run down of what else the game has to offer. The graphics are all right, that's about as complementary as I can get, they are not bad but there not that good either. There are different enemy sprites and backgrounds so things are not too repetitive in the graphics side which is something nice for me to say I guess. I also need to point out that the games title Warlock on the title screen being on fire looks excellent, as does the digitized style face you see of the guy who played the Warlock in the films. As for the sound well it is all right, but the music really does get very boring after awhile, there is too much repetition.

Overall I think this game is really not worth your time unless your an absolute SNES obsessive. It cost me about £7 if my memory is correct and this is too much for it. I strongly recommend that you ignore the game and instead look at investing in a copy of the original Warlock film especially if you like horror films and enjoyed the original Terminator because it has a similar sort of vibe to it. If I need to give this game a score out of 10 I would give it a 4, there are much worse games out there but then there are a heck of a lot better as well, id call this average leaning to bad.