 Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssedruck Actor Julian Sands was the undisputed King of Cheesy Horror movies that ran even Cable TV throughout the 90s usually on USA network at like 2AM whether it was Tale of a Vampire, The Tern of the Screw, or the Warlock Series. Unbeknownst to me, is that the second Warlock movie received video game adaptations for both Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Finally, a video game starring Julian Sands, all that's left to my bucket list now is a game featuring Richard Greco The story here is the same old stuff. When the sun and the moon align, Satan sends his son, the warlock, to go find the six runestones that will enable him to destroy the earth or something, and you play as a sorcery wielding druid that must stop him somehow by following warlock through time portals, I guess? I'm not even sure if this follows the movie at all or what, or if the publisher LJN just wanted to license the film name for whatever reason, who knows? Both the SNES and Genesis versions were developed by real-time associates, the same team that brought you games like Beavis and Butthead, Ah, Real Monsters, and Skulljagger, Revolt of the Westacans. In other words, keep your expectations low, and as long as you do that, there's a chance you might enjoy this one. It's a small chance, but hey, it's better than zero chance. So you start out and you run to the right, and before you know it, you're starstruck by the screen presence of one Julian Sands. He destroys the bridge in front of you and, uh, wow. Yeah, the controls of this one are the biggest hurdle to get over. It's almost like warlock can't decide if it wants to be a cinematic platformer like Blackthorn in Prince of Persia, or just a regular old action platformer, and it's caught right in between. The jumping here just feels off, and it takes a long while to get used to the feel of the controls. I can't remember another game that plays quite like this one, and I mean that in a bad way. You do, however, get this cool unlimited magic projectile, along with a few other complimentary spells that come in handy. There's a nifty roll maneuver that helps you dodge stuff, and the game certainly has a great look to it. The backgrounds look nice, the scenes between levels do a great job setting the tone, while the music adds to it nicely, and the sprite animation is well done, especially once you zap an enemy. You also have a secondary attack in the form of this orb thing that follows you around. Hold the Y button and send it in whatever direction, but to be honest, it's pretty useless because it's so weak. But like I said earlier, the big problem here is the controls, just simply jumping and moving around to dodge stuff. The game starts out easy enough where you defeat all these demons and then defeat Julian Sands again before he escapes through a time portal, but the controls are just so oddly stiff and delayed that it feels like a chore just to get even this far. In addition to that, you have to stop moving completely in order to use both your magic attack and your secondary attack, and that is annoying because you have to make sure you have plenty of space to use them, so you don't take any unnecessary damage, especially during boss fights, so as a result the game turns into a slog. The level design also doesn't do you a whole lot of favors here, this is one of those games where drops of water do damage, come on, really? There's also a lot of stuff that comes flying at you from nowhere that your projectile can't hit, so you have to rely on your crappy secondary attack. You really have to approach this game at a slow pace if you want to get anywhere, so you gotta be extremely patient, and many times I came away feeling like this game just wasn't worth the time it was asking of me. There is at least a generous password system here that splits up each level into several different sections, and there's six total runes you gotta find, the first one you get right away, but after that the levels can get really long, but they're at least sectioned off into five or six different areas, so the password checkpoints are pretty player-friendly. You start out with only one life with the ability to collect more, and there's no continues here, but the thing is you can take a ton of damage before dying, so that's nice. So yeah, Warlock does have some things going for it, the game really looks great, it certainly provides a cool atmosphere, there's neat little touches here and there like your health meter being represented by your beat-up face, and let's face it, there just aren't that many horror games on the Super Nintendo, so I can see how this game can be appealing to some people. However, the controls here bring Warlock way down. It would have been a lot better had this game just picked a style and stuck with it, whether it be the more deliberately paced style like Blackthorn, or just a regular run-and-gun style action platformer, and for what it's worth, the Genesis version is practically the exact same game, so this isn't really a case where one is even slightly better than the other, unless you prefer one controller over the other. If you want to check out a horror-themed game like this, you're better off with something like Nosferatu. That game may not be perfect, but it's got a similar horror vibe, but with better controls and a slightly more player-friendly approach. Warlock may look really cool, but ultimately, the bad controls make it a stay-away. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.