 Lots and lots of adventures to be had on the Super Nintendo. We got the Adventures of Mighty Max, Adventures of Yogi Bear, Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, Adventures of Batman and Robin. We even got the Adventures of Tintin released only for our friends in PAL regions. That brings me to the Adventures of Dr. Franken, a cartoony Halloween-themed platformer made by a company called Motive Time. They had a hand in two other Super Nintendo games, one being Dirt Racer, a not-so-great racer that utilized the Super FX chip, as well as the SNES port of Dragonslayer, which believe it or not is a solidly mediocre title, unlike the total disaster that is the NES port. But that brings me to Adventures of Dr. Franken, and yeah, it's a solidly mediocre game. You get three lives without any continues to get through 18 levels, no saves or passwords here either, but there's plenty of extra lives you can find throughout the game. The biggest strength of Adventures of Dr. Franken is probably that nearly every button does an attack of some kind. D jumps of course, but Y and A both do spin kicks, X does a standing version of Giles Flash Kick, the L button uses a one-hit Hadoken-style projectile, you only get three of those, and the R button sends a projectile that freezes enemies, and you only get four of those. What's odd here are the Y and A kicks. Y will only kick when you're facing the right, and A will do the same kick if you're facing the left. Well, whatever. Now, if you think this game is structured like a boring run to the right and kill stuff then face a boss type of game, you're in luck. Instead, it's a boring wander around and look for stuff to collect then find the exit type of game, and that brings me to the story. So Frankenstein's Monster, or Frankie as the game refers to him, wants to take a much-needed vacation with his girlfriend named Bitsy, but in this wintry economic climate Frankie can sadly only afford one plane ticket. So what's his solution? Why? To disassemble his girlfriend, of course, and ship her in parts thrown in several different suitcases. Of course the airline ends up losing his luggage and she ends up in different spots all over the world. She must have been flying American Airlines. Anyway, Frankie has to wander around all these different levels and find all the different pieces of both his girlfriend's luggage and his girlfriend herself. The first level has you putting together her passport, then after that the game opens up a little bit more and allows you to travel to other countries as this map shows here. But yeah, that's about it. You go to each of the 18 locations, find items which are usually divided up into four pieces, then you find the exit, all while these enemies float around and cause a nuisance and get in your way. Unfortunately, the adventures of Dr. Franken has way more detriments than strengths. First of all, the game just plays very clunky. The attacks are fine and the hit detection is okay, but having to press jump and down at the same time every time you reach two platforms that meet together like this is just kind of annoying. You see it right away in the first level and it's like you have to pump the brakes on your character every time. The second big problem is your health bar. Inexplicably you start each life with half a life meter. Why? You boost artificial difficulty so you can't beat the game in one rental? Oh, okay. And yeah, with half a life meter, three or four hits from enemies kill you no problem. Oh, and did I mention that you get three lives, then it's game over and you start from the beginning? Yeah, you know how certain arcade games are structured to be quarter munchers? Adventures of Dr. Franken is like the home console rental version of that. There should be a term for those. What would it be? Rental munchers? No, that doesn't sound right. Anyway, the thing is though with this title is that, well, it's just not worth it to begin with because it's just so freaking boring and it goes on for way, way too long. Every single level has the same objectives, the same structure with no boss battles at all. And sure, this game has a certain charm to it thanks to the artwork, the sprite design and the music, but a little variety here would have gone a long way. This is probably something like a 90 minute play through too if you're playing for the first time since you're not going to know the location of any of the items and I'd be willing to bet you'd be bored to tears after about 15 minutes or so. What's kind of interesting is that Adventures of Dr. Franken post-dates a Game Boy game made by Elite Systems simply called Dr. Franken and it's the same sort of deal. You're exploring 20 different stages looking for parts and searching for keys to unlock new areas, but the thing is, this game is much better executed. The level design is a bit more streamlined making it easier to explore and it has a password system as well. There was even an NES and a Game Gear version of this game plans. It got as far as a prototype on the NES, but it was never released. We did however see a Dr. Franken 2 for Game Boy released in 1997, holy crap. But yeah, it's a lot like the original, only a lot faster paced and a lot more difficult. As far as the Adventures of Dr. Franken for Super Nintendo goes, it's eminently skippable. It's one of those games where you play it for a little bit and you appreciate the sprite work and the backgrounds in the music, but the game itself is just blah. It doesn't help that it seemingly goes on forever and there's next to zero variety in the gameplay. As the cliche goes, this one got lost in the shuffle, but in this case, it's very easy to see why. This isn't a game to avoid or anything, but it's definitely not worth going out of your way to play. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.