A Strange Cart of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

It is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with its appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a NES game so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. it must be deformed somewhere; it gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. It's an extraordinary looking game, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can't describe it. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see it this moment.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde


Click for bigger versions

In a dark laboratory in 1989, Toho and Bandai combined their considerable intellects in the pursuit of science. Envious of great products like Super Mario Bros. 2 and The Legend of Zelda, the companies wanted to find the formula for greatness and use it in their own games. The games Bandai had published up to that point had been tortured affairs like Chubby Cherub and Ninja Kid, games that had a few bright spots but were far from excellent. If only they could find a way to separate the good from the bad; to isolate the good and bad elements of their video games and purge the latter.

In their dark laboratory, they produced a concoction that could isolate the good and evil within video games. Excited to try it out, they decided to skip testing and use it immediately. Things didn't go as planned. The bad elements of the video game were isolated and then begin to overwhelm the good. Soon, the game was consumed by evil. In their quest to create a good video game, Toho and Bandai produced one that was 100% concentrated in badness - the purest of bad video games.

The end result was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a NES game that seems misguided in all facets of its existence. At this point, not many people know much about the game itself, but everyone seems to know that it's bad. The game has been made famous by guys like the Angry Video Game Nerd, who used it it one of his early reviews and attempted to describe its tremendously evil powers. Make no mistake - the game IS bad, but that's what makes it fascinating. And unlike many bad games, it isn't terrible because it doesn't function correctly or because it can't be beaten, it's just genuinely BAD. The artists and programmers working on the game obviously had some degree of talent, (the game looks pretty nice at times and the controls work well for the most part) it's just that the entire premise of the game is completely and totally lacking in fun. The game made it all the way through the planning stages and programming without anyone realizing that the most fundamental aspects of the game are not only frustrating, but extremely boring.

So how can we make the game fun? By doing a LP of it, of course! The game is actually pretty short and doesn't take more than 30 minutes to get through, so we have plenty of time to take the scenic route and tackle the game in-depth. Let's start by explaining just how the game works:

Gameplay

In their mad quest to translate Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde into a video game, Toho created something appropriately bizarre. Their first step in adapting the book? Ignoring everything about it except the title and the basic premise. A book about a man wrestling with his own evil desires becomes a game about a man who teleports to the world of demons and fights anthropomorphic brains. Whether or not that's an improvement is up for you to decide.

I'll let the game's manual explain the premise:

Dr. Jekyll is in a merry mood as he leaves his house on a fine London morning – the day he is going to marry his fiancé the beautiful Miss Millicent. Dr. Jekyll’s only goal is to get to the church on time!
Unfortunately, the good doctor meets with many accidents and obstacles on his way to the church – and if the stress from these frustrations gets to be too much for him, it triggers his transformation into the evil Mr. Hyde!
When Dr. Jekyll changes into Mr. Hyde, he finds himself trapped in the mysterious World of Demons. Here he must to battle with the demons sent to destroy him. By defeating these demons one by one, Mr. Hyde can gradually work his way back into his original Dr. Jekyll form.

Yes, like most modern uses of this story, the game treats Dr. Jekyll like he's Bruce Banner. When he gets angry, he turns into Mr. Hyde, who is like The Hulk and has increased strength. Ignore the fact that in the book Mr. Hyde is actually smaller than Dr. Jekyll to begin with. The way the game works is relatively simple, although it has a few quirks that confused me the first couple of times I played through the game. We'll get to those in time. For now, let's just jump right into the HUD.



The game gives you two status bars that both play different roles. The first is your LIFE bar, which is shared between Jekyll and Hyde. Getting hit by certain enemies in the Jekyll portions of the game will knock off a few notches from the LIFE bar. Getting hit by ANY enemies in the Hyde world will decrease your LIFE. The only way to refill your LIFE bar is to transform into Hyde and then successfully transform back into Jekyll (However, the Japanese version gives you an easier way to refill your LIFE). If at any point Jekyll or Hyde runs out of LIFE, then the game is over. However, you do have the opportunity to continue the game should you die in this manner.

The second status bar is your EVIL meter. When you are Jekyll, getting hit by anything will deplete this bar. Once it hits zero, you will transform into Hyde. It will hit zero often because Jekyll gets hit A LOT. There is no way to refill the EVIL meter as Jekyll (unless you're playing the Japanese version. Notice a pattern?). Once Jekyll is transformed into Hyde, you then have to fill the meter back up. You accomplish this by killing enemies during the Hyde portions of the game. Thus, the Hyde portions of the game are a battle to turn back into Jekyll before Hyde runs out of life and dies.

On the right side of the HUD are your coins, which are almost completely useless. The only way to get coins is by destroying certain enemies while you're in Hyde mode. (There is an easier way to get coins in the...you get the deal). These coins have only one use - to make one character shut up. There's one enemy in the Jekyll mode that sings really bad music and shoots musical notes all around the screen. If you have enough money, you can pay her to stop singing. If you don't have enough money, she'll just pelt you with notes until you transform into Hyde. In the later levels, she sits up in a balcony and throws notes down at you, which means you can't even give her money. Yeah, the coins suck.

The central gimmick of the game is the transformation between Jekyll and Hyde. It's also where the game gets somewhat confusing. When you are playing as Jekyll, you move from left to right. When you play as Hyde, you move from right to left. However, you are not moving in opposite directions. The game treats Hyde as a mirrored reflection of Jekyll. Thus, Jekyll and Hyde aren't moving towards each other in the middle, but walking along the same path.

Here's how the game works out. You start out as Dr. Jekyll, moving through the level as everyone tries to kill you:



Eventually, the constant onslaught of explosions, bird shit, angry dogs, and annoying children will prove too much for Jekyll to handle and his EVIL meter will be depleted. In this scenario, Jekyll's meter runs out in Stage 2.



Jekyll and Hyde travel in the same path, however, they do not travel together. This does not make sense. If Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, shouldn't Jekyll just transform into Hyde in Stage 2 and continue on his way? Yeah, that's what should happen, but why should the game start making sense now? Jekyll and Hyde are separate characters and begin at the same point. So, when Jekyll transforms in Stage 2, he turns into Hyde, who is still at the beginning of Stage 1:



Even though Hyde is moving from right to left, he's still moving in the same direction as Jekyll. When Hyde destroys enough enemies, the EVIL meter will fill back up and he will transform into Jekyll.



Jekyll will resume his journey at the exact point he transformed into Hyde earlier. Whenever he transforms into Hyde again, Hyde will resume at the point he transformed into Jekyll. The game remembers the points at which both characters transform and will start the player there, unless the game ends because the LIFE bar is depleted. In that case, when the player continues, Jekyll and Hyde will start at the beginning of whatever level they were in. For example, if Jekyll was in the middle of Stage 4 and Hyde was at the end of Stage 3 when the LIFE bar depleted, when the player continues Jekyll will be at the start of Stage 4 and Hyde at the start of Stage 3.



There is one very important rule that regulates these transformation sequences. Under no circumstances can Hyde travel past the point where Jekyll is located. If Jekyll transforms into Hyde in the middle of Stage 2, Hyde needs to transform back into Jekyll before he gets to the middle of Stage 2. If Hyde reaches the point where Jekyll is, a lightening bolt comes out of the sky and strikes him dead. If the player dies this way, the game is over and the player cannot continue.



It's the same as that funky time travel rule in Timecop, where if you ran into a version of yourself from the past/future you just merged into them and melted into a blob. It's a pretty simple rule - just don't let Hyde get in front of Jekyll. Of course, despite the fact that this rule is stressed repeatedly by the manual and the game itself, breaking it will become a critical factor in completing the game.

And that's the basic gist of the gameplay. As Jekyll, you try to make it as far as possible before transforming. As Hyde, you try to destroy enemies with your fireball and transform back into Jekyll before you either run out of LIFE or catch up to Jekyll. As the game progresses, it becomes harder and harder to survive as Jekyll, which means you want to build a pretty sizable lead on Hyde before you get to Stage 4, otherwise he'll catch up quickly and you're fucked.

And who are these enemies that are continually assaulting Jekyll and Hyde? Let's take a moment to meet them.

London Characters

Dr. Jekyll

The main character of the game. His goal is to get to the church and marry his fiancée Millicent. Unfortunately, many dangers and accidents await him along the way.

The good doctor himself. He seems like a well-mannered and sharply dressed gentleman, yet everyone in London absolutely hates his guts and wants to kill him as quickly as possible. He may also have pulled his hernia or something, because the rate at which he saunters to the chapel is practically glacial. You'd think someone would pick up the pace a little bit when bombers are trying to make them explode, little kids are shooting at them with slingshots, and every animal on earth wants to tear our their eyes. But not Dr. Jekyll. Slow and steady wins the race.

Arnold


A hunting maniac who always carries his rifle around, and doesn’t pay attention to where he points it – or fires it. Stupid and stubborn, and therefore dangerous.

Apparently it's duck season in London, as Arnold and dozens of his identical clones are out in force, trying to blast every fowl in sight. For some reason, the only place these guys hunt is in the graveyard. Curiously enough, it's not the bullets from Arnold's gun that threaten Dr. Jekyll, but the birds he kills. Once shot, they plummet out of the sky and usually right onto Jekyll's head. Whether he's getting shat on by birds or hit by their corpses, Jekyll is under constant bombardment from the sky.

Bees and Spiders


Every single member of the animal kingdom hates Jekyll's guts and wants him dead. Bees and spiders do their part in impeding Jekyll's quest to get laid by being small, annoying, and hard to hit. The spiders hang from trees, moving up and down, forcing Jekyll to try and anticipate their patterns in order to pass. The bees just fly around in seemingly random patterns. Sometimes Jekyll can walk right through dozens of them without getting hit and other times they will sting him ruthlessly until he dies, like Macaulay Culkin at the end of "My Girl." Fortunately, they are the one enemy that Jekyll can actually kill with his walking stick.

Billy Pones


A slingshot sniper. He has a crush on Dr. Jekyll’s fiancée Millicent, and so he aims his slingshot at the good doctor.

The "Dennis the Menace" of the video game. In his epic quest to cock block Dr. Jekyll, this little shit continually runs back and forth across the screen, picking the most annoying opportunities to use his slingshot and shoot Jekyll in the crotch. To make things even more annoying, there's a slight delay when he's pulling back the slingshot that is difficult to compensate for. While Jekyll is already busy dodging bombs, bird crap, and crazed villagers, it's almost impossible to notice the little rock sprite from the slingshot traveling across the screen. Billy Pones is the worst. Why can't he die of consumption or something like most children in British novels from the 1800s?

The Bomb Maniac


A mysterious man who pops up everywhere to create explosions. Very dangerous.

By far the most annoying enemy in the game. This Abe Lincoln lookalike slowly walks across the screen until he gets close to Jekyll, then plants a cartoony bomb and runs away. Depending on which level Jekyll is in, he has between 2 and 0.1 seconds to get away from the bomb before it detonates. The effect of the bomb is catastrophic, often instantly turning him into Hyde if it doesn't kill him outright. The Bomb Maniac is no stranger, often appearing about a million times per level. Jekyll is already slow, but having to run from bombs every other second makes his pace even slower. Curiously enough, none of the villagers seem to care that hundreds of mad bombers are detonating bombs around them all day. They're too focused on punching Dr. Jekyll in his big dumb face.

Crow


Dr. Jekyll is continually beset by the most well-fed crows in the universe. They are capable of crapping on his head roughly 20 times in a 10 second span. This often results in the NES slowing down from the dozens of falling turds on the screen. JJ & Jeff has nothing on the amount of shit on screen in your average game of Dr. Jekyll. And that's before the crows even show up. [/rimshot]

Elena


Born tone-deaf, she is a classic example of someone who persists in doing something even though she is terrible at it. Her truly awful singing is harmful to anyone within earshot.

Appropriately enough, this fat lady's singing is probably responsible for the most deaths in the game. Her singing shoots out lots of little musical notes that hurt Jekyll. In the later stages, she shoots hundreds of these things out in quick succession, basically beating Jekyll back and forth in a never-ending ULTRA combo. If Jekyll has a bunch of coins and can manage to get close enough to her, he can bribe her to shut up. However, in the later levels she sings while standing on a balcony, making it impossible to shove the coins into her fat maw. The game also plays a screeching little opera tune each time she appears on screen, just to make sure the player hates her even more.

Jan


A strange old man. Digging is his life. He can usually be found digging holes in the street, and shoveling the dirt onto passers-by.

You can't have a game set in this time period without the requisite creepy gravedigger. Despite what the manual claims, Jan never digs in the city, choosing to stay in the graveyard and indiscriminately fling dirt everywhere. At the very least, this means that he isn't deliberately targeting Jekyll, just being an inconsiderate jerk. This makes him the nicest man Jekyll will encounter in the entire game.

Luna the Cat


An alley cat – usually peaceful, but capable of violence when hungry or threatened.

I'm sure the people behind Sailor Moon are flattered for the homage here. Luna is safe to approach when she's in a good mood, but once she is startled by a loud noise she turns into the evil cat from "Pet Sematary," running around the screen and making a horrible noise. Since he is such a dweeb, Jekyll naturally gets his ass handed to him by Luna quite often. Do not turn to this doctor for the cure to cat scratch fever.

Murphy the Dog


Most of the time, this animal sleeps peacefully in the sun, but he can be nasty when awakened suddenly.

Just your average annoying dog in the tradition of terrible canines like Beethoven and the Bumpus Hounds. He's a docile creature until something startles him, after which he runs around the screen a couple of times before scampering off. Given that any given moment in the game resembles a war zone, the dog becomes startled 100% of the time.

Rachel


A beautiful, lonely widow. Not dangerous to anyone except Dr. Jekyll, who looks something like her late husband!

The winner of the least flattering sprite award. They just took Elena's sprite and put a hat on her. Since she's so hot for Dr. Jekyll, she throws hearts at him while standing on a balcony. It makes one feel like they're playing a game of "Popeye." Because Jekyll is as pure and chaste as the winter snow, these hearts hurt him. He refuses to touch any woman except his blushing bride to be. Rachel only appears in the Japanese version of the game. In the US version, they just took the next logical step and changed her into Elena.

Rosette


The only daughter of Dr. Jekyll’s friend, Lord Ranright.

One of the only characters that actually helps Jekyll out. In the city levels, she will wave at him from her window. Jekyll can enter the door of her building and go up to visit her. Often, she will give him a bunch of coins, refill his life meter, and refill his Hyde meter. Because she is bipolar, sometimes she will deplete his Hyde meter and cause an instant transformation. This game never misses a chance to hate the player. Since she offers a bit of assistance, Rosette was naturally removed from the American version of the game, which means the only way to obtain coins and refill your meters in that version is to defeat enemies as Mr. Hyde.


Villagers


The numerous denizens of London, none of whom possess any manners. When they spot Dr. Jekyll, they will suddenly run at him as quickly as possible in an attempt to hurt him. Jekyll's only defense is to try and jump over them, which can be difficult given that he moves like a sloth. They exhibit unusual behavior in the Japanese version of the game, sometimes running around so they can enter doors as quickly as possible. Obviously, Toho were ahead of their time, making their random villagers exhibit the "realistic" behavior that Bethesda would later brag about in their Elder Scrolls games.


World of Demons Characters

Mr. Hyde


Dr. Jekyll after his transformation. He can only regain his original form by battling the demons who attack him. Fortunately, he has a powerful weapon: the PSYCHO-WAVE.

The portrait makes Mr. Hyde look like a demon, but in-game he just looks like a fat hobo in a mustard-colored coat. Hyde isn't liked by the enemies in the World of Demons any more than Jekyll is liked in the real world, but at least he has the ability to fight back. M. Bison may try to act like he's King Shit, but Mr. Hyde mastered psycho power way before him. His incredible PSYCHO-WAVE allows him to fire a single, tiny little fireball that boomerangs across the screen. He can only shoot one at a time, so he has to rely on punches to defend himself if he fucks up and misses an enemy with the wave.

Carotta


A sea demon who defends her territory with a bow and arrow.

All the monsters in this game are endearingly stupid. They all resemble the creatures from early D&D monster manuals. Ok, we need an enemy that looks neat? How about we make an...um...evil mermaid. Yeah, an evil mermaid that jumps out of creeks and attacks people! But not with her hands, with arrows! That she shoots out of a harp! If he were alive, Robert Louis Stevenson would be so jealous he didn't think of this shit first. Despite the fact that she is listed in the American manual, Carotta only appears in the Japanese version of the game.

Corum


A flying skull. He opens his jaws wide when attacking and shoots balls of fire.

The illustration in the manual looks like a monster from "Beetlejuice," but the in-game sprite is a lot less scary. He looks like the floating head of a wrinkly old man. Despite what the manual says, he can't shoot fireballs. His only method of attack is to open his jaw wide and rush at the player. 90% of the time, Hyde can simply jump over him without incident. You suck, Corum.

Eproschka


A flying demon that attacks by using a trumpet that blows lethal bubbles.

DESCRPTION

Letule


A mysterious, ghost-like demon who appears, attacks, and disappears again.

A ghostly face that randomly appears and throws out fireballs. The game has a neat little rotating effect that makes Letule look a bit three dimensional. For being an evil, disembodied head, he doesn't seem like that bad of a dude. He comes in festive green and red varieties, making him the ideal demon to brighten up your Christmas festivities.

Nunu


It looks like a baby, but don’t let that fool you!

An ominous baby. Mr. Hyde naturally gets excited when he sees a Nunu, eager to shoot a baby with a fireball, but when he gets closer a startling transformation occurs! Nunu stretches upward and transforms into an...uh...a slouching blue guy with a beer gut. Beware!

Onoria


An old woman demon and not very dangerous looking – until she attacks by turning into a snake!

Many of the enemies in the game employ the art of deception. In this instance, when Hyde approaches Onoria, her body explodes and she turns into a gnarly snake that kind of looks like the phallic Freddy snake from "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3." Of course, this transformation can only fool you once. The body exploding part is actually more dangerous than the snake, as it's pretty much impossible to prevent Hyde from getting hit by a piece of Onoria's duodenum.

Palma


A flying rock monster. It appears suddenly in the skies of the World of Demons, and just as suddenly explodes, raining flaming debris onto anyone below.

The most annoying enemy in the game by far. At any given moment in the World of Demons, at least two Palma will be flying and exploding in the sky, sending debris in all directions. As the same progresses, they shoot more and more fireballs, which are practically impossible to dodge with Hyde's bulky frame. Sometimes the psycho-wave will be able to hit them, but most of the time it will just fly around them and make Hyde feel like a moron, hurting his already fragile self-esteem.

Shepp


These monsters are small, but all the more dangerous because they always travel in threes.

Man, NES games were all about using anthropomorphic brains as enemies. Who cares if they don't have eyes or a real body? Just slap some legs on those suckers and let them go at it. At least, I think it's supposed to be a brain. The in-game sprite looks more like an evil meatball than a brain. Shepp are the filler enemies of the Hyde levels, appearing constantly just to give the player something to attack. This is pretty helpful in most respects, as they go down easy and allow Hyde to quickly fill his meter back up.

Walrich


A fire monster whose body is engulfed in blazing flames.

A very unfortunate man who dropped his lighter down his pants. I think he may be related to the fire guy from the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" NES game. He doesn't do much besides scream and run across the screen, which is understandable given his situation.

Hunchback and Scythe Guy


The working class minions in the World of Demons. They don't do much besides slowly walk toward Hyde and wait to get fireballed to death. They are a very reliable source of coins and easy to kill, so they are the closest thing to friends that Hyde will find. The hunchback only appears in the Japanese version for some reason.

Well, that's it for the basics of the gameplay and the enemies we can expect to encounter in our playthrough. However, before we get started, we have to cover an extra aspect of this LP: We're going to go through two versions of the game!

ジーキル博士の彷魔が刻, Jekyll Hakase no Hōma ga Toki



As mentioned in the above sections, the Japanese version of the game has quite a few unique features. This isn't one of those cases where they just changed a few sprites for the American release to appease Nintendo censors. There are several large differences between the games that make the Japanese version overwhelmingly superior.

In addition to having a greater variety of enemies and including Rosette as a helpful character, the Japanese version has different levels! The level progression in the Japanese version is as follows:

City
Park
Alley
Town
Cemetery
Street

The level progression in the American version:

Town
Cemetery
Town
Park
Cemetery
Street

That's right, the American version cuts out the Alley and City levels, replacing them with copies of already existing levels. I have no idea why in the world anyone would do this, as the Alley and City levels are pretty cool and removing them makes an already repetitive game even more tedious.

None of these differences make much sense. The Japanese version of the game was released on April 8, 1988. The American version wouldn't be released until April 1989. It seems like the developers spent the entire year stripping things from the Japanese version to ensure that the American release was far, far worse. Maybe the developers realized that they already had a bad game, but by making a few changes they could make a legendarily awful game that would live on in video game infamy.

Or perhaps they were punishing Americans for the failure of the game. This was Toho's very first video game project (Yes, the Toho responsible for Godzilla) and they went into this affair whole hog. Yes, they could have taken the easy way out and released their awful Godzilla game as their pioneer game, but they gave Jekyll that honor instead. Hell, they even made a commercial for the game in Japan!


Click to watch

Despite the advertising push, the game was a big failure. Angered by this failure, it's conceivable that Toho wanted to punish the gaming populace by making the American version of the game even worse. Just imagine all the shitty birthdays where a child received a copy of this game from a clueless relative. A terrible license that means nothing to a kid, combined with an awful game and a hideous box. A recipe for many, many youthful tears. Fuck you, Toho.

The end result of this whole affair? The game is recognized as bad in both countries, but in Japan its awful nature is kind of endearing. The game has numerous websites devoted to it (here are two examples) and many gamers treat it like Cheetahman II, a game that's pretty funny in how terrible it is. In America, it's treated like the piece of garbage that it is.

In the interest of giving Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a fair shake, this LP will go through both versions of the game and see if one is any better than the other. It's a highly scientific affair, and as you are just a reader, you don't even have to play through the games to see the results. Lucky you!

Next time: The story begins...

I was unaware of how much nuance went into the design of this game.

I owned it, but never got anything but the "Hyde is killed by the WRATH OF GOD!" ending.

So the point of this game is to avoid a logical paradox caused by a dimensional shift brought on by being shat on by crows? Brilliant!

I think my favorite LPs are all of awful games. Comedy truly is someone else's suffering.

You're part of the problem!

>=[

Oh man this is awesome.

I am excited.

This game sounds absolutely amazing. I can't wait.

Are you playing the American or Japanese version?

Sounds like this game was yet another victim of the anti-rental sentiment that ran rampant amongst third parties in the 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, developers' response to rental stores being able to sell the same experience hundreds of times over and make back the original cost of the cart in spades was to re-engineer the US releases to be ass-hard. Their idea was that somehow people would opt to buy the game instead of rent it.

The actual effect, unsurprisingly, was much the opposite: people kept renting the games, and when word got out that a game was particularly nasty (like, say, Battletoads), customers would avoid those games like the plague and only ever rent or borrow them since they were so difficult. Meanwhile Nintendo's own games were selling in spades, as well as being rented a great deal, and none of the third parties could quite figure it out. I guess the idea of "make a game people will actually WANT to buy" was beyond them?

Oh man, am I excited for this! I think I enjoy these shorter LPs of weird, crappy games the best!

I've never played the game but I remember the cover of the game frightening me as a kid.

I love this.

This is already excellent! I beat this awful thing many years back when Funcoland was selling it for 29 cents, and it was bewildering from beginning to end. I've been waiting for someone to explain its existence ever since.

Like you said, it's not bad because of glitchiness or programmer ineptitude or anything -- everything in the game is intentional, which just makes the whole thing even harder to accept.

I've never heard of this game... and now I feel like I missed out on one of the most amazing NES games ever... my childhood has been robbed!

This game sounds like it is probably awful, yet based on such an intriguing concept as to be amazing. I can't think of another game quite like it.

Gameplay is coming soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd share the scant few mentions that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde received in the press.

The first comes from a Bandai ad for Nintendo games that appeared in 1989. I found it in EGM #3:



The box art is interesting because in the final product, we only see Hyde's head. This early box art gives Hyde the full costume treatment. He looks positively dapper. However, I find the unreleased game next to Mr. Hyde more fascinating. No idea what in the world that NES game would have been like.



Shockingly enough, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde got a little face time in Nintendo Power #3. It was on the front page of Pak Watch and they even put some art around it. Clearly they hadn't played the game yet, because that's way too much effort to put into hyping it.



The game even got one of those "Now Playing" features in Nintendo Power #4. When NP couldn't even be bothered to give a game a full page to itself, that was the secret code that the game probably sucked. Still, they went through the trouble of creating some awful art for it!



The game also got a write-up in the Nintendo Power Pak Source supplement. The scores are on a 5 point scale, by the way. This disappointed me as well.

Oh my, I remember that Now Playing.

I like how they said "One tragic drink and a classic horror film is transformed into a great video game!" It's like they were already lamenting the execs getting drunk and greenlighting this game.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgQSFYdYfwI

Part 1 is now up on Youtube with annotations to go along with the gameplay. This part covers the first two levels for Dr. Jekyll along with Hyde's first level. I tried to explain the basic gameplay concepts and the control mechanics so that the later levels will at least make a little sense!

Why did you purposely turn into Hyde near the end of the video there?

I thought it would be nice to make sure the LP has a good balance between the two types of gameplay, as Jekyll's part is pretty boring. Also, you need to progress with both characters in order to get the GOOD ending, so I figured I'd go ahead and have them keep pace with one another rather than do five Jekyll levels and five Hyde levels in a row.

I like the text-on-video style of LP. I think you really need to see all the shit (ha!) on the screen to really appreciate this game.

The premise of this game is interesting but in practice it looks boring as hell. How many mad bombers are there in London!?

There's only one mad bomber, but he's speedy.