In honor of he who died and rose after three days in the grave and now grants life ever lasting to his followers I thought it only right I got into the spirit once. So Dracula, this one's for you:
Just look at it.
You have what appears to be (and is) an accountant being menaced by boobalicious vampire women twice his size, so he's got Ethan Winters beaten to the punch by 34 years. But don't be fooled. One glance into his 30-yard stare and its obvious why only Mr. Weems can stop these sinister She-Vampires:
Weems is dead on the inside yet still living, where the she-vampires are animated from within with life, while dead.
He is their antithesis.
So yeah, a pile of jank with a fun name crossed my path, and now you all have to hear about it. If you're not hitting 'J', you have no one to blame but yourself.
Released on a scad of systems, but mostly the ZX Spectrum and the C64, The Astonishing Adventures of Mr. Weems & the She-Vampires is a sort of 'Gauntroidvania'. It's also trying to push the limits of how titillating a pre-NES era game could be, though the C64 port's interface missed that memo.
The hacked c64 version was the one I played, but giantbomb had a lot of gifs from the ZX verison that I've upscaled for demonstration purposes.
The only bit of story is from the back package. Weems wants to feel something, so he's decided to take on the Great She-Vampire or die in her buxom grasp. Fair.
This game is not recommended for people with epilepsy, dignity, or in general.
Mr. Weems has a garlic gun to defend his ever-dropping blood supply (vampire hunter is an odd professon with anemia) and destroy the baddies...
All three of them, which are all introduced on the first screen!
You've got bats, they pop out of pots and attack you.
The manual says these guys are Frankenstein's' monsters, but they're clearly the giant from Twin Peaks trying to warn you that you've bought a dud.
On the C64, the lesser she-vampires are clearly based on Dracula's brides, whereas on the ZX, they're more like ghosts with big naturals.
Which means that to get both kinds of vampire babe from the secondary cover, you'd have to buy a cassette for your c64, and and for your ZX. And I don't mean a cartridge, I mean a, Cassette tape.
If you manage to stalk your way all the way to the end and find the gear you need to destroy her, the Great She-Vampire awaits:
There's no boss fight, but there is a 1 pixel nip, at least on the ZX spectrum.
From there you book it back the way you came, only every screen now has a she-vampire chasing you in a murderous rage. Make it out, and you win. Or maybe you didn't, because just like the Dungeon of Fear and Hunger, you can never really escape Mr. Weems & the She-Vampires.
Only Weems increases the immersion by truamatizing you, the player. Mr. Weems is fine. You don't have to worry about the Weems.
So...
Is it a good game?
Not remotely, but that isn't the point in the slightest.
It's temping to say this is the Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies of video games, but that's not quite right. Weems has promise and ISCWSLaBMUZ doesn't make promises. It issues threats.
Mr. Weems has the charm of a concept that's all potential and zero execution. A dead-eyed accountant gunning his way in a Gauntlet-esq blitz through a vampire-babe infested castle is a fun idea, more-so with all the secret passages and 'gather items and backtrack to the boss' aspect. It's just everything else that goes wrong.
I mean, who doesn't want to hunt the Great She-Vampire to her penthouse for a good staking, I ask you?
