Dracula Hunter (lost arcade game; 1979)

Picture taken of a Japanese magazine.

Status: Lost

Dracula Hunter (aka ドラキュラハンター Dorakyurahanta) is an arcade game released in Japan in 1979 by the company "Tenkon Kogyo". There appear to have been both an upright cabinet and a cocktail screen model made for it, though there haven't been any pictures of the former to surface online. While it was popular in its country of origin, its overseas localizations saw little to no success. The game was popular enough to be referenced in the manga Game Center Arashi where a young boy is on a mission to become the "greatest gamer of all time", making this game one of the first games to have a pop-culture reference in other media.

Multiple photos of the ROM board and exterior machine parts have surfaced online through a Japanese auction site, as well as several screenshots of the game in action. The oldest known footage was from a YouTube video uploaded in 2012, the description states that the game was recorded from real hardware. Another video showing gameplay footage was uploaded in 2018, and the uploader stated it was recorded via an emulator. It is unclear whether it's a homebrew ROM or a custom version of the popular arcade emulator MAME.

On May 1st, 2018, the complete arcade cabinet was listed on the Yahoo Japan auction site, mentioned in the MAME dumping Google group. It is unknown who bought the cabinet, or if it was ever sold.

Gameplay

The game appears to be a mixture of Space Invaders and Galaxian, where you have to protect a sleeping princess from a horde of vampires and occasional dive-bombing bats. Unlike most shooters at the time though, the player is able to move around freely across the board. The player must kill the vampires and bats by throwing a cross that loops around them, this can make the game rather difficult as you need to get close to the enemy to guarantee a direct hit. The player must also complete the stage by hitting the doorway to Dracula's castle with a cross, this can be difficult due to the one-hit-death mechanic.

Availability

As stated previously, the game was popular in Japan but was not very successful in the United States. Theory suggests this was because of a controversial game Death Race released prior, having gotten public outcry due to its grim nature of using cars to run over pedestrians. It's safe to assume this game was caught up in the public outcry and thus not many arcades wanted to host it. It is unclear how many units were sold overseas or how many arcades had it.

Fan Games

A fan-made sequel was unofficially released for the Sega Saturn in 1999 called Dracula Buster, which can be easily found through ROM & iso hosting sites. Likely, the game's sprite graphics were traced or recreated by memory and not raw graphical rips.

Similarly, a game called Dracula Panic was released for the Sharp MZ-700 home computer by a company called OAK Corp, in 1982. This appears to be a direct clone of the game, with very similar theming and gameplay mechanics.