Previous Next

Elvira may have a reputation as a pretty wild party animal, but even she draws the line when her new home has been turned into a site for endless celebration by ghouls, zombies and slime-dripping monsters. Even the servants have turned into bloodthirsty psychos, but it's not Elvira's fault. It all started when her Uncle Elmo popped his clogs and left his home, the rather spacious castle Killbragant, to his most favourite niece. Elvira promptly packed her suitcases and headed off in expectation of a life of luxury. Unfortunately, her Great-great-grandma Emelda had made a past with the Devil to bring her back to life. Apparently, she was an even bigger party animal than Elvira [Is it possible? - Ed] and all the local monsters and demons have gathered to throw a humongous party.

Being chased around your own castle by assorted werewolves, vampires and freaky farmers - Phil - may make a good movie but it's no way to live. Elvira makes a desperate plea for help and for one or two excellent reasons which we haven't the space to describe here, you quickly offer to help out. Apparently Emelda's flesh-crawling return can be prevented by opening a chest hidden in one of the towers. You need six keys to open this chest, and guess what, Uncle Elmo forgot to include them with the door key. So like in any good B-movie horror flick you've got to explore all the castle's nooks and crannies, just asking for the assorted creeps and nasties to knock your brains out.

At this point the audience wonders why the hero doesn't grab an M-16, flamethrower, flak jacket and a couple of gallons of holy water before even thinking about doing anything. But no, you're a traditionalist and make do with a whopping great sword. The weaker creatures can be dealt with by a few lunges and parries (the only real arcade bit in the game). Other monsters regard sword-swipes as merely insulting - these can only be defeated by magic spells. So as well as exploring for the keys, you have to locate special ingredients which smart cookie Elvira (who's locked herself in the kitchen) will then mix up to make spells. Elvira was originally a one-megabute-only game on the Amiga, so it's quite an achievement to fit it into the Commodore 64.

Graphically the scenes are simply excellent and not that different to the Amiga's, the gore has been toned down but it's still not for the weak-hearted. Detail on objects and the border doesn't quite live up to the main action graphics, though. As for sonics, there's some good spooky music on the attractive title sequence, but in-game FX are sparse.

Interaction with the game is by moving a pointer around the screen and clicking on the arrows for directions or one of the words down the side. Joystick control isn't quite as fast as mouse: it's okay, though. The only serious problem is disk access. Your C64 simply hasn't the memory to keep that much of this graphically superb game in memory. So every couple of screens there's a bit of disk accessing and disk swapping (there's three double-sided disks!). If you have a short temper, you will soon be diving for the off button. However, if you're the patient type, and you're looking for a puzzling adventure game with a good splattering of gore than here it is.

Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark is a great game let down only by the appalling disk access.

Who would've expected the fledgling budget house MicroValue to make such an impressive full-price debut? It this sets the standard for future Flair releases, then we've got a lot to look forward to... including an Elvira arcade game!

The adventure game is packed with stunning graphics. Unfortunately this means very frequent (though fairly rapid) disk access but with over a megabyte of data across three double-sided disks, you certainly have plenty to see and do.

Put some relaxing, slightly creepy music on the stereo and Elvira can keep you bewitched for hours.

Elvira is an American star who made her first appearance as the hostess of a horror movie series on a local TV station. Real name Cassandra Peters, the Los Angeles actress auditioned in normal street clothes but was told to come up with something more macabre for the show. A local kid apparently came up with the concept (and we admire his imagination).

Nine years later, she's come to symbolise the US horror industry and has boosted the reputation of Hallowe'en so much that "sometimes I feel like Santa Claus. Perhaps they'll soon have Elviras in department stores asking kids what they want for Hallowe'en." (We hope so!)

There have to be a film eventually, but the eventual Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark movie was surprisingly gore-free. Instead the 15-rated New World video has the most cleavage jokes in history and is unsurprisingly one of Robin's favourite films. Naughty but nice!

Presentation 82%
Postcard of Elvira, instruction manual, spell and recipe book including tips, save/load plus a novella. Disk accessing is heavy, though.

Graphics 90%
Very attractive main graphics.

Sound 56%
Okay title tune, in-game FX limited to clanking swords during combat.

Hookability 71%
Icon control system works well and it's good fun just exploring. However, disk accessing is a bit of a problem.

Lastability 82%
A big challenge, with over three disks to go through!

Overall 81%
A superb translation which is a real treat for anyone with patience.