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Aren't those 60's horror films great? The hero enters a remote village tavern to find a group of character actors with silly accents. Everything goes well until he mentions the castle. There's a sudden hush and someone drops a tankard or two. Everyone glares at him because several local girls in tight bodices have mysteriously disappeared. And so it goes on, until the final scene where the monster gets it, the castle burns down and the hero runs off with the innkeeper's daughter.

Well, Brides Of Dracula is even sillier. The plot is some wibble about the vampire superstar Count Dracula who wants to get married to thirteen vampire women. He's discovered that the local village of Bistritz is home to thirteen particularly appealing girls, but they need converting to undead vampires before they're suitable marriage material. This involves the Count overpowering his victim and biting her neck - her hair then turns black and spikey, her dress black and skimpy and her thoughts solely to Drac. She follows him back to his castle - so foolishly obsessed is she - and spends the rest of her time waiting for him in a coffin.

Vampire hunter Val Helsing, on the other hand, doesn't want the marriages to go ahead - whether this is because he wants the women for himself, because he just wants to spit the Count, or because he sincerely believes that women have more of a role in life than merely serving their master is unclear.

Anyway, whatever his motivation, he runs around trying to find the thirteen ingredients - like a crucifix and a wooden mallet - to put into his vampire destruction kit to destroy the Count before the nuptials can take place. Both Dracula and Van Helsing wander round picking up these objects and taking them back to the starting point. First one to finish collecting all thirteen items wins, unless you run out of lives first. You choose which character you want to play and a friend, or your ST, plays the other. It's a split-screen display, even in one player mode. Control is the standard joystick job and involves a lot of jumping over people or hitting them. The objects of your quest are always in the same areas, so, after a few games, you get to know the lie of the land. Control is, at times, hideously frustrating, especially when trying to use the stairs for the tenth time.

The graphics have a decidedly individual style - there are some pretty backgrounds and the game uses more than sixteen colours on-screen in some scenes. This, along with parallax scrolling, means it looks attractive enough, but it all moves too slowly. The main sprites move jerkily and plod around in a rather unhurried way, giving the game a pedestrian pace. The sound is unmentionable, so we won't.

Brides Of Dracula definitely has potential. If the graphics were speeded up, some good sound effects added and the gameplay changed, it'd make a brilliant game. As it stands, it's not really much fun - even if it's raining outside and the little hand's gone past the vertical. After a couple of games, it turns into a plodding jaunt round the landscape visiting the same areas and doing the same things. Once you've completed the mission once, it would have to be raining very hard indeed before you'd be tempted to go near it again.

There are some good touches and characters, but they don't drag the game about the level of being pretty dull. Two players don't add much either. At this price, you and your ST deserve better.

1. Not many two-player split-screen collect-'em-ups around like this - phew!
2. Unique style of graphics, some humorous touches, but all too jerky.
3. Horror Zombies From The Crypt has a similar theme, but has more to do and is prettier.