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Master of Darkness (SIMS - Game Gear - 1993)

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Clonevania: Master of Darkness

If you follow me on Twitter, you might've seen that my brother recently gifted me a Steam Deck for a wedding present. Being the educated soul that I am, my first priority with this impressive handheld was not to play the shiny new remake of Resident Evil 4, but to put emulators and ROMs on it so I could successfully play games released three decades ago.

One of these games was 1992's Master of Darkness, which was released for both the Sega Master System and the Game Gear. Master of Darkness has at least three names depending on its platform and region, and the few people who've written about it on the internet have called it Vampire, Vampire: Master of Darkness or In The Wake of Vampire, creating the illusion that this lone game is an entire franchise.

But Master of Darkness is the exact opposite of a franchise - rather, it's a single title that Sega released to mimic Castlevania when Konami's series was still a Nintendo exclusive. It falls fully in clone territory, and I first became aware of this game when I was a kid reading through the section on The Castlevania Dungeon about "Castlevania-like games." There, it's described as "worth a shot, if only to see the shamelessness."

I'll dare to make a hot take and call that a harsh analysis of Master of Darkness, though maybe I just have a high tolerance for obscure games that resemble more famous titles when you squint. Master of Darkness is far from the crappiest Castlevania clone I've played (that award goes to Castle of Shadows, a piece of mobile shovelware that's no longer available on any app stores), and there's a special kind of B-movie charm that the game radiates.

Instead of putting you in the role of a buff Belmont vampire hunter, for instance, you play a London occultism expert dubbed Ferdinand Social - a truly top-tier name for a protagonist. Social learns that Dracula is going to wreak havoc thanks to his trusty ouija board, which sends him an eerie message one night and serves as Master of Darkness' creative password screen. Taking his knife in hand, Social pursues leads to the Thames and faces Jack the Ripper, who's collecting bodies to fuel Dracula's resurrection. Social's journey then takes him to a creepy house of wax, a graveyard, a laboratory, and finally Transylvania itself.

It's an interesting selection of levels, and while you'll occasionally have to navigate Social through stained glass towers filled with swinging pendulums exported from just about any Castlevania, there are also some original moments. The house of wax, in particular, really makes the skin crawl with poltergeist-animated furniture and creepy women in white who only become alive after you move past them. The late 1800s setting also adds a Hammer Horror-esque flair to Master of Darkness that sets it apart from Castlevania, a series primarily known for its pre-Victorian vampire killing romps (with the exception of a handful of entries - most notably Bloodlines and Portrait of Ruin, neither of which had been released back in '92).

But while Master of Darkness' levels might be charming for evoking the same aesthetic as '70s British horror, they drag with repetitive design. Each level relies way too much on stairs, and while Social isn't as annoying to control on staicases as Simon Belmont was, Simon always traversed through tight levels that never got monotonous. In contrast, each level of Master of Darkness is huge, and after the twentieth staircase, it all starts to blend together. The game also has a habit of locking the player in a single room and forcing them to survive a gauntlet of foes, which becomes old fast. Then there's the last level - a labyrinth of interconnected screens that's just as much fun as most labyrinths are in video games.

Master of Darkness could've benefited from tighter level design for sure. And to stand out from Castlevania, it also could've done away with Dracula as a big boss, since his final appearance is pretty unmemorable anyway. Any other famous horror presence would've helped this game stand out from its competition, and besides, Ferdinand Social seems like an everyman sort of dude. I can easily see his ouija board warning him about Frankenstein's monster, a demon lord or some other denizen of evildom.

Social never got a chance to fight alternate baddies, since Castlevania stopped being a Nintendo exclusive when Bloodlines hit the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in '94, and I doubt that a huge contingent of Sega owners wanted the clone once the real thing was accessible. Still, something about Master of Darkness sticks with me, and it's certainly worthy of an afternoon if you enjoy emulating forgotten gems with say, a Steam Deck.

Honestly, I kinda wish some studio would get the rights from Sega for a remake. I doubt they're interested, but Lizardcube - the company that made Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap and Streets of Rage 4 - would be a great choice. Drop the Dracula stuff for a focus on other gothic icons, fix the repetitive levels, invest in hand-drawn art, and boom, you've got something that could win a niche yet loyal audience, especially since Castlevania is now a series pretty much stuck in limbo. Personally, if I were in charge of the never-will-happen Master of Darkness reboot, I'd make Jack the Ripper the main bad guy. Maybe Jack's killing victims to power some kind of immortality soul engine, and Ferdinand Social has to navigate through ten London landmarks to bring him to justice, culminating in an awesome fight on the clock hands of Big Ben. Now that's a plot worthy of a Hammer flick.