Well it’s getting close to Halloween, so I thought I’d treat you all to a super scary blog! Well, it’s not that scary. During this time of year, our minds drift to thinking of all sorts of Halloween monsters, from witches to zombies to ghosts. All of these are gross and scary to a certain degree, but to me, none is more scarier and grosser than vampires! I just think they’re so disgusting! Drinking blood just sounds so nasty to me! I don’t understand why anyone would find that alluring. And don’t get me started on that Twilight junk. So I started to think about if there are any famous vampires that I actually like. And I thought of five. Just five. So I thought I’d share them with you all!

Kid Dracula

He’s the main character in the game that shares his name. It was on the 8-bit Famicom in Japan only (look at the first boss to understand why), but it did make it to the US on the Game Boy. It’s basically a parody of Castlevania, kind of like what Parodius is to the Gradius series. All the familiar Castlevania characters and levels are extra cute and super deformed. Even the first level theme song is a wonky version of one of the main themes in the game! But Kid Dracula is incredibly fun, too, and my favorite Castlevania game in the series. And speaking of Parodius, you can also play as Kid Dracula in one of those shooters, too. He’s my favorite character to play as. International Track & Field on the DS also had a Kid Drac cameo, too bad the controls in that game sucked. I read that Kid Dracula is actually supposed to be a young version of Alucard. With the popularity of Castlevania now, don’t you think it would be cool to make another Kid Dracula game?

Count Chocula

I just like cereal characters. They were a big staple when I was a kid. And I’m glad that Count Chocula doesn’t drink blood. At least I don’t think he does. I think he just eats chocolate. You know what’s funny is that I don’t even LIKE Count Chocula cereal! I hate marshmallows. If they made the monster cereals without marshmallows, I might eat them. You can find those cereals at this time of year, too. They have Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry. All with marshmallows. Yuck! I saw them at the store the other day, along with Franken Berry and Boo Berry Fruit Roll Ups! Naturally I didn’t buy them. So yeah, I don’t like other cereals like Lucky Charms either. I was so mad as a kid when they came out with Pac-Man cereal, because it had marshmallows, too!

The Count

Even though my favorite Sesame Street character is Oscar the Grouch, I can understand why many kids (and now adults) liked The Count the best. Like Oscar, he had a bit of an ‘edge’ to him. Just goes to show that even the littlest kids can be fascinated by scary stuff. Plus, Count tried his best to make math and counting fun, which is gotta be hard to do, since math really isn’t fun at all! And he doesn’t drink blood either! I read that back in Sesame Street’s early years in the late 60’s and early 70’s, The Count was even scarier than he is now, and could even hypnotize people! Yeah, a lot of Sesame Street characters have changed over the years. Oscar was orange in the first season, for instance!

2-D BloodRayne

Note that I specified BloodRayne from the recent 2-D game which I reviewed a few weeks back. Her new game was a 2-D sidescroller, like a mix of Castlevania and Mega Man X. And because of that, I loved the game, despite the tough challenge level! It was also surprising since I don’t normally play bloody vampire games. But 2-D BloodRayne seemed like a cool lady who could do all sorts of neat moves. And she was a strong female character, which I appreciate. And in the game, I don’t think she tried to trick any good humans into sucking their blood and turning them into vampires. She just sucked blood and killed the bad guys. So she was a good vampire. So does this mean I’m going to go back and play the older BloodRayne games and watch the movies? Oh, HECK NO! I prefer to stay blissfully ignorant in my 2-D world, thank you.

Spike McFang

OK now we’re going to go super-obscure here. Back in the 16-bit days on the SNES, there was a game that I always wanted to play, but could never find or rent. It was called The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang. Gameplay looked similar to Zelda with its top-down perspective. You played as Spike McFang, a vampire who wore a top hat, drove around a bus that had bat wings on it, and ate tomatoes. While I played a LOT of SNES games back in the day, there were some that I missed, such as this one or Illusion of Gaia. Never could buy them cheap enough or find them at the rental stores, or I just didn’t have the time. I was hoping that someday they’d end up on Virtual Console, but that hasn’t happened and probably won’t. I still wish that I could play those games today. I know you can do the emulation thing, but I’d rather not. I’m just weird that way. But from what I’ve seen, I think I’d really like The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang. I don’t know what it is about 16-bit SNES games that captivated me more than any other game system, but they did. I guess that’s why the SNES is my favorite game console. Oh! I almost forgot that I read somewhere that the SNES Spike McFang game was actually a sequel to one on the TG-16!

Honorable Mention: Jurgen

Well I thought of another vampire who was kind of cool. Jurgen was a Eurotrash vampire in the second season of the Sam & Max games. But he was really funny in the third season, where he worked the camera for Satan so the demon overlord could do some reverse PR in the last episode to tell everyone that he wasn’t responsible for the giant monster terrorizing the city, even though the title of the game was The Devil’s Playhouse! Man, I wish TellTale would make another Sam & Max game. TellTale isn’t as cool as they were a year or two ago.

Bloody Conclusions

And that’s all I feel like talking about vampires. What do you think of my picks? Are there any other vampires you think I would like? What are your favorite vampires and other Halloween monsters? Let me know in the comments section!

My favorite Halloween monsters are actually ghosts! I think ghosts are cool. Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favorite movies, a guilty pleasure of mine is watching those dumb Ghost Hunter type shows, and heck, I even like Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde just as much, if not more than, Pac-Man himself!

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