Night Creatures (TurboGrafx-16) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
271A playthrough of NEC's 1991 horror-themed action-adventure game for the TurboGrafx-16, Night Creatures.
Night Creatures was developed for NEC by Manley and Associates, and it was the sole TurboGrafx-16 game to be created by the people that brought us such SNES hits as The Wizard of Oz, Pink Goes to Hollywood, and King Arthur and the Knights of Justice. They had a of a couple hits for PC (Wolf and Lion), but for the most part their work tended to fly under the radar.
And if Night Creatures flew under your radar, you can count yourself very lucky.
It's a platforming adventure game starring an assortment of Halloween-style monsters, lifting many of its ideas straight out of games like Simon's Quest. You play as some guy who gets cursed by Hecate one night as he takes a nighttime stroll, and if you don't find a way to cure yourself before sunrise, you'll be transformed into a "night creature."
To save yourself, you have to search for weapons and destroy all of the boss monsters before time runs out. (If you want to see what happens if you take too long, I included it at the very end of the video) Night Creatures feels like it's trying for an "open world" like in Castlevania II, but there aren't very many areas at all to work through, nor is there any real thought required to navigate them.
Chances are, though, that you won't want to. While the graphics are music are nicely done, the game is an utterly wretched waste of time and money. The potentially cool animal transformations are made useless outside of very specific couple of moments thanks to the drain they impose on your life gauge, the controls are sloppier than a drunk at last call in a hotel bar, the collision detection is some of the worst I've ever experienced in a game, and the knockback after taking a hit coupled with the lack of a reasonable window of invincibility allows enemies to easily pinball you back-and-forth until your dead. It all feels so unfair and cheap. And broken.
If you enjoyed X-men on NES, you might find something here to like, too. I guess.
Besides those issues, the game also feels thoroughly incomplete. It seems like there were some good ideas here, but the useless items, the lack of use for the bear transformation, and the boss rush at the end all seem to imply that Night Creatures was intended to be far more than it turned out to be.
It might've all nicely served as a bit of mindless entertainment if it hadn't been released in such a dire state, but Night Creatures' quality delivers on horror far better than its content, and as you might imagine, that's far from ideal.
With US exclusives like this, it's no wonder that the TurboGrafx-16 sank so quickly.
If you want something for the Turbo with a similar theme but that's actually fun to play, grab Splatterhouse or The Addams Family instead.
You can find more Halloween/horror-themed games through my playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHuN8U3j4lnYxDOPIpgoQNv3
And to see more of the TurboGrafx-16, check out this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHthFFFMbIuf5uIEsXu69_WF
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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