Bram Stoker’s Dracula
I remember when Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out. It was July 1993. It wasn’t hugely anticipated, and operators who were buying pins held on to their money because they knew what was coming next - the much anticipated sequel to The Addams Family: Twilight Zone.
Consequently, Dracula turned up at my local arcade without much fanfare, and I went to play it with my friend Matt. I was just starting to buy new pinballs at that time. I had bought White Water in April and Matt and I planned to go shares in the TZ when it arrived in August. $8,500 in 1993 was a sizeable investment and we were saving all our bucks to spend it wisely.
I thought Dracula was pretty cool, but then we were spoilt for great titles in those years. Apart from the aforementioned White Water…Dr Who, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Getaway HS2, Addams Family and Fish Tales had all come out in recent times.
I was getting pinball fanzines, namely the PinGame Journal and Flipside, both from the USA. Early reviews of Dracula were not that favourable. One criticism was that the ball launches in to the pop bumpers and makes it hard for the player to get control from the outset. It also always had that weird software bug where the audio ramps up in volume at unexpected times. Still does this today.
As for the art, I used to think the backglass and mismatched blue speaker panel / red display a bit dark for my liking. The moulded figure on the coffin kinda twee looking. Tastes change though, and over time I definitely warmed to the colour scheme, and now think the toy model Drac delightfully kitsch. Some people have put the more sinister looking bat-Drac on their games and removed disco Drac with his Love Boat’s Isaac moustache (reference for the 1970s fans).
A bit like Fish Tales, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a game that gained a cult status over time.
The gothic horror theme and amazing dot matrix animations tied in with killer sound effects and screams.
Of course we can’t overlook one of the best mechanical inventions on any pinball machine to date; the mist magnet; where the ball will magically float across the playfield offering the player an opportunity to strike it off its path and start the mist multiball.
Dracula has also gained a cult status for being an excellent tournament game. The lightning flippers, tough outlanes, and fantastic ruleset for the ability to stack multiballs for 10, 20 or 30 million point jackpots. I think the only flaw for competition play is the disproportionate mystery award of up to 20M points, even on tournament settings.
There weren’t too many Draculas to be found in the wild.
I did pick up one second hand in the late 1990’s. Sold during a cull down about 20 years ago. It was a very nice example and went with a bundle of six similar pins for $6,000, many of which I had bought brand new. Such was the deflated pinball market at the time.
Many years later I wanted to get one again because it is such a killer machine.
The one I acquired was an import from Europe and had been pretty messed up in its life over there. A hole was cut in the front cabinet for a ticket dispenser and the underside edges of the cabinet were so filthy that I think moving pinballs and doing car oil changes must be a joint business. It also had terrible and clumsy workmanship on the circuit boards.
Below is a weird example of a CPU with data issues…the mist animations on repeat overlayed with the game being in standard game mode. It’s quite the artistic anomaly. Not my machine and has the bat-Drac mod on the coffin. No ball in play, it would have continued like this had I not switched it off. I suspect a ribbon cable problem.
So, for my example, the cabinet has now been restored, new decals added and all the many ghouls de-housed from Transylvania.
It has come to the YOPS pin-family, initially for the NZ and Wgtn Champs in January and now is part of our permanent collection so I expect to hear some dirty thirrrrrrrrrty millions from you all.
