On a bleak, windscreen-wiper-defeating November evening, shrouded by torrential rain, Brad and Janet break down in the middle of nowhere returning home from their friends' wedding. They're welcomed inside a spooky house of horrors, not unlike the Addams Family mansion by a creepy, dishevelled butler known as Riff Raff. Reluctantly conceding help, they enter amidst an Annual Transylvanian Convention attended by an ensemble of vaguely human-ish nutters lead by Dr Frank-N-Furter, a self-proclaimed 'sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania'. Parodying Dr Frankenstein, Franky claims to have discovered the secret to overnight life creation, skipping all that longwinded pregnancy and growing up stuff. By the time Brad and Janet realise they've stumbled into a waking nightmare, it's too late to extricate themselves. They may as well go with the flow, join the surreal musical comedy stage show!
CRL Group bravely attempted to adapt the bizarre, cult cavalcade of crazy to the major 8-bit home computer systems available in 1986. It's an exploration-puzzler of sorts in which you play as Brad or Janet in an effort to recover all the various components of Franky's Medusa machine to free their loved one from a catatonic state, encased in stone. To make progress, keys must be collected and forcefields deactivated whilst navigating around the hindrance of Tim Curry's underlings, including Meat Loaf riding his trademark motorbike and Rocky himself; a muscle-bound, blond-haired, blue-eyed poster boy for Hitler's Aryan superrace.
I trace the game's development path, establish the strength of its connections to the source material and decide if it's worth your time.
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