Movies - Nightmare On Elm Street

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	Movies - Nightmare On Elm Street

Nightmare on Elm Street is the name of a video game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System by LJN. The game is loosely based on the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror films of the same name, especially the third film and fourth film. A seperate DOS computer version based on the film franchise was also released, but was a role-playing game.

NES Storyline

In the game you (and up to three other players with a special adaptor) controlled a character that had to jump and punch his way through various Elm Street locations and homes to collect all of the bones of Freddy Krueger in order to place them in a furnace and end his reign of terror. Each character had the ability to withstand roughly a dozen direct hits, before they lost a life (the character floated up to the top of the screen as an angel). Each character had an on-screen sleep meter that would slowly decline (and could be replenished with cups of coffee). When your character fell asleep, the setting and villains became darker and more sinister. While the character was asleep, icons could be collected that allowed ther character to switch between three different Dream Warriors.

Ninja - Throw unlimited throwing stars and a jump kick.

Acrobat - Twirled when you jumped and threw an unlimited supply of javelins.

Magican - Shoot unlimited fireballs and had the ability to hover when you jumped.

All the players could get these icons and use the Dream Warrior powers at the same time. In an interesting twist, when four players played at once, two of the characters would appear as females.

However, if you stayed asleep for too long (you woke up by finding boom box icons), you would hear the film's famous theme song and you be forced to have mini-battle with Freddy Krueger.

Once you collected all the bones in a level, you had to battle a form of Freddy Krueger that was vaguely similar to forms that he took in the films. The final level took place in the former house of Freddy Krueger as you made your way into the boiler room to burn all his bones in the furnace. Before you can toss the bones in the furnace, you had one final battle with Freddy Krueger.

The game was somewhat more popular then LJN's Friday The 13th Nintendo game because of its option to play four players at once and its usage of the Dream Warrior powers that were a popular part of the film franchise. However, like many LJN games, the graphics were average and the censorship rules of Nintendo meant that game could never capture the scary mood of the slasher film franchise.

The ending was also a disappointment as it simply involved watching the bones float into the furnace, followed by a congratulations message and a promise that the world had not seen the last of Freddy Krueger.

DOS Storyline

The DOS and Commodore 64 edition of a Nightmare on Elm Street was very different from the NES game of the same name. Published by Monarch Development and developed by Westwood Studios the role playing gameplay and overhead viewpoint were similar to Gauntlet games. Using the characters from the third film, you can chose to play "Kincaid", "Kristen", "Will", "Nancy" or "Taryn" on a quest to save "Joey" and defeat Freddy.

Arcade Storyline

A Nightmare on Elm Street is also the title of an arcade game, where up to four players could team up to battle Freddy in the infamous boiler room. The arcade game had incredibly poor graphics, and was similar to the DOS edition in that there were no dream powers, but rather the players collected various combat weapons, that you could use against Freddy. The game is difficult to find.

Pinball

Trivia

LJN was also responsible for an arcade version of A Nightmare on Elm Street where you and up to three other players could wander through a boiler room collecting various man made weapons to be used against Freddy Kruger. The game had incredibly poor graphics and is difficult to find.

The introductory screen shot for the Nintendo version has what appears to be a glitch where Freddy Kruger's is not wearing his trademark glove, but still has sharp knives coming out of his fingers. However, the picture of Freddy is based off a poster for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
, where Freddy's knives came out of his fingers in this manner.

Despite the popularity of the franchise, given a second life with the commercial success of the film Freddy vs. Jason, a video game based on the films has never been released for any of the more powerful video games systems.

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