It’s 1986, you’re the vampire lord himself waking up in casa de Dracula’s Castle and aside from an incredible thirst for the red lifeblood stuff, you find yourself incredibly annoyed. That evil bastard Van Helsing has snuck in while you slumbered away for decades and completely renovated your castle!
Obviously it’s time to rip out his throat. Once you figure out the zodiac coin room system between you and him first.
Welcome to the Dracula’s Castle Gamebook from the mid 80s – seriously, why don’t they make books this good anymore?
Dracula’s Castle gamebook – another tome for the planned pile
Ugh, my mythical bookshelf is growing by the week. Firstly my plan to find at least one original Fighting Fantasy book from the early 80s to early 90’s has been a complete disaster. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve visited the local op shops and made a beeline straight for the second hand section, searching in vain for anything with that classic green spine but coming up empty. The supplies of anything by Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone and co have well and truly dried up (they’re still available from collectors but for drug money). We’re talking Fighting Fantasy, Dungeoneer, Sorcery, the works – scarcer than rocking horse poo!
And now tracking back to those amazing game book memories, all of a sudden I’ve just remembered Dracula’s Castle, another amazing gamebook I used to thoroughly enjoy from my local library in Richmond. Where not only could you play the quintessential vampire lord, but you could also choose to be the hapless Johnathan Harker – solicitor and hopefully vampire Slayer!
Of course trying to find a copy of Dracula’s Castle from 1986 might be an even tougher mission, given that there was one of these books…and around 53 Fighting Fantasy efforts.
Still, I do like a ridiculous challenge on occasion.
(Coincidentally if you came here from Googling ‘Where can I buy Dracula’s castle book?’ then the top answer is probably eBay but be prepared to drive a wooden stake through your wallet. Last time I looked it was around $85 AUD for a really rough looking copy…)
Inside Dracula’s Castle – memories of ’86
Now being a runt born on the turn of the amazing decade that was the 80s, I came across author J H Brennan’s excellent Horror Classic game book effort more in the 90’s. And it’s incredible the things I remember from it even though it’s been decades since I flicked through the pages.
I’ve since recorded what I remembered:
But if you don’t like video (or YouTube has suddenly crashed for whatever reason not letting the clip above play for you), the things that I remember included:
-Rolling a dice for each of your stats. Obviously you wanted nothing but 6’s for whoever you played but especially if you were wearing the shoes of Johnathan Harker as he slogged through Dracula’s Castle because of course the Master Bloodsucker himself had stats set to maximum.
-If you played Drac at one stage you could meet and team up with your humble manservant Igor! (Or you could slay him if the mood took you.)
-Also if you were the king of vampires I remember the journey of having to collect astrological tokens to unlock Van Helsing’s hiding spot. This included facing (and retrieving the token from it’s nose) a bull creature representing Tauris, a fish creature for Piscees etc
(Author J H Brennan wrote a lot of non-fiction books about everything from Nostradamus to astrology so you can see where this zodiac ideal hailed from.)
-You could scale the outside of Dracula’s castle…but there was a chance you could slip off and die. One flat vamp.
-I don’t remember much about playing Harker. Obviously rolling up a vampire was far cooler. Who wouldn’t want to be lord of Dracula’s haunted castle?
Dracula’s Castle – the next best thing
The odds of finding a copy in the wild (or in the next garage sale I stumble over)? Astronomical. But I can certainly relive the memories thanks to someone scanning the entire book on Archive.org. Oh god, the memories are coming back with these pics – I completely forgot about the location guide!
Now obviously this is not as good as having a physical (and undoubtedly well worn by this stage) copy of Dracula’s Castle on hand to flick through and roll the dice with – but at least someone has preserved it for the interwebs for fans like me to trawl through once again.
Garlic fireball spewing piano playing cherubs? Where the hell did this little bastard spawn from??
And was this glorious sketch the inspiration for Watchmen’s Dr Manhatten? You be the judge!
It turns out Dracula wasn’t alone here…
Yes the internet isn’t just full of social media conspiracy theories and more malware than your devices can eat, occasionally it does good things. Like reveal to me that Dracula’s Castle wasn’t the only game book that J H Brennan created way back when. No there was the Grailquest series:
But more importantly in the vein (geddit?) of classic horror game books, there was also a Frankenstein version! And not only could you play Frankie himself (as in the monster), but also the fully fledged lunatic who pieced him together, yes Dr Frankenstein PHD, MAD.
Will I ever find this particular book on a dusty shelf somewhere where it’s been laying for decades, a faded $2 sticker slowly peeling off? I’m going to say nay.
However once again in the spirit of preserving history of innovate gamebooks like this, I’m so happy to report that it too is also scanned in full and preserved over at Archive.org.
So while the search continues to find a copy of Dracula’s Castle and now this one, at least I can flick through and appreciate the glory of 80’s game books all over again!
Have you played either? Are there still copies of Dracula’s Castle or Frankenstein’s curse still on your bookshelf? Let me know in a comment below!