RETRO REVIEW: A Nightmare on Elm St. (NES, 1990) “Hey! You Forgot the Power Glove!”
I guess I couldn’t let our Dorkside’s 2024 Freddy ‘Fest (*tm) thing go by without bringing this up now could I? A Nightmare on Elm St. for the Nintendo Entertainment is a great, *cough* wonderful, *choke*…I mean, it’s a game that has been lumped in with LJN’s notorious track record of poor 8-bit releases based on movies. Only this one has the odd distinction of having been made by Rare; That’s right, the developers responsible for such stone cold classics as Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye and the almighty Banjo-Kazooie are to blame for this one.
Please don’t make me play it again.
Taking on the role of some generic, rando teenagers (up to 4 of them if you happen to have been privileged enough to own the Four Score), this game seems to be based on the series as a whole and not any one specific installment. Though maybe it could be Part 3 because you’re a Warrior in a Dream? I dunno. (email me). Anyway, the goal here is to run around a spooky street called Elm beating up all sorts of innocent Halloween themed animals while collecting the bones of one Frederick Herman Joseph Christopher Reeve Krueger. Once you’ve completed his skeleton, a boss fight starts and you gotta take out the Dream Master to advance to the next stage. Maybe it’s based off of Part 4: The Dream Master then? No clue.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Despite the general tediousness, there’s an admittedly pretty interesting mechanic called the Sleep Meter that slowly drains automatically and once it’s completely empty, guess what? Yep, you’re royally screwed having now fallen asleep and entered the dream world (though there are cups of coffee scattered around to help keep this at bay). Here, your energy is much weaker but you’ve also now been granted special fighting abilities. This all sounds pretty good while I’m typing it and reading it out loud back to myself but the overall problem lies in the execution. There’s an undeniable repetition happening that sinks in real quick. This game isn’t really all that horribly made, it just makes the unforgivable mistake of being boring.
Still, I can’t argue that it doesn’t have one banger of a soundtrack
I never personally owned A Nightmare on Elm St. as a kid but I do remember seeing it at somebody’s house and was kinda blown away by the novelty of it. Freddy Krueger’s face slapped across a NES cartridge was beyond cool simply as an object. It wasn’t until years later when I ran across one at a yard sale though where I was finally able to add it to my collection. But at that point, my Nintendo was already residing in the console retirement home of my garage. I didn’t actually finally get to have a real go with it until fairly recently by way of a uhh, digital copy. I sat there all ready for it one night, lights out and excited for some lo-fi time travel. And I played as much of it as I could, I really did! But before long, my sanity began asking me where I’d decided to wander off to.
Being head over heels in love with the sadly now defunct Friday the 13th game, I’m absolutely convinced there’s a totally viable and great approach to the Nightmare property utilizing a similar system. Especially if you worked in updated forms of the sleep meter and dream world mechanics. But until that happens, we’ll all just have to settle for and play what we’ve got here. Alongside an original cartridge and NES deck, there are many other options available to check this thing out for yourself. Or you could just throw a playthrough on over at the good ol’ Youtube and have it on in the background.
I’d recommend the latter while we wait.
Side note: The Power Glove came out exactly one year before this game.
I mean… c’mon.
