Plus, vampires can turn into bats. Not even Batman can turn into a bat. Wrap your head around that one.
With all this awesomeness, it's amazing that video game vampires suck so bad (pun not intended, don't you dare laugh). Seriously -- compared to the badass vampires on the screen and in books, video game vampires have come up short for years. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, I am going to examine some of the best (and worst) vampires from the past 40 years.
1970s and Early 1980s
When video games hit the scene, vampires were well-established as being awesome in films, TV shows, and books. Dracula is one of the most popular movie characters of all -time, and generally has the ability to scare the crap out of people.
Literary Vampire of Note: Kurt Barlow. The antagonist of Salem's Lot was plain diabolical. He was thousands of years old (the potential for immortality being yet another superpower of vampires). He used hypnotic abilities to force people to drink blood, which must be way easier than trying to slip it into their drink. He even killed two people by smashing their heads together. All around, he was pretty hardcore.
TV/Film Vampire of Note: The Night Stalker. The highest-rated TV movie in history at the time, The Night Stalker centered on a vampire killing people up and down the Las Vegas Strip. The film got another made-for-TV sequel and spawned a TV show about supernatural investigation that was a precursor to the X-Files.
Video Game Vampire of Note: The Count. As with all Scott Adams text adventures, this game was a delight to play... but it sure made Count Dracula look like a wuss. The Count spends all day sleeping in his semi-unguarded coffin, allowing you free reign through his security-free castle. If you're out at night, the Count shows up and kills you. But if you hide somewhere ridiculously obvious -- say, the oven -- the Count is utterly mystified at how to stop you.
This is especially bad vampire treatment, because it happened in a pure text adventure. As such, Count Dracula could have done virtually anything; he could come flying in like a pro, throw you into the moon so hard that it explodes, and then hit the Las Vegas Strip for a bloody bender. But instead, he just lays there, anxiously sleeping off the day like a hungover prostitute. Way more disappointing than the vampire fare available on TV or in books.
Mid-to-Late 1980s
As video games struggled to express entire worlds in 8-bit pixels, other media explored the deeper aspects of vampires.
Literary Vampire of Note: Akasha. Queen of the Damned is one of the most popular entries in Anne Rice's epic vampire saga. The first vampire ever is revealed to be a brutal former queen bent upon world domination through slaughter. In the "sleep all day, feast all night" world of vampires, it's refreshing to see one with some ambition.
TV/Film Vampires of Note: The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys has a teenage Kiefer Sutherland leading a street gang of California vampires. People who cross them make Sutherland bloodthirsty and brutal, not unlike how a modern Sutherland gets at last call.
Video Game Vampire of Note #1: Vampire. This baddie from the original Final Fantasy isn't very vampire-like. Showing absolutely none of the superpowers associated with his kind, this guy's attacks are limited to swiping at the main characters and casting Gaze, which causes paralysis. A more flavorful attack would have been Confuse, which sometimes makes party members attack each other (i.e. what someone would do after being bitten by a vampire).
A later encounter with the same vampire leads to a one-hit kill battle encounter. No stakes, no crosses, just one punch. Hell, even a guy LARPing as a vampire could take that and stay up. But anyway, let's not rely solely on one anecdote to judge video game vampires during this period of time. Surely the '80s must have given us a better video game vampire -- like maybe this one.
Video Game Vampire of Note #2: She Vampires. These bloodsucking ladies are from a game called The Astonishing Adventures of Mr. Weems and the She Vampires. Let that one sink in. It sounds like a board of 80-year-olds came up with the title. And the only thing astonishing about this game -- or the vampires in it, for that matter -- is how much of a Gauntlet clone it is.