I was recently thinking about how long it had been since I wrote an installment of Random Game Wednesdays. Taking a look back, I haven’t written one in over four years. So I decided, why not do a new one? I don’t know if this will be a regular, ongoing thing again, we’ll see how it goes. I don’t have anywhere near as much free time as I had when I first started this feature, but it is one I always enjoyed doing.

To make this entry extra special, I decided to do a game from my Sega Genesis library. I was pretty sure I had never done a Genesis game, although I did a quick skim back and saw that I did do a game from the Genesis Mini console. But this is from my actual cartridge collection. I have a total of fifty-six Genesis games, including many classics like Rocket Knight Adventures, all of the Sonic games, that Jurassic Park game where you play as a raptor, all sorts of good stuff. So, as always, I went to a random number generator and received number “fifty-four”. So, looking at my games in alphabetical order, the fifty-fourth game is… Warlock. What the hell is Warlock?

After Googling it, it turns out Warlock was a 1989 horror movie that I had never heard of, and this was a 1995 Genesis game tying into it. Why was it released six years later? Was there a VHS re-release of the movie to go along with it? Was there a straight to video sequel? I’m sure the answer is out there, but I didn’t actually find out. All I know is this is a Genesis game that I had never heard of but somehow ended up in my collection based on a movie I had never heard of. What could go wrong?

Before starting the game, I checked out the options which helped me figure out what buttons do what. The A button’s function is listed as “orb”. The other two are shoot and jump, pretty self-explanatory, but what does orb mean? I tried pressing A, and this little thing floating by my character blinked. Pressing it while holding a direction sent it out in that direction. It was kind of finicky, and you can’t move while doing it, but at least I figured it out.

You start in some kind of town, with dogs and random people walking around. Eventually you get to a bridge, and suddenly some guy shows up and destroys the first part of the bridge, plummeting me to my death. Game over, start over. It took like twenty seconds. I’m then greeted with a screen of some guy looking menacingly at me. Is that the same guy that destroyed the bridge? Is he the warlock? Am I the warlock? The target audience for movie tie in games is fans of the movie or people who are excited for said movie, so not knowing what’s going on isn’t really a fair complaint. But it’s still a thing, I have no idea what’s going on.

My second time, I jumped to avoid the gap in the bridge. Now I’m suddenly being attacked by bats. Using the C button to shoot, I tried to hit them before they hit me, but with no real luck. You can aim up at an angle, but I just could not line it up right. After passing the bridge, that bad guy is back, and now he’s turning the dogs into monsters and the random people into zombies. These enemies are pretty easy to deal with, just hold down shoot and blow them away.

The next area is indoors and full of more zombie people. Some of them aren’t already zombified, but if you shoot them, they automatically turn into zombies, so I saw no reason not to do it. Throughout the area are several items to pick up, such as healing potions and a shield. Pressing up on the D-pad and Start at the same time uses whatever item you have currently selected. I couldn’t figure out how to choose which item was selected, however. According to a Google search, all I have to do is hold down the start button, but that just seemed to pause the game. I don’t know.

This indoor area was pretty confusing. There’s lots of stairs just kind of going all over the place, and I eventually hit a point where every enemy was dead and there was nowhere to go. There was an elevator towards the middle of the area, but it only reached places that were accessible by the stairs. After a lot of walking back and forth, I eventually noticed a small switch, which when shot, allowed the elevator to go up even further, opening up a new path. This confusion would continue into the next level, where I would move forward, jumping over some gaps, until eventually finding a diamond that made me float when I would jump on it. It took me a few tries, but I eventually figured out that it let me float a long distance by repeatedly pressing the jump button to get over a long gap. And once I got to the other side… a dead end. So what was even the point? But also, where was I supposed to to go? From just trial and error, I eventually found a second path near the beginning of the level, under a waterfall, but this was not well telegraphed.

So, very easy to get game overs, not interesting combat, and confusing level design. Is there anything I do like? Well, it does look pretty good. That village in the first level is pretty well realized. The second area under that waterfall has a creepy atmosphere. That all seems fine. But overall, that’s the only thing I liked.

Warlock is not a great game. Kind of par for the course for movie licensed games of the time. But I did hold on to the password I got, just in case I want to pick up from level three at some point. I doubt I will, but you never know. But on the plus side, playing this did make me take a closer look at the games in my Genesis collection, which has led to me playing some much better titles. Maybe you’ll hear about some of that soon.