In 1989 Rare and LJN released A Nightmare on Elm Street tie-in video game on the NES, but it was quite different from what it was originally announced. The main difference in this prototype / concept version of A Nightmare on Elm Street is that you could play as the iconic 80’s slasher icon. Screenshots of the game appeared in a few issues of Nintendo Power and other magazines, sharing some details on the gameplay:
“It’s your greatest dream and your worst nightmare. You are Freddy Krueger… the gruesome star of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies. Use all of your evil powers and special abilities to track down and destroy your pursuers before they bury your bones.” – Nintendo Power.
“You are Freddy Krueger. A horde of obnoxious teenagers are trying to get rid of you by finding your bones and burning them. Killing them is the only way to stop them. You can travel along elm street through various lines (electrical and plumbing) or by stepping into a mirror and entering another room. The kids have weapons and some of them possess “Dream Alter Egos”.. If you strike them before they wake up, they’ll trouble you no more. Sharpen up those finger razors and get ready to slash, ’cause Freddy’s here!”
In one of these screenshots you can see the dream killer as a snake and in another Freddy is normal but going after some random kids, not a character from the film. In 1989, another issue of Nintendo Power addressed the game in an article about the Nintendo Satellite. This one had two different screenshots, one where Freddy is seen with two enemies and a cool title card. The description was different and it described what we got in the final game:
“You may never go to sleep again once you enter the nightmare world. You and your crew, the elm street neighborhood gang, have the power of the satellite to get you through in this LJN horror PAK.”
Thanks to Roxas for the contribution!
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This game’s main poster, (with the 3 screenshots) was posted online way back in 2008. I wrote about this proto on MobyGames 10 years ago. Any way the prototype did exist and it was changed into Phantom Fighter for the nes. Freddy was changed into a Martial arts fighting master and the teenagers became Phantoms.
The prototype was not developed by Rare, it was made by Marionette Co., Ltd. The same company that made Dr.Chaos.
Hey, wouldn’t happen to have any sources of information on that, would you? While I wouldn’t doubt that LJN would’ve hired multiple studios simultaneously to work on games they got license to, and this would also be far from the first time a game starting development with a license attached needing to redress it once they lose said license (Sunsoft’s Journey to Silius starting out as a Terminator game immediately springs to mind), having something concrete to back that up would be nice since multiple communities of people have been trying to figure out what happened to this version of the game for decades now. I’ve been looking up info on Marionette and Phantom Fighter trying to find any info that it started out development as Nightmare on Elm Street and haven’t found anything yet. Anything you can provide would be helpful, thanks! (Note: I’m not associated with Unseen64, just a curious person doing their own investigation)