The Province from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 86

D2G Province Prcllew Friday, January 19, 1996 OBI ifn EH By Renee Doruyter Theatre Critic usi ywu uiuuijiii was anic iu competes with the Count for her affections. The opening scene showing Dracula's ship driven aground and his rise (and rise) from the poop deck is hokey and uncomfortably loud. (So is the wailing music that follows and reappears at the end of the play it should be scary, not painful!) For the rest, there's little to complain about. Act One seemed a little low-key but the whole piece builds nicely; there's lots of comic relief, some absolutely priceless moments and great special effects. Good show! The Passion of Dracula continues at the Arts Club Mainstage to Feb.

24. Tickets'. 687-1644. The performance series of the Kiss Project continues tonight with Off the Wall, featuring action poet Sheri-D Wilson, the Joe Trio and a pot-pourri of musical forms, and tomorrow with An Evening of Fire featuring Oscar Nieto, Mary Louise Albert and Flamenco Heresy. Both shows are at 8 p.m.

at Performance Works; tickets are $15 each. On Jan. 25, TheatreSports gets into the swing of things with Scared Scriptless with a Kiss; music and dance from around the world is featured on Jan. 26. On Jan.

27 there's a dance-till-you-drop party with hot Bhangra rock band Dal-Dil-Vog. Don't miss it. go to sleep at night the clogs howl, the lights subtly change and a deep voice entreats softly, "Come to me, now." Deadly attractive to women, admired by men, worshipped by a few strange souls, Count Dracula is alive and well at the Arts Club Mainstage in The Passion of Dracula, written by Robert Hall and David Richmond and directed with a comic touch by Jay Brazeau. Brazeau's cast is magnificent. Lonesome Dove hunk Eric MWormack stars as the lonely Transylvanian nobleman who meets his match (or does he?) in Professor Van Helsing (Simon Webb), well-informed uncle of the object of his affections, the delicious young Wilhelmina (Molly Parker), who appears to be fading away.

At the local sanitorium, Dr. Cedric Seward (Bernard Cuffling) discusses the situation with Van Helsing and Freudian specialist Dr. Helga Van Zandt (Annabel Kershaw), who also happens to be the mistress of Lord Godalming (John Payne). furious village maidens have come to a grisly end and villagers have become aware of a giant bat; on the scene to investigate is young reporter Jonathan Harker (Vincent Gale), who also falls hard for Wilhelmina and Staff photo by Arlen Redekop Eric McCormack and Molly Parker star in The Passion of Dracula. wiwt i i mm An exhaustive video game study of 40 industry experts tabbed 1995 as the year 16-bit (Genesis and Super NES) systems died.

Guess again, cheeseheads. Once again the "experts" have proved that predicting the vidgame industry is about as easy as shaving your legs with Another gorgeous game for the Saturn that's sure to please soccer fans. The smoothness and speed of play is very impressive, as are the graphics. Goals are celebrated with a nice pan around the stadium to a scoreboard where we're treated to some fancy graphics. But there are shortcomings.

The goalies don't move smoothly and can be too tough to beat. And where's the memory? The 16-bit FIFA Soccer for the Genesis by EA Sports has more than 100 teams available in 12 leagues, including international. You can play the Vancouver 86ers against Milan, Liverpool or Argentina if you want. Worldwide soccer has just 12 international TEAMS! You THUMB systems aren't destined to become modern-day eight-tracks, are they? Not yet. But Sega and Nintendo underestimated the quality of their new titles for the cheapie systems.

When the SNES and Genesis first came out they were considered high end and were kind of expensive. Now, for $100, a 20something lad can get a Genesis and a copy of NHL 96. We still haven't heard the last of the 16-bit systems. Not a cheese grater. Christmas sales of the Genesis and SNES blew everyone away, and it caught the honchos at Sega and Nintendo with their hard drives down.

Donkey Kong Country 2 sold 900,000 copies in North America in less than a month. And the bet here is they could have sold can play as England against Argentina, but not SgT PAUL CHAPMAN Power Play Worldwide Soccer by Sega Saturn. they don have the real only did the games sell so well, but Sega and Nintendo report 1995 combined sales of four million 16-bit consoles (that's close to $500 million US). Which means those folks won't be ready to trade up to the more muscular next-generation gizmos In less than a year. So for at least a year, there won't be a 16-bit the dust.

GAMEDAY Worldwide Soccer by Sega for the Saturn. players either; they're made up ethnic fantasies. Still, the gameplay is good and, if you own a Saturn, it's a worthwhile title. A 3 on the Numb Thumb. CHEAT OF THE WEEK To make Sketch Turner, um, pass wind, in Sega's Comix Zone, press down quickly and repeatedly on the D-pad when enemies appear.

Man, that iced tea must have something extra in it. Too bad it doesn't kill the baddies. copies. (When MK3 first went on sale, it grossed $15 million US in its first three days. The same weekend, the leading Hollywood movie grossed just under $9 million.) Sega also cashed in on the longevity of 16-bit, peddling 500,000 copies of their marvellous Vectorman title while Prime Time NFL Football and Madden 96 also blitzed cash registers with sales of 500,000 each.

So what's up? Those fancy new 32-bit another 250,000 if they had enough supply DKC2 was harder to get than a Courtenay Love handshake. Nintendo also did stellar business with Killer Instinct (1.2 million copies) and Yoshi's Island (1 million-plus). Third-party gutspiller Mortal Kombat 3 also racked up bigger numbers than Anna Nicole Smith's seamstress. Combined Sega and Nintendo sales of MK3 equalled more than a million.