The Adventures of Dr. Franken (1970). Play online

Summary

I first stumbled on The Adventures of Dr. Franken on my dad’s Game Boy in 1992, and the quirky platformer stuck with me.
You control Franky, a lovelorn Frankenstein’s monster, racing through eerie locales to gather bits of his missing girlfriend, Bitsy.
The music borrows Bach’s Fugue No. 2 for the title screen and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for the stages, both arranged by Mark Cooksey on an Atari ST.
A simple password system let us keep our progress, which felt like a neat hack for a handheld.

The SNES version stretched the quest to seven floors and twenty diverse stages, sprinkling keys and upgrades that keep the hunt interesting.
Behind the scenes, a prototype NES edition and a Game Gear build existed, but neither saw an official release.
Plans for a Mega Drive port fizzled out before launch, making those lost builds a collector’s dream.
A 1993 Game Boy sequel, Dr. Franken II, kept the weird charm alive, even as the franchise remained a niche gem.

Storyline

In The Adventures of Dr. Franken for the NES, players control Franky, a Frankenstein’s monster on a desperate quest. His girlfriend Bitsy has been torn apart, and her body parts are scattered across a bizarre world. Franky must explore each level, battling odd enemies and solving platform challenges to retrieve every piece. Once all fragments are gathered, he can reassemble Bitsy and bring her back to life. The game blends classic side‑scroll action with a quirky horror romance.