Martian Dreams is the second (and sadly also the last) part of Worlds of Adventure, a spin-off series of Ultima games set in our universe instead of Britannia. Like the predecessor The Savage Empire it draws inspiration from pulp novels and science fiction stories. Especially those tales full of excitement with heroic guys (and occasionally girls) on the cover who single-handedly save the world/planet by fighting hordes of enemies in the most exotic places imaginable. This time you set forth on a journey to Mars, so it pays homage to novels like Burroughs’ Barsoom stories, Well‘s The War of the Worlds and Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.
All those people sneering at the thought of playing fighting games with a single-button joystick probably have never tried one which has been originally designed for it. Admittedly, many genre entries don't play all that well that way. Though those are usually ports of successful arcade cabinets or from game consoles equipped with multi-button gamepads. "Reducing" an existing control scheme well is a sometimes impossible task. Elfmania has been designed from scratch for a simpler control scheme, on the other hand.
The time has come. The night of all nights has arrived, where I will dive into darkness. Evil awakens and a nightmare comes true: Dracula rules our city of New York and the lord of darkness is also the head of the local corporation for cyber-genetics, cyber-space, cyber-surgery, cyber-technology, cyber-weapons and cyber-surveillance. Appropriately, it has been a very long time since the city has seen any light; we are in an apparently endless night.