Castlevania

GOOD EEEEVENING
Step into the shadows of the deadliest dwelling on earth. You've arrived at Castlevania, and you're here on business:
To destroy forever the Curse of the Evil Count.
Unfortunately, everybody's home this evening. Bats, ghosts, every kind of creature you can imagine. You'll find 'em all over the place, if they don't find you first.
Because you've got to get through six monstrous floors before you even meet up with the Master of the House. Your Magic Whip will help, and you'll probably find a weapons or two along the way.
But once you make it to the tower, you can count on a Duel to the Death. The Count has waited 100 years for a rematch. He's ready. Are you?

Castlevania is the first widely known game of a very strong franchise. And a very unsual game it was. We should start by saying it's reserved, that is it keeps a low profile. Like in many succesive adventures, you a Belmont must go and defeat Dracula. And like these other games you may obtain many auxiliary weapons that help you in your quest. But what makes this game different from the mayority? Let's go back in time to 1987.

The NES has recently come out, most of its cartridges have labels (action, adventure, sports; hey my labels are actually based on theirs). Mario is still all the rage. A game known as Vampire Killer had been released for some plataforms but was relativelly obscure and was more of an Adventure title (the first in the series). It had a simple storyline but it had really intricate maze like levels that needed to be explored, multiple items and even sellsmen (they're everywhere aren't they :P).

Konami decided to port this great game to the hot new console (the NES of course). However in the process they streamlined this game, its gameplay was simplied to an action title's with linear levels (now its just you and Dracula's minnions). Also due to NES limitations they decresead the resolution of its graphics and sound. So a new approach had to be taken. A very well crafted level design, atmospheric and gloomy. Some areas have nonstop action, others have a strong emphasis on mood and still others on platforming challenges, however all are memorable. And lo and behold Castlevania was born.

So now with that said, we can trully give a fair description of this game. As I mentioned before this game is reserved, its storyline will not interfere with your gameplay. Neither will the gameplay mechanics. Yet it has a very well crafted level design, with a very coherent progression, you can almost imagine being in Dracula's castle.

However, Simon is not really super human. He can't jump 5 stories high out of a sudden and if he's hit by an ball of fire he's thrown back (which often frustrates gamers who had a heavily overpowered champion to play as), just a very fit and dextrous guy with a lot of courage. To me this makes sence, if the prince of Darkness has barricated himself in his castle you'll find yourself out numbered and overpowered and that is just the case. Not all is lost though, Simon is actually very much capable to conquer all these problems but he really needs a lot of help from you.

So let's see how this turns out, atmospheric stage design, graphics and music. Nonstop action, and a coherent sequence of locations. That is this game honestly tries to emmulate that feeling you get when you go into a haunted mansion. Plus it's relentless difficulty adds the only element that could be missing, adrenaline. Unfortunately though, many gamers are far too jaded and can't seem to allow these graphics to do their charm (kind of like what happens with movies special effects, people might get startled with a some horror movie scene until someone finally locates a zipper on the monster).

So honestly that is what this game tries very well to offer. If you give it a chance, you might find yourself battling hoards of monsters in the darkest of places. Unfortunately though, as far as I've played (none since the PS2 version came out) this was never attempted again, with the same measure of success (and as far as I know it was only attempted in Haunted Castle). All new Castlevania games have either a very strong storyline or superheroes rather than humans or some other thing that prevents them from reuniting these elements that made Castlevania stand out way back in 1987 (some might say 1986).

Still not all is perfect, as I pointed out the characters mobility is one of the mayor limitations of this game. Controllers have evolved since the NES considerably (not to mention Colleco's and Intellivisions or Atari's), so it had only a limited number of buttons to choose from and only two of which may be used comfortably (the others are more akin to functions keys due to their placement). Hence we might find our hero to climb stairs rather than throw a weapon (and this is something that si common even in fanmade games, guess not everyone has a problem with this, personally I don't think its such a big deal). And yes, in this instalment Simon is incapable of huge or double jumps, firing his whip in other directions, carrying an inventory or asking some other character for help.

So the big question, is it any good? Well to me it's great! But as usual it depends on each persons perception. If you don't mind your games to be challenging, 8 bit graphics and sound, and are not all that picky with controllers you may very well enjoy what this title has to offer. Otherwise however, you might find that future instalments have "solved" these problems (like in many forms of art there is just no right way of doing things, I actually cherish these qualities). And like usual I'll finish leaving the veracity of this article and this games quality entirely up to you, who in the end is the only important person (the user or, in this case, gamer). And now its time to enter Castlevania:

Play Castlevania online at nintendo8.com

Enhanced versions of this game

• Vampire Killer: An MSX game with many adventure elements.
• Castlevania Chronicles: A remake for the Sharp X6800 and later PS1 (very good but its tough love I tell you).
• Castlevania Remix: This is a romhack with a much darker tone. The game is a completely different experience with different level designs, monsters and such, however unlike many other deravative works it's still supposed to be this particular journey.

Related games

• Simon's Quest: Its sequel.
• Super Castlevania (Castlevania IV): The Super Nintendo's version is supposed to be a remake. It has a very different tyle of gameplay and to be honest is another great game itself.
• Haunted Castle: An arcade game, similar though in that one Simon's bride is snatched by Dracula (ala Ghosts and Goblins). It has a stiffer game play and, believe it or not, much greater challenge (plus Simon looks like a walking boiler, but is really not that bad).

Aditional links

A few good sources of information on this and other Castlevania titles:

• Castlevania wikia
• Inverted dungeon
• Chappel of resonance