Subj : Retrogame of the month: Castlevania
To   : All
From : deepthaw
Date : Fri Oct 06 2017 13:43:28

October is here, bringing all the fun of Halloween and zombie movies, so it
only seemed appropriate to make my retrogame of the month one of my personal
favorites: Castlevania!

The first game in the series, aptly titled Castlevania, originally launched
for the NES/Famicom in 1986 - although it was accompanied by an MSX port at
roughly the same time.

Your job as Simon Belmont was to grab your whip (which could be upgraded to a
morning star) and climb through the levels of Dracula's castle to kill the
count himself. Along the way, you encountered a number of monsters taken
straight from popular horror films both classic and modern.

In fact - the entire game had a film motif to it, with the intro screen
featuring a filmstrip graphic and even listing "actors" for the creatures at
the end of the game. Monsters were a mix of Universal and Hammer horror film
icons, including Frankenstein's Monster (the Boris Karloff version), Dracula
(a mix of the Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee incarnations) and a mish-mash
of other mythological beasts (Medusa took up residence in the castle for some
unknown reason.)

Graphics and music were both extremly high quality for the time, although
controls were a bit unforgiving. The health bar almost seemed optional as a
vast number of deaths came about as the result of being knocked into
bottomless pits or realizing all too late that you couldn't adjust your jump
trajectory.

The first game was ported to MSX2 under the title Vampire Killer, and served
as a somewhat RPG-er version with largely the same graphics but no scrolling.
You wandered levels searching for keys to open progress further into the
castle.

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest was a distinctly RPG-inspired follow-up. It
kept the same high quality graphics and soundtrack, but gameplay suffered.
Controls were the same, but bosses were extreme pushovers and the puzzles
were grossly unintuitive. Villagers intentionally lied, and what few hints
you were given made next to zero sense.

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse was the high point of the original series,
returning to the strictly action platforming of the original. In a way it was
everything the original Castlevania was but bigger and better: More levels
with branching paths, multiple playable characters, and a password system.

Castlevania III was followed up by 16-bit sequels on the SNES, Genesis, and
PC-Engine. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for Sony's PlayStation
reinvented the game by launching a more anime inspired artstyle and borrowing
exploration mechanics from the Metroid series for exploration. SotN became the
first in a long, long line of "Metroidvania" titles, which were mostly released
on Nintendo's Gameboy Advance and DS portables. (I guess if Nintendo didn't
feel like making sequels to Super Metroid, Konami was going to do so
themselves.)

Castlevania was a headline title for the NES and loomed large over the 8-bit
era. It was one of the earliest gothic horror styled games and was cited as a
direct influence in titles such as Ninja Gaiden. With their recent withdrawal
from most of the gaming market, Konami has allowed the Castlevania series to
fall by the wayside but we can only hope they find a way to resurrect the
series.

As an aside, Netflix recently launched the first season of a Castlevania
animated series based on the storyline of Castlevania III. It's been pretty
positively received, and I personally found it pretty enjoyable. It's no
amazing work of art, but it's definitely of far higher caliber than most
video game -> cartoon adapations and worth a weekend watch.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A35 (Windows/32)
 * Origin: Deep Space '94 * telnet://deepspace94.com * fnord (80:774/43)

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