#go play the adventure and belmonts revenge right now

[artyrogue]

Blind Date Gaming: Konami GB Collection Vol. 3

Boy, I am WIPED after my date last night. It all started out as it usually does -- a quick visit to PRANG for an introduction to my next potential video game suitor. Who could have guessed that I would served up 4 dates! They all came together at once under the guise of Konami GB Collection Vol. 3.

I was greeted at first by an anime schoolgirl with a huge hand and quite possibly a contender for the weirdest hairstyles I've seen in a while. What is that, a grass-inspired mohawk laid over top a normal haircut?

Is this what the cows that make cowlicks eat?

What happened next was an eventful set of speed dates. This onslaught left me with no down time, thus the exhaustion. However, I did end up meeting some nice games. I'll speed through them each quick-like to keep this from being overly long. Luckily each of the games are pretty short (as expected from Game Boy games)!

First up is Gradius II! Now, I've never actually played a Gradius game, so I can't say if this is a port, some reconfigured version of Gradius II, or what. What I CAN say is that it has tight controls, beautiful graphics, interesting bosses, and some fun gameplay.

Looks like a rocky magic 8 ball

You start off hangin' out with what I assume are your dad and mom starships. Aww, family time! Soon, however, someone decks your old man and blasts your momma fulla lasers. Obviously disturbed, you fly forward and get chased by the perpetrator through a buncha rocks until you escape.

Good thing this guy doesn't feel like firing at me for whatever reason

...Except you kind of don't? You end up going through a bunch of planetary landscapes, shootin' dudes and grabbin' powerups that let you fire lasers and stuff. Pew pew! You eventually get captured, break out, and summarily fly through a ship, an asteroid belt, and I think some alien's guts? I'm not sure; I never went to med school for interplanetary digestive systems. Bosses fight you at every turn, and they are so sweet. Like, I don't always know what I'm attacking, but it just looks so cool that I really don't care!

Ever want to fight a kneeling, fanged alien stuck in a wall with detachable mouthy-brains? Yeah, well now you do, obviously!

In the end you find the enemy ship that assassinated your nuclear family with nuclear weapons, commit your own brand of galactic revenge, and I assume go on with your day in a half-arsed way, never addressing the journey you just went through for fear of sparking up some majorly weird PTSD.

Next up is some Castlevania game! It claims to be Castlevania II, but don't think it's Simon's Quest since it doesn't have slow-scrolling text boxes telling me that night is a poor time to explore the world when suffering from a magical adversary's angry sentiments. Instead, you just go about whippin' junk. Alright, I can be a lion tamer for the undead.

Why do cultists always gotta wear hoods? Can't they wear like a polo and some comfy slacks?

So in this installment, you can apparently shoot fireballs from a fully-upgraded whip, so it's instantly MUCH easier than most Castelvania games. The list of enemies is kind of lacking, but it was enough to feel competent. The level design was pretty spot-on, which is par for the course, though for some reason this game has a love affair with ropes? They're EVERYWHERE, but there's enough variation in the levels to give them pass. For example, some areas have auto-directional-pulling ropes, some ropes are spider webs made by enemies, some require quick sliding to avoid obstacles, etc.

You gotta wonder, does the guy living here have to go through all these traps every day just to get his mail? And how does he carry groceries back to his (probably rope-decorated) kitchen?

The boss fights were definitely memorable. Some of their designs were flat-out brilliant, and they were all pretty fun! Your sub-weapons weren't really that useful here, but that's fine. The bosses, too, were made a little easier with the projectile whip, but the designers struck a good balance between fun and hard.

These guys shoot out vertebrae in an arc, transferring them from one head to the other. I don't have a quip here, it was just a stupidly awesome designed boss that I wanted to gush about for a bit!

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. The bosses were all fun except for the last 3 in the game. Allow me to whine and complain about them for a bit, if you will! The first was a tunneling snake on a forced scrolling screen that made you take damage unless you memorized where he was going to surface next (I HATE memorization-by-death gameplay). The next was a fellow Belmont who would relentlessly whip the crap outta you, throw swords all over the screen, and would probably be nigh impossible if I didn't have Holy Water. The final was Dracula, who I suppose gets a pass for being hard since he was the final boss...but he, too, was pretty much a memorization-by-death fight, too. The dude has 6 orbs revolving around him that spread out, essentially making 85% of the screen unsafe. Unless you know the specific spot to crouch down for the given position he's in, you get hurt, and you get hurt pretty badly. Oh, and you can really only hit him once per attack, so you'd better learn the safe spots for all 8 of his attack spots and hope you can hurt him and get into your safe position before taking damage.

ouch ouch ouch OUCH

In the end, it was overall a pretty fun time. Konami definitely knows how to make a good sidescrolling action game, which is probably why they're half of the name of the 'Metroidvania' genre. Go team Belmont!

Next up: Yie Ar Kung~Fu! What is this? I've never heard of it. It's a simple fighting game where you face off against 5 fighters, each with their own weapons and special moves. You play as a normal weaponless guy who can only kick and punch, because that's fair? Regardless, you must persevere through 4 rounds of these 5 fights, each time with your foes getting slightly harder.

Mmyep, this is fair.

My trademark fighting game strategy of sweeping seems to work for the most part, though as the difficulty ramps up, the other fighters move with ridiculous speed between attacks. Eventually, the game just becomes 100% about approaching a foe with more range than you, which obviously is the main focus of fighting games. What's that? Combos? Pffft, those are lame, just have the enemies fly across the ring like a sugar-high Jack Russel Terrier.

So this guy's power is to propel himself like a missile and look like an absolute goon while doing so

There's also a mini-game where you hit things thrown at you, but like they show up so quickly and your animation speed is so slow that it's impossible to do very well. It was an okay game overall, though, but I can sort of see why it isn't as well-known as Gradius or Castlevania.

Last game: Antarctic Adventure! It's a penguin-based racing game! I think? Does this count as a racing game? Well, you race against the clock, so sure. You gotta move at top speed through an icy wasteland, avoiding sea lions and holes in the ice.

I like how this sea lion looks after getting plastered in the face by a penguin moving at ~120 km/hr. Is he in shock? Is he alive? Should I notify his next of kin?

The lore is actually pretty deep in this game. The world has fallen into ruin due to global warming, and the glacier sheets on Antarctica are slowly melting away. As a penguin trained in espionage and terrorism, you must travel to the different embassies that many countries have propped up in an attempt to stake a claim in possibly the only livable area in the near future.

The french are planning to build replicas of their famous landmarks here, like the Ice-full Tower and Arctic de Triomphe.

You're not exactly racing as much as you are keeping ahead of the authorities pursuing you for planting bombs in the embassies. If you successfully plant your payloads in all of the embassies across all of Antarctica, you destroy their chances of bringing cultural imperialism to the local wildlife. Your customs are at stake! You must cast your empathy aside for the greater good of penguin-kind!

Also, you can sometimes turn into a helicopter? Not sure what that was about.

Okay, okay, yeah, I may have embellished a bit there. No, it's not as cool as that. You just run from one place to the next and heck if I'll ever find out why miscellaneous countries happen to have little castles in a barren arctic wasteland. People's taxes at work, I guess!

Oh right, there's also a fifth option on the main menu. It's Ms. O.C. Anime Girl explaining things about the games to you. I can't read anything she's saying, though, so I can only imagine the shady koala statue in the back has some relevance to her dialogue.

So that ends an exhausting series of dates. Whew! Glad you toughed it out with me. As I've completed all of the games this time, I didn't think another date was warranted. However, Gradius and Castlevania were fun enough to say that sure, I guess, it's worth going on another date in the future. Maybe it'd be better to find the original games, though, instead of this particular port. I can only assume the extra screen real estate, better sound effects, and greater ROM size would only enhance their experiences. And speaking of experiences, grab a Sprite of Passage from the jar over there on your way out! It's mint-flavored and can double as a water purification tab if you're ever stuck somewhere in the wilderness!

Man, I would kill to watch a skeleton ballet

#blinddategaming #gameboy #gradius #castlevania #otherdumbstuff

[weaselsblaugh]

The Castlevania series in one sentence each - remastered chronicles requiem edition

Castlevania: Go kill Dracula and every single Universal Studios movie monster.

Castlevania [C64]: Playing "Vampire Killer" through a SID chip doesn't _always_ make it cooler.

Castlevania [Amiga]: You'll be fighting the control scheme more than you'll be fighting Dracula.

Castlevania [MSDOS]: Simon attains a skin tone more commonly associated with department store mannequins.

Vampire Killer: Go kill Dracula, if you don't get lost first.

Vampire Killer, take 2: Go kill Dracula's portrait painting.

Haunted Castle: Go kill Dracula, now with only one life and no continues.

Simon's Quest: Resurrect Dracula from spare parts just so you can kill him again.

The Adventure: Go kill Dracula, really slowly, because otherwise this blurry screen can't keep up with you.

Dracula's Curse: Two hundred years ago your ancestor looked exactly like you.

Dracula's Curse, take 2: Go kill Dracula with the Power of Friendship!* (Void where prohibited, party size not to exceed two members.)

Dracula's Curse, take 3: Go kill Dracula with the help of his rebellious son, a mage, or a landlocked pirate that climbs ceilings.

Belmont's Revenge: Your son was supposed to kill Dracula, but Dracula nabbed and brainwashed him, so it's all up to you again, because vampire hunter parenting is hard.

Castlevania 4: Go kill Dracula from any of eight directions you like, or waste all your time twiddling the whip around because it's fun.

Dracula X: Go kill Dracula in the most anime way you possibly can, at age 13, with all your cute animal friends.

Dracula X, take 2: Go kill Dracula with this key! (What do you mean it doesn't do anything?)

Dracula X, take 3: Castlevania's Greatest Hits album.

Peke: Go buy a Super CD-ROM² system card, _then_ we can talk about killing Dracula.

Peke [PS4]: Your favorite cheat code doesn't work.

X68000: Castlevania's other Greatest Hits album.

X68000, take 2: Is "bathead" supposed to be a pun on butthead?

Bloodlines: Go kill Gary Oldman's character from the hit Hollywood film, Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Dracula X [SNES]: The fire is prettier and the music is nicer but killing Dracula is way harder than it usually is this time.

Dracula X [SNES], take 2: Wait, haven't I seen this level before?

Castlevania 64: Go kill Dracula, assuming you're facing in the right direction first.

Castlevania 64, take 2: Go kill Dracula, provided you aren't hypnotized by the beautiful violin music on the title screen.

Symphony of the Night: Go kill Belmont...?

Symphony of the Night [true ending]: ˙ɐlnɔɐɹp llᴉʞ oפ

Symphony of the Night [Saturn]: Go kill Dracula and also the frame rate and any semblance of difficulty balance this game ever had.

Legacy of Darkness: The closest thing we'll get to a video game adaptation of Teen Wolf.

Legends: Go kill Dracula, but first, reproduce with his son, in what's arguably a way cooler origin story than Lament gave us (until Sonia got stricken from canon).

Resurrection: Sonia Belmont could have been in another game if only this one hadn't been cancelled.

Circle of the Moon: Go kill Dracula, provided you're able to see what you're doing and aren't tired of hearing The Sinking Old Sanctuary by the time you get there.

Harmony of Dissonance: Dracula's castle is stricken with a dissociative identity, or something, so go kill Dracula's WIP body (but not before you've finished decorating his guest bedroom for no particular reason...?).

Order of Shadows: Go kill Dracula and probably also your cell phone bill.

Aria of Sorrow: Go kill Dracula...wait, Dracula's already dead? Wait, this guy might be Dracula reborn? Wait, *I'M* Dracula?

Lament of Innocence: The Belmont Clan origin story gets totally retconned as Leon must go kill some vampire that isn't Dracula, since Dracula hasn't been born yet. (So what's he still doing here anyway?)

Lament of Innocence, take 2: Belmont May Cry (and probably does).

Dawn of Sorrow: Go kill these two jokers who think they're Dracula but can't possibly be because you're still Dracula, while the Belmont du jour keeps insisting that you Go Home and Be a Family Man.

Curse of Darkness: What was Lament missing? That's right: a furniture collecting sub quest and a pet raising metagame.

Portrait of Ruin: Dracula comes back because World War 2 was really sad. (Yes, really.)

Portrait of Ruin, take 2: Castlevania: the thrilling two on two on two tag team match, only on pay per view!

Portrait of Ruin, take 3: We make an attempt to reconcile Bloodlines into the canon by turning the bishounen Spaniard into a ghost cowboy and injecting a heaping helping of anime teen angst.

Portrait of Ruin, take 4: The Whip only works if you spend a couple minutes flinging custard pies at the ghost of Richter Belmont.

Portrait of Ruin, take 5: He's not Dracula but he's still a vampire, so please go whip the crap out of him with the help of your schoolgirl friend who slaps skeletons with books and sometimes turns you into a frog.

Dracula X Chronicles: Go kill Dracula, and in a twist exclusive to the remake, your girlfriend who is now a succubus.

Order of Ecclesia: We're supposed to kill Dracula with these fancy spells, but the only other guy here stole all of them and kidnapped the entire nearby village, so go beat him up and take them back so we can resurrect--I mean, KILL Dracula. It'll work, trust me!

Order of Ecclesia, take 2: go kill Dracula, but first, make the jeweler fall in love with you and take a picture of Bigfoot.

Judgment: Our timeline has so many holes and retcons in it that the only way to solve it is to have Death's brother Time show up and make everyone fight each other, which doesn't solve anything, but somebody had fun with it, I'm sure. (Probably only the artist.)

The Adventure Rebirth: The Castlevania game that nobody can buy anymore because it's marooned to an online service that closed down.

Lords of Shadow: Because Castlevania really needed to be more like...what was the big popular grim dark fantasy thing back then?

Harmony of Despair: Because clearly everybody's favorite part of SOTN was spending literal hours grinding for Crissaegrim, only now they can do it with friends.

Mirror of Fate: Go kill Dracula with crippling frame rate issues and falling damage.

Castlevania Puzzle: What do Castlevania fans want the most? Puyo Puyo, of course.

Lords of Shadow 2: Take me down to the Castlevania City, where the grass ain't green and the story ain't pretty.

The Arcade: It's like House of the Dead with whips.

The Pachislot: Wherein Konami refocused their efforts to appeal the franchise to only their most dedicated and loyal fans... Japanese gamblers.

The Netflix Original Series: Trevor is a foul mouthed drunk, there are frequent references to goat fucking, and somehow it's still better than the franchise has been for just shy of a decade.

Grimoire of Souls: What do Castlevania fans want the most? Fate Grand Order, of course.

#castlevania

[operationrainfall]

Title Castlevania Anniversary Collection Developer Konami Publisher Konami Release Date May 16th, 2019 Genre Adventure, Platformer Platform Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS4, XBox One Age Rating T for Teen – Blood, Fantasy Violence, Partial Nudity Official Website

I wasn’t originally planning on reviewing the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. After all, I didn’t receive a review copy, and mostly bought it to satisfy my own nostalgia. But the more I played it, enjoying both reliving and experiencing anew highlights in this storied franchise, I decided I might as well write something. After all, I was already taking dozens upon dozens of screenshots. And despite only being a nominal fan of the Castlevania series, I felt I had some things to share. I say nominal because I only really got into the series when Symphony of the Night revolutionized the entire thing, and you’d be accurate in saying there’s a big difference between the original games and those which came after SOTN. Hell, before this I hadn’t even beaten any of the original NES games other than Dracula’s Curse, nor had I touched upon the Gameboy or Genesis entries. So I actually had a lot of work to do in order to write this review. The question is, did I come out of it with my fandom gloriously inflamed by the Collection? Or was it just a miserable pile of remakes?

I’m going to start out by explaining how this review is going to go, since it’s not often I review 8 games at once. This review will devote a few paragraphs to each game in the order I played them, along with plenty of pretty pictures. At the very end, I’ll touch upon the visual and audio presentation plus anything extra, and finish it up with my summarized thoughts. With that out of the way, let’s start my first foray into the Belmonts’ Gameboy mayhem with Castlevania The Adventure.

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It’s easy to think of portable iterations of any popular series as quick cash grabs, and I admit I didn’t expect much of anything from Castlevania the Adventure. Luckily, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Because while the classic Gameboy wasn’t capable of the visual feats of the NES, Konami seemed to take that as a challenge to pack as much awesome into this tiny adventure as possible. Though it only includes 4 levels, no doubt due to the limitations of said platform, they are each multi-tiered and full of challenging platforming and nasty beasts. There’s everything from Punaguchi (Bone Pillars) to Mudmen to what I assume must be the ancestors of Fleamen. While falling into bottomless pits was frustrating, it was made less so with the advent of save states. I actually stumbled upon that feature, discovering it was available for all the games in this Collection. I quickly grew to love its inclusion, since you can press ZL at any time to freeze the game, and then either save or load your progress. You might think that made things too easy, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Saving at the wrong time, such as when at low health or equipped with a bad sub-weapon, made things much harder, so I grew to time my saves carefully. They were a necessity, especially when facing challenges like instant death spike walls chasing me through levels. You’re welcome to play without any saves, but that should only be reserved for the most hardcore of fans.

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The bosses in this game were also surprisingly impressive. Though simplistic, they offered a robust challenge, especially the room full of Goblins (they’re really Fleamen) jumping out of holes. As for Dracula himself, being on the Gameboy didn’t sap any of his challenge. He managed to teleport all about hurling waves of fire at me, and as if that wasn’t enough, transformed into a giant, deadly bat for the final confrontation. I was really quite impressed by Castlevania the Adventure, but felt I needed a break from Gameboy graphics afterwards. And so, I decided next to try a game that just now officially made its stateside debut…

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I had actually heard a lot about Kid Dracula over the years, but there’s a big difference between hearing secondhand and playing firsthand. What I never could have guessed was how truly weird and innovative the game was. First off, while most Castlevania games are dark and brooding, this side story is light and cheery. You play the titular Kid Drac (not clear if he’s supposed to be a young Dracula or Alucard, but that’s not really important) on his quest to oust a pretender to his monster throne. That’s about as serious as things get, and I quickly was met with how absurd this game was.

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For one thing, every monster in this game is a cutesy and cartoony one. There are adorable little witches, goofy skeletons, cheerful bats and much more. But don’t let that fool you, this game is far from easy. If I had felt any guilt about using save states in Castlevania the Adventure, that completely left me here. Kid Dracula doesn’t really believe in checkpoints, so often if you get killed, it’s back to the very beginning of a stage. That’s made more difficult by the fact many of the bosses here are large threats who like to cheat. The most mellow is a happy ghost who looks creepily similar to a Klansman, and even he killed me a couple of times. Pretty much the only boss who won’t pose a challenge is the Statue of Liberty (no, you didn’t hear that wrong), since you just need to beat her quiz show to win the “battle”.

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What makes this game a treat though are all the weird combat conventions. Each time you beat one of the 9 stages, Kid Drac gets a new power which he can scroll through at will. If that sounds like Mega Man, just you wait. He can also charge all of his attacks by holding the attack button, though some of his fully charged powers double as new ways to traverse your environment, such as transforming into a bat or flipping onto the ceiling. Which is my way of saying that there’s a lot of complexity to the game, and no shortage of challenge. Turning into a bat didn’t keep me from dying dozens of times, and in a game with this many stages, you’d better be ready to die. The only thing at your disposal to earn more lives are the totally random minigames, such as guessing the color of dancing girl’s panties, stabbing a skeleton or various games of chance. If nothing else, Kid Dracula is worth playing just to see how full of deliciously crazy Japanese flavor it was. After beating it, I needed something a bit more grounded, so let’s return to the years of the Gameboy.

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Everything that impressed me about the original Gameboy outing was enhanced in Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge. It continues the story of Christopher Belmont, who was victorious, defeating Dracula in Castlevania The Adventure. But you can’t keep a good vampire down, and this story has the ghastly spirit of the Count take possession of Christopher’s son, Soleil Belmont. Symphony of the Night flashbacks aside, I was not expecting this much lore in the game. After all, the first one was pretty basic, but there’s some intense father / son drama in the game, not to mention the first true boss fight against a human in the series, serving as a progenitor for fights against the likes of Juste, Richter and Maxim later on.

One of the reasons I enjoyed Belmont’s Revenge was that it took all the things that were good about the first outing, and smoothed over the rough edges. Sure you can and still will die, but you have a bit more breathing room. And the bosses were wildly creative, in my opinion. You have an elemental wizard, a fight against two living statues, an armored demon, a creepy wall monster, a super difficult bone dragon, Dracula himself and even your son, Soleil. What gives you a fighting chance, unlike in Castlevania The Adventure, here you have access to a couple of sub-weapons – the axe and holy water. Being accustomed to the later games, I thought the water was the way to go, but to my great surprise, the axe was my go-to weapon of choice. Being able to hit things at odd angles was a constant life saver.

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As much as I loved most things about this game, there was one sticking point – the final bosses. The fight against Soleil was incredibly difficult, but not as tough as Dracula. Mostly because the good Count fired rotating balls of death, and finding a safe place to avoid them required much patience on my part. The only upside is this time there was only one phase to the Dracula fight, so it wasn’t impossible. Overall though, this was the better of the portable entries included in the Collection. Next up, we’ll go back to where it all started on the NES.

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There’s a reason I took my time getting to the original Castlevania, and that reason is simple – fear. I worried I wouldn’t be up to the task of tackling the game that started it all without the modern conventions I’ve grown accustomed to. You can’t level up and you’re totally reliant on timing and having the right sub-weapon equipped. I also was concerned the platforming would be too much for me. Thankfully, those fears were mostly unfounded. Sure, the original game is hard, but it also has some sections that are surprisingly easy. Furthermore, most of the bosses in the game are a cakewalk, with the notable exceptions of Death and Dracula, who are both unrelenting bastards.

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I learned a lot of lessons after playing the first Castlevania. First off, I learned Dracula’s design has changed wildly over the years. I always thought of him as the dapper caped gentleman with long hair, but here he looks far more ghastly and demonic (and that’s before he transforms). I also learned that the bad writing for the plot isn’t a bug, but a series feature. And that Fleamen are horrible in any game, but doubly so when you have limited evasive movement. And lastly I discovered that some of the most iconic bosses, such as Medusa and the Mummy, start out as pushovers. There are also weird discrepancies, such as Dracula’s fireballs having homing capability. That said, I had a lot more fun with the first game than I expected. But after all that retro, I wanted something a bit more updated, so I moved on with Super Castlevania IV.

Head to the SNES on Page 2 ->

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Some games transitioned to the SNES with flair, and Super Castlevania IV is certainly one of those games. They took everything that made the series iconic and seasoned it with a bunch more spice. This was the first game in the series where you could whip in multiple directions, as well as fling your whip around to block projectiles. You could also swing across gaps with it, a feature I think should have shown up in more games. But what I loved most about this entry was how huge it was. They jam packed content into this, and when I thought I was almost done, I was barely at the halfway mark.

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The experimental nature of the game was fantastic, and I loved how it really took chances with different ideas. They used Mode 7 graphics for crazy rotations and things like giant chandeliers you could stand upon. They also made it really feel like a Castlevania with lots of opportunities for a cheap death. That happened a ton in the Clock Tower, and I died several times fighting against the Mummy atop giant clock hands. They even took foes I thought of as weak in later entries like SOTN and made them a true threat. Namely, the ghostly dancers are a force to be reckoned with here. When they turned invisible and started attacking me, I nearly lost my composure. And as weak as Slogra and Gaibon were later, they were an impressive challenge here.

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Perhaps the best part of this game was the final path to Dracula. While the fight against Dracula himself isn’t my favorite in the series, it’s plenty challenging. And considering you have to brave a gauntlet of foes like Death and others to get there, it feels suitably epic. I already liked Super Castlevania IV from playing it years back on my Wii U, but after finally beating it here, it’s easily become one of my favorite entries in the long running series. So of course, my next game was one that has gotten a ton of praise as well.

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Dracula’s Curse is iconic in the Castlevania fandom, and it’s not hard to understand why. Not only did it introduce multiple characters and branching paths, it also had tight gameplay and the challenge fans have come to expect. Hell, the recently released Netflix series was heavily influenced by this game, and that wowed us fans. I had played a little of Dracula’s Curse on my 3DS, but I got frustrated by some of the bosses and hadn’t picked it up afterwards. So I figured now was as good a time as any to try again.

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Whereas the original Castlevania featured Simon Belmont, this one took place several hundred years earlier. As such, it made sense to focus on his ancestor Trevor. The curveball were the 3 other characters – Sypha, Grant and Alucard. All three have totally unique play styles and offer interesting ways to explore. That goes triple for Grant, who can hop around like a heroic Fleaman. I daresay that Symphony of the Night wouldn’t have existed without this game, and for that, I love it even more. That said, there is one thing about this game that really irritated me. Sometimes when you kill an enemy, they will drop a random sub-weapon, which I think is a feature exclusive to this game. Sounds great, except it often happens in the heat of the moment and usually gives you a sub-weapon you really don’t want. I can’t count the number of times I reloaded my save to avoid getting a shitty weapon.

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The bosses in Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse are pretty tough, and the fact that you can take a variety of paths through the game makes things interesting. While they toned down some bosses, there are plenty that will cause you grief. One is the recurring Cyclops boss, another is a fight against an evil spirit who possesses multiple monsters to kill you. Even though they mellowed out Death from the first game, he also has a second, horrific form. And while I wasn’t a huge fan of the Dracula fight in Super Castlevania IV, the one here is fantastic. I can’t say I understand why he turns from a Count into a monstrous amalgamation of brains and then an angry bird statue, but the creativity and challenge impressed the hell out of me. Frankly, we’re lucky we got this game, since the one that preceded it was highly controversial. And that one’s up next.

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I’m gonna be perfectly frank, I considered skipping Simon’s Quest. While you hear nothing but good things about Castlevania III, II is the polar opposite. It’s confusing, awkwardly written and somewhat psychotic. And yet, the more I played it, the more I found weird little charming features. For one thing, the music in this game is still amazing, no matter how much of a mess everything else is. For another, aspects like leveling up and equipping items got introduced here, and without those, I never would have gotten my first Metroidvania. They introduced Churches to fully heal you here. Also, the day / night cycle was actually really cleverly used, and it made sense Dracula’s minions were more powerful at night. So much so that I kind of wish it had made it into other games, not counting the stupid N64 entries.

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With all those nice things out of the way, let’s move onto the messy bits. First and foremost, you really can’t beat this game without a guide. Or you can, but it takes blind luck and infinite patience. I am not a fan of either, so I found a guide and got playing. There’s so much that would have been improved with just a bit more clarity in this game such as what equipped items do, clear hints on where to go next etc. And this may sound like an odd critique, but I wanted more bosses in this game. There’s a total of three, including the big bat himself. That is starkly less than any other game in the series, even the Gameboy adventures.

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They also complicated things with tons of hidden items and invisible platforms. I cannot count how many times I fell through the floor, but it was definitely more than a dozen. The game seemed to delight in pulling the rug out from under us players. Especially with regard to things like kneeling to make tornadoes appear or water levels recede. It’s bonkers this game didn’t kill the entire series, charming quirks notwithstanding. But I am glad I finally got through it, doubly so cause it let me save the best for last – Castlevania Bloodlines!

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Not to immediately contradict myself, but Bloodlines wasn’t quite my favorite game in this Collection. It did come damned close though. With just a few improvements, it would have easily claimed that title. See, I grew up playing video games, but I never owned a Sega Genesis. I had a Game Gear, but that wasn’t the same thing. So I missed out on games like this when they originally released. Which is a shame, since Bloodlines had heart and creativity to spare. Not only did it expand the Castlevania universe in big ways with two playable characters, it also took the series into modern times. That’s quite cool, and part of the reason I was so impressed by this entry. Another reason was the gameplay.

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This might sound odd, but in many ways Bloodlines almost doesn’t remind me of a Castlevania game. For one thing, it’s significantly faster than the other games. Both you and your foes react quicker and have less wind-up time, which in part caused me to get burned alive by Bone Pillars on many occasions until I acclimated. For another, it is far less focused on platforming hell than other entries. And while there is the usual gothic influence here, it just feels different. In a weird way, this almost reminded me more of a Contra game. But that’s far from a bad thing, and some of the unusual foes caught my attention, such as Minotaurs and swinging plant monsters.

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As you span the globe in Bloodlines, going from Greece to France, you’ll face some really eclectic bosses and even mini-bosses. One of the weirdest ones is a pile of living gears that attacks you in Germany. An especially interesting one is a floating, ethereal maiden who transforms into a hideous moth. And the fight against Death himself is especially clever, involving Tarot cards that force you into fighting older bosses a second time. Sadly, the fight against Countess Bartley herself is a bit underwhelming, and so is the fight against Dracula. But all in all, there’s a lot more great stuff than bad stuff here. Plus, with two playable characters, you have an excuse to play through more than once to enjoy all the sights and sounds. My only real complaint about the game is how short it is, sitting at only 6 stages.

It wouldn’t be fair to talk about any collection without discussing the controls. Thankfully, I found all the controls tight and responsive. Once you get them down, you’ll be ready for each subsequent game, other than Bloodlines. That efficiency also applies to the aforementioned options. It’s handy and quick to save and load the game, as well as check the controls at any time. I didn’t really play with the other visual filters, but there’s plenty if you’re interested.

While I won’t cover the aesthetics for each of the 8 included games, I will discuss the art for the series on the whole. It’s my opinion that Castlevania started out great and only got better with age. You’d think the NES games would look ugly and blocky now, but the game has always had tons of personality and conveyed dark themes well. That’s in large part due to the color palette, which has lots of browns, reds, blacks and other dark colors, such as dark blue and forest green. Whenever they had more to work with, they managed to improve things dramatically, such as the huge character sprites in Super Castlevania IV or the complex visual effects such as bleeding fountains in Bloodlines. And perhaps one of the things I love most about the series are all the great monsters. Ranging from bone tossing skeletons to hulking Axe Knights to floating Medusa heads, there’s a ton of diversity on display. Some of the more eye catching visual effects were swinging from your whip, rotating chambers, shifting towers and even a cool mirrored effect at the end of Bloodlines. Hell, even the Gameboy games were visually appealing, and they only had two colors to work with. If I wasn’t already impressed with the art in the series, I certainly am after playing through all 8 of these games.

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Musically, this series is even more impressive. Even when they only had a few tones to work with, they managed to orchestrate complex melodies. The tunes range from hard rocking to gothic songs, and everything else in between. While there are the more iconic tracks like Bloody Tears, Theme of Simon, Vampire Killer and Wicked Child, I also liked some of the lesser known stuff. From the Gameboy games, I was fond of New Messiah and Revenge. From NES, I enjoyed Mad Forest and Silence of Daylight. From SNES, I really was impressed by both The Library and Treasury, while from Genesis, Iron-Blue Intention and The Discolored Wall stuck with me. As for Kid Dracula, the music there was totally unlike everything else, being cheerful and upbeat. A good example of which is Hop and Step Above the Clouds.

As much as I enjoyed the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, there were a couple glitches and one letdown. One glitch occurred when I exited from Simon’s Quest. When I returned to the game select screen, there was a loud static sound that muted all the music. Thankfully, restarting my game seemed to fix that. Another happened during the original Castlevania in the underground grotto level. It was a loud, recurring ding sound not unlike the ticking of a clock. Once I got past that level, it never returned, but it is worth noting. The more serious concern I had was that this collection inexplicably doesn’t have a music select which seems odd, for a couple reasons. For one, Castlevania is known for the tremendous music. For another, there is a companion called Book of the Crescent Moon, full of interviews, strange secrets and behind the scenes looks into the development process, as well as some great sketch art. While you can certainly hear all the wonderful songs while you play the game, this game absolutely deserved a way to listen to them at your leisure.

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Honestly for $19.99, it’s hard to go wrong with the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. It’s packed with great retro gaming, easily 10+ hours worth, and tons of lore about the series. It should put a smile on the faces of many fans. I definitely feel like more of a true fan after playing it, and gained new appreciation for what Konami accomplished back in their glory days. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned glitches and frankly inexcusable lack of a music select, I couldn’t give this a perfect score like I wanted. But if you’re a fan, old or new, of Castlevania and want a handy collection on any current console, you have plenty to sink your teeth into with this.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”4″]

Review Copy Purchased by Author

REVIEW: Castlevania Anniversary Collection Title Castlevania Anniversary Collection

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