REVIEW: Castlevania

An old-school review of the NES classic, ‘Castlevania’! Complete with tears!

1986 castlevania count dracula Gaming nes retro simon belmont

Castlevania, an old school Konami game of 1986, and, for many, one of the defining games for sheer nerve-twisting difficulty. Perhaps it is redundant to review a 25 year old game, but with Skyrim, Mass Effect and the Arkham games, I think it wise to look back at how far we’ve come in game development.

The “plot” is as follows: you play as Simon Belmont, a warrior destined to fight the “creatures of the night” as your ancestors did before you. Your family’s arch-nemesis, the immortal Count Dracula, has returned to life after another 100 years of being kind of dead. So take your whip (yes, a whip is your main weapon), march up to and through his castle(vania), kill his soldiers, butlers etc., and kindly ask the bloodsucker to explode once more. Other games in the series (especially Symphony of the Night onwards) tend to pay a little more attention to the plot. But that’s not why you’re here, you’re here to prove you’re a bona fide Vampire Killer!

The gameplay is simple side-scrolling action; you walk from one side of the screen to the other, dying, attacking enemies with your whip and sub-weapons, attempting to take as little damage as possible, dying, braving traps such as bottomless pits, moving platforms and gears, on your way to face the boss of the level and dying.

This is you after about five minutes of dying. A lot.

You start the game with a minimally upgradeable whip; upon picking up the appropriate items, you can turn your standard leather whip into a mace (double damage) and upon the second pickup it will change into a morning star (extended range). Your whip is slow but reliable; knowing your enemies’ patterns and timing your whipping attacks correctly is the key to victory.

 

But, of course, a Vampire Hunter has more weapons in his arsenal, like the dagger which… you throw. It has a very long range but SUCKS! It does piddling damage and should be used only if there is nothing better to hand or you’re doing a challenge. The axe is a nice step up. It’s thrown overhead, meaning it can reach airborne or elevated foes and can connect multiple times. The cross acts as a boomerang on a horizontal line and can also hit multiple times. Holy water, which you throw on the floor, spouts flames, immobilising enemies while doing damage and is an insane game breaker on most bosses. Then there’s the watch, which stops time for all enemies (except most bosses), allowing a few cheap shots. All sub-weapons consume a single heart for each use (the watch takes five hearts), which can usually be found by breaking candles, as with most items. And no, hearts are not health. This isn’t a game where you “cast from hit points”.
 

This. This is my sweet hell.

The visuals are dated, but the gothic art design retains a certain charm and menace. The audio fares similarly, rendered in 8-bit but beautifully composed, with some tracks getting well-deserved remixes in future games. The game has only six levels, but it’ll probably take a while to get through them all, especially if you’re not familiar with old-school difficulty, which seeks to throw a bat at you into the nearest pit.

 

And remember: this game is HARD. There is no easy mode. (But there is a harde(er) mode!) If you feel up to the challenge you can get this game for NES or download it on the Wii for 500 points. Also: good luck. And don’t hurt yourself when you break your controller.

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