Castlevania

Castlevania was made by Konami and released in Japan in 1986 on the Famicom Disk System and in 1987 in North America for the NES. It was the first game in what would become one of the biggest franchises in video gaming history. Spanning over thirty different titles, the series has the player hunt down vampires, demons, and other creepy things in this horror-type platformer. The story introduces the protagonist Simon Belmont, one of many in a long line of Vampire hunters. The game itself takes place in 1691 in some unmentionable region of Eastern Europe and Simon Belmont is the man in charge of vanquishing Dracula once again. Turns out that every 100 years or so Dracula is resurrected and one of the Belmont clan must take up the whip and take care of the situation. The subsequent games in the series all revolve around the eternal struggle between these two sides that seem destined to fight each other throughout time itself. It makes for interesting novelizations, comics, and movie attempts.

The Art

            North America                    Japan (cartridge reissue)

Famicom Disk System

Like album covers, box art is awesome. The box art for the Japanese disk and cartridge versions differ to the North American box art. Konami used a standard gray box for all of their titles released in North America. I'm not sure who painted that awesome scene of Dracula's face, Simon Belmont, and the castle. It almost has that Frank Frazetta, old fantasy/sci-fi cover feel to it. Box art for older era video games always had a way of misrepresenting the game, or making it better. I'm not sure which. At least in Castlevania's case, they used the same artwork, though I think the Japanese ones look better (which is often the case). The differences in box art is both startling and interesting as most games were packaged differently between Japan, the US, and the rest of the world. The Japanese manual of the game features cutsie color cartoons and pictures, while the North American version is black and white, and condensed. The 1993 Famicom cartridge reissue has a different manual with the same black and white illustrations, but with red blood splatters all over the pages in the backgrounds.

The Music

The music for Castlevania is definitely awesome. The music has been remixed, covered, and copied by many musicians. The popular track "Vampire Killer" is the song for stage 1 of this game, and has reappeared throughout the franchise. The music itself was composed by Kinuyo Yamashita. It was her debut work for Konami, and she went to score soundtracks for other games as a freelance composer. Her lasting effects on the Castlevania series have been felt as her orignial 8-bit tunes have been reworked and used throughout the series.


While looking around the internet for some remixes and symphonic renditions, I was able to find some bootlegs of "Castlevania: the Concert", and others from Play! A Video Game Symphony series.

The Graphics

The graphics are pretty awesome for a mid 1980's NES game. There are noticable details to the backgrounds to really bring out the whole castle/vampire thing. The character sprites look... ok. Some are hard to tell what they are. Konami twiddled with these details throughout the next two Castlevania games. For the most part it you're just jumping on blocks and climbing stairs. It looks good.

What happened?

So I tried to beat Castlevania. The first two stages were relatively easy. That's when I found an increasing wall of difficulty in the third, fourth, and fifth stages. I never even reached the final sixth stage. Game mechanics like jumping and hitting enemies requires pin-point accuracy or it ends in death by falling into a pit, into water, etc. I found myself dying over and over in the underground stage at the beginning of level four. I died over twenty five times and if I didn't manage to keep a specific item for the boss, there was no point even trying. Game Over. Continue from the beginning of the stage. 

How far did I get? I got to the end of Stage five and as soon as the Grim Reaper boss appears... I die from his flying heat-seating scythes. Over and over. Total frustration. I found that if I could get past level 4, that level 5 seemed easier, but the absolute timing required to make crucial jumps was tough. Much of the game is based around these platform areas, and the sadistic cruelty of the designers who thought it would be awesome to throw all monsters at you. By stage five you can only be hit four times before dying, so everything was killing me... over and over. 

The overall challenge comes from the lack of controls, lack of items, tough enemies and everything else that made Castlevania impossible. After playing for five hours I began to seriously doubt my skills as a video game player. I chose this game because I knew it would be challenging, but it only kept destroying my patience as I would make stupid mistakes continually. I forget that these older games were designed to kill your soul.

Regrettably, I feel that I have to come back after some practice to defeat this game at a later time. 

FAILURE

Statistics: 

Deaths: 96 Continues: 24 Game Overs: 24 Levels: 5

CastleVania®, and all associated video games, music, characters, etc. are owned by Konami - all rights reserved.