Castlevania (1986)
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Castlevania is a platform video game developed and published by Konami for the Family Computer Disk System in Japan in September 1986 and is the very first main installment of the Castlevania series. It was ported to cartridge format for the Nintendo Entertainment System in May 1987. It serves as the first/third-to-last game of the Castlevania NES trilogy.
Plot
Simon Belmont is the latest in a long line of vampire hunters. The Belmonts have kept the peace of Transylvania for centuries by destroying the evil Count Dracula. After a century of rest after the last confrontation between him and the Belmonts, Dracula has risen again to terrorize the countryside of Transylvania with the help of his minions to draw Simon out for revenge. Vowing to end his reign once and for all, Simon takes up his whip and sets forth for Castlevania.
Why It Rocks
- Many traditional horror monsters, such as Frankenstein's Monster, Medusa, Death, and Dracula act as the game's bosses.
- The concept of fighting through a mansion to hunt Dracula was pretty original for games at the time.
- Across the stages are candles, which can drop sub-weapons, shots, points, and hearts.
- You can also find different versions of Simon's whip, most of which do more damage to enemies.
- You can find power-ups that allow you to throw up to 3 sub-weapons at once.
- There are five sub-weapons all of which became a staple in the series for many years and most of the times they have reappeared in recent titles in one way or another. Throwing sub-weapons also require hearts to use.
- Dagger - Can be thrown forward until it strikes an enemy, hits a candle or leaves the screen.
- Axe - Launched upward and forward in an arc, slicing through any enemies, candles or walls it encounters. The player is normally allowed to throw another Axe after the first one is off the screen.
- Cross - Can be thrown forward like the knife, but it returns to the player and has a slower speed.
- Holy Water - Tossed in the air in a short arc, causing weak damage against any creature in its path. Once it hit the ground, the glass bottle was shattered and flames appear upward, damaging any creature it in its flames repeatedly for a few seconds.
- Stopwatch - Freezes every enemy on screen.
- Great soundtrack.
- The Famicom Disk version has a save feature for up to three files that saves your progress at the start of each block.
- The 1993 Famicom cartridge re-release took out the save feature, but added an "Easy" mode featuring weaker and slower enemies and starts the player off with ten lives and 30 hearts.
- For an NES game that was first made in 1986, it has surprisingly a good vriaty of bosses, having six different bosses in total.
- The game has about 18 stages, some with a mini-boss and a traditional boss at the stage's end.
- Challenging difficulty (which can be both good and bad).
- Good graphics (for its time).
- Extra lives are given for your first 30,000 points and every 50,000 points afterward until reaching the score cap.
- While there is no save system, using a continue takes you back to the start of the area, instead of starting all the way over.
- The game has New Game+. After you see the credits, you get dumped right back into the first level, except now the original enemies deal much more damage. Bats and Medusas are no longer limited to a few areas; now they appear everywhere.
- The final boss is a great seance of challenge.
Bad Qualities
- Your jumps can't be controlled in midair, which only adds to the difficulty. Bare in mind, Super Mario Bros. came out the year prior and allowed you to move if you jump while standing still.
- Even if there is ground on the previous screen that he walks up to the stairs from, if Simon goes down from the upper screen by falling, he'll die.
- Some of the flying enemies like bats and Medusas are annoying to fight due to their patterns.
- The game doesn't have many health items, which is one of the reasons for the game being so hard.
- Should Simon die at any time, he'll lose his sub-weapon and double/triple shot, go back to the leather whip and his heart counter is reduced to 5.
- If that wasn't bad enough, there's knockback, which can lead to cheap deaths.
- Stage 15 is the hardest stage in the game. Throughout the stage you have to face against Medusas, Axe Armors, Hunchbacks, and Red Skeletons; and most of the time, a combination between each one. What's worse, is that Death's boss fight occurs during the stage and not a separate stage like the others. If you die at any point , you have to go back to the beginning of the stage.
- What doesn't help is the fact that Death's fight is the hardest in the game. This is due to the fact that there are four scythes that home in on you, leaving almost no breathing room, and taking a huge chunk of your health.
- There are two game-breaking bugs:
- During Death's battle, throwing three items at once with the Triple Shot while Death throws three scythes will likely freeze the game. This was fixed in a later revision; the Double and Triple Shot powers simply vanish once you reach Stage 15. You can even collect randomly dropped Double Shot powerups during that stage, but they won't actually do anything for you.
- In the hallway leading up to Death with the two Axe Armors and Medusa Heads, if you get both Axe Armors onscreen at once, the game will start flicking badly and may end up crashing from having too much stuff on the screen, especially if you're throwing out sub-weapons and/or items are dropped in the crossfire. To prevent this it's imperative the first Axe Armor is killed before you get to the point in the hallway where the second one spawns.
- Vs. Castlevania, an arcade port of the game that distributed only in North America, made the game even harder by increasing the amount of damage the player takes from enemies, making the time limit stricter, and reducing the bonus points awarded at the end of each boss battle (making extra lives harder to come by). While the difficulty level and clear bonuses can be adjusted with the game's dip switches, the Vs. version is overall much harder than any of the home releases.
- The idea of using meat as health instead of hearts can be confusing for some since hearts had been used for a long time in NES games.
Trivia
- The game's release date in North America corresponds to the 90th anniversary of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.
- The Holy Water subweapon was renamed to the Fire Bomb in the western localization due to Nintendo of America's strict policies against religious referencing at the time.
Reception
Castlevania is often considered to be one of the best games on the NES. It has received critical acclaim ever since its original release. It sold impressively and is considered an NES classic by PC World, while Nintendo Power and Game Informer ranked it in their best video games list.
Videos
References
- Known as Akumajō Dracula (悪魔城ドラキュラ, Akumajō Dorakyura, Demon Castle Dracula) in Japan.
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