Dark Castle

released on Dec 31, 1986

Dark Castle looms over the landscape like a plague. Its evil ruler, the Black Knight, must be defeated. And you're the only candidate to do it... First you'll have to make your way through chambers of nasty hazards. The castle guards are hunting you, plague-infested rats and bats attack, the Dragon breathes scorching fire, the Torturer wants to get you, and the Wizard may or may not aid you with a spell. Award-winning Dark Castle is a fast-paced action game with full digital sound, amazingly rich resolution and well-crafted animation. As the hero, you will bound throughout the castle, surmounting hair-raising obstacles, eluding death and -ultimately- becoming the victor!


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Decided to delete a rather crude and stupid one-sentence statement (I marked it as Abandoned then said I'd rather play DMC2 than this... which isn't wrong but still who tf wants that as a review?) to at least say things about the game. I'll note that although I marked the Mac release thanks to the Mini vMac emulator, I actually beat this via the Genesis release w/ Ares, of which the differences between them are listed here.

To give credit, this does have some prestige when concerning its initial launch of the aforementioned Mac release. I recommend reading up this excerpt from GameDeveloper's article on the game from its source, Gamasutra worker Richard Moss's book Secret History Of Mac Gaming, but essentially, the goal was trying to combine arcade-like experience with cartoon aesthetics and tone. The latter is obvious from all the jokes spawned about Prince Duncan, the 'hero', looking like a bootleg Shaggy and one of the earliest forms of Easter Eggs depending on the date you play this, but the former is also evident in that one of the levels is just a Donkey Kong Arcade homage. Also, it seems like this was the progenitor of the WASD+Mouse format, of which has become the staple of PC gaming setups, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was a Winback/MGS2/Kill.Switch & Gears Of War scenario where it became standardized way after the fact. I do also really like the B&W look of the Mac release, making this a PoP89 scenario where I prefer this more minimalist, simpler look and appeal than later ports trying to give it more detail and colors.

It deservedly earns a place within the gaming timeline as an influential mark, which makes it stings even more that not even the Mac release satisfied me, and in fact drove me up a wall. I won't say this has "aged" or has become "dated" since, among other reasons, like that's literally throwing away everything I just stated in the last paragraph, but I do wonder if people back then had much more patience than we do now, cause uggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this was rough.

This is the first 2D platformer I've played in a while where it'd be better if there were less enemies around, considering a majority of the screens are crawling with them one fashion or another. The way the controls work is that you use the mouse - either horizontally or vertically, via the options - to aim Duncan's hand, and you press Left Mouse in order to fire. It's not so much the speed and arc that bothers me, and more so the reaction required in order to hit the enemy on time, made worse by usually being plopped at awkward spots to throw your rock at, as well as most being able to get back up after a couple of seconds. A lot of the time enemies tend to swarm in on you right when you're about to fire, which combined with a one-hit state, meant seeing game overs and level restarts a lot. The sharp decline of the levels is also just, staggering, starting off OK if hampered by again the bad enemy placements and quickness, only to then require precise landing within do-or-die scenarios, made even worse by its awful controls.

I can see why they wanted to aim for the cartoon squash stuff as well, but Duncan's a weak motherfucker, dude can barely step over an inch-wide indent or a guard before tumbling down and getting dizzy. I get it for medium-ish drops, but come on. It also doesn't help the registration for the jumps is obnoxiously fickle and precise, making what should be a simple rope swing devolve to trial-and-error, even when accounting for timing. It also doesn't help that of the three jumps available - straight, running, and downward - barely any of them can help you get onto platforms from below, or jump off/land towards ropes. Mind you, I'm saying all of this by spending my time on the BEGINNER difficulty, I don't think I want to imagine what it's like on Intermediate and Advanced setting. By the time I got to the Fireball levels, I wanted it to end finally, only giving up when I couldn't take it anymore.

...only to see Katiopeia's review and see that you can just skip everything and go straight to the Black Knight if you wanted to. It's super improbable since doing Fireball and the Shield rooms are necessary to handle some of the obstacles, but at this point, I didn't really care. After attempting and failing a few times, I went "fuck it" even more and went for the aforementioned Genesis release, not only cause I can just rewind when needed, I can also utilize the cheat menu to make this painful process less so. I don't really care for points, plus this isn't the first time I went Cheat Mode just to make something less painful (I love VTM Bloodlines but there's a reason people dread the last level and Nosferatu Warrens), and finally, I at least wanted to say I played and beat it.

I feel bad for ragging on this cause this really isn't anywhere near as broken, unpolished, insert other words w/ negative connotation here as DMC2... but it made me far more angrier, delirious, and downright toxic by comparison. And to me, that's about on par with all of that.

Now what's this Beyond Dark Castle thing about...

This review contains spoilers

This game is a joke that will make you die without laughter. There is no Storyline just complete the 4 stages and that's it, this would only work if this game had amazing gameplay. The Graphics are not the worst, but they don't make anything look great. The Gameplay is disastrous, you move very stiffly around the rooms, the jumps are delayed, and you will need it because the protagonist trips over everything, even though he can go downstairs, if he walks from a drawbridge off onto the path he falls over and if his feet are still on the drawbridge you will have to do it again, you need to feel exact when going up and down stairs, and jumping on ropes needs to be perfectly timed if your slightly early or late you fall and either get hurt or die, if you get hit a few times you die, which is too easy because you have to gradually turn your aim around instead of having it aimed instantly, and when you kill enemies, they will respawn after a while, there's also a way forward in a where you have to walk to the dragon to get into a new room. The Music is just the iconic Dracula music by Bach, repeated the whole time. Sounds are terribly recorded especially the 1 of the enemy types that sound like kids making fun of you. This game makes you wonder why not everyone could be a game designer, when this anomaly exists.

You know I'm still convinced that a bunch of martian molerats of some sort did the entire game design behind Dark Castle, it's the only thing I could think of to explain why the game has the horrifically clumsy control scheme that it has.

Like, gee we've got all of these enemies running around, and bats flying all over the place that can one-shot the player. How about aiming our arm very slowly like a clock to throw rocks at them to defend ourselves? Which also have ammo by the way. I had one instance where I made it to a screen with this broom that just splits into more brooms if you hit them with a rock, and I couldn't jump over them. I only had ten rocks for some reason, so I ran out. This ammo carried over to my other lives with me beginning at zero, and I had no idea how to progress since there didn't seem to be any other path. God tier, better than Super Mario World tbfh.

I could hate this game a lot more, but I just can't because it's absolutely hilarious. Having Great Value Shaggy running around falling over roadside curbs, and getting the shit kicked out of him by everything in sight never fails to lighten the mood. It probably helps that I never liked Scooby-Doo much. In the meantime Toccata and Fugue in D minor is spammed all throughout the game, while these adorable little dudes run around with their arms out going "NYEH NYEH NYEH NYEH NYEH". I seriously considered putting those guys in my favorite enemies stable, if I had a real attachment to this game I probably would.

It's interesting to note that the Toccata and Fugue in D minor track is 12:46 long when looped once, kinda impressive. It was also apparently made for the game by Johann Sebastian Bach himself according to the file I downloaded. I wonder how he felt about being reanimated just to convert his music to the Genesis for Dark Castle. Probably not feeling great about it, especially since he's dead like the Queen of England.

SNES gamers absolutely fuming that they don't have a true masterpiece like Dark Castle for their system, they are so angry!

The first computer game I ever played. Every single sight and sound is etched in my brain. So fun. So funny. Great phone ringtones.

This game makes me laugh so I'll give it a 3/10 just for that.

Dark Castle is not a video game, and I repeat, not a video game. Dark Castle actually is a psychological bio-weapon created by an evil corporation to see how much mental anguish a person can take before they snap and transform into a suicidal crazy person.

The main character is one of the most laughable excuses of a protagonist I've ever seen in a video game. He moves around so sluggishly and awkwardly that you'd think he has some sort of mental
defficiency with a cactus shoved up his ass.

He can't even go down a single step without falling or getting dizzy, sometimes he'll even fall down stairs. It makes me believe he is running around with his goddamn shoelaces untied.

And sometimes when he has to make a jump, he'll just stop in mid-air and fall straight to his death. What?? Is the character just suicidal? Does he not want to be in this horrible game anymore? If so, I don't blame him. It's like that one line that Danny DeVito once said in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "Suicide is badass!"

Sometimes you have to jump and grab ropes but he doesn't grab them and again, just commits suicide.

And he runs so slowly that it's actually faster to jump around the stage, and even then, that works against the player, because again, falling from even a few inches sends your character into a dizzying frenzy.

Pretty much every time you die is because the controls fight against you. The controls are some of the worst I've ever seen in a 2D platformer. Hell, to duck you have to hold up and press B.
I-I'm sorry?? Holding UP to DUCK? Christ.

Everything you try to do, you either die or get stun locked and it's impossible to play the game with any sort of precision. Your main weapon of defense are rocks, but they don't actually kill any of the enemies, instead they just stun them for a brief moment.

Trying to hit enemies with the rocks is a pain in the ass in itself: because you have to gradually turn your arm in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion various degrees as if you were fuckin' using Mega Man's arm cannon. Just like the movement, aiming is slow, sluggish, and unresponsive. So by the time you get a proper aim, you're already dead, and if you do hit what you needed to hit, something is already behind you about to kill you anyway. This is especially impossible when trying to hit bats that fly around, just forget about it.

The layout design is also just abysmal. Many areas just have dead ends, a lot of them look the same, and sometimes you can even fall through trap doors that take to this one dungeon cell area, meaning you have to backtrack all the way from where you fell. Which means that it's all meant to waste time along with wasting even more time because you die repeatedly because of the impossible shitty controls, but oh man, I'll get to that.

The game is not only a time waster, but it is INSANELY annoying. The soundtrack only consists of ONE song, which is that one generic Dracula's Castle organ song that everyone is familiar with. It REALLY drones on your ears.

You can shut the music off but every time you die it gets turned back on again. And if you turn off the music while there is a note playing, it bugs out and then it sounds like the organist just slammed his face into the D key and lost conciousness.

Also for some fucked up reason there is a difficulty selection but that means literally nothing, because even on Easy Mode, the game is still impossible to play.

The enemy sound effects are so gut-wrenching to listen to. It never stops, and it's just a real pain to listen to, especially the ones that go
Nah nah nah nah nah
Nah nah nah nah nah
NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH
NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH

God, just shut up. It never stops, it genuinely drives me insane. Then again, it kinda makes sense, because it's like the game is trolling you.

So now for the biggest insult of this entire game:

So when you start the game there are a bunch of doors in front of you that you're supposed to go into to get items to defeat the Black Knight, the main bad guy of the game. But the truth is: You don't need any of these items. All you have to do to beat the game is to just go into the door the Black Knight is in, and when you reach him, you just pull a bunch of levers and that's it, you beat the game.

That's why there are speedruns of this game on YouTube in under 3 minutes, I'm dead serious.

Is this game for real?? So all of that masochism is completely unnecessary? You go through all of that trouble of playing through all the other stages only to realize that you can beat the game in just a few minutes?? Imagine being a kid in the 90s and you were completely unaware of this. Good God you have my condolences.

And this isn't just in the Genesis version, it's in the Mac version, the Commodore version, Atari version, it doesn't matter. And no matter what platform you are playing on, the controls are still broken, your character is still pathetic, and you can beat the game as soon as you start it.

It makes me wonder why this game was even made. Oh right, to cash in on the popularity of the resurgence of Dracula movies that came out in the late 80s and throughout the 1990s.

And if that wasn't enough, they released the game on the infamous Phillips CD-i, and oh ho ho boy, it's even WORSE than the Genesis version.

The art style is even more cartoonish, the sound effects are even more irritating, and the controls are somehow even worse, I am dead fuckin' serious. You cannot, and I mean you CANNOT control the character. It would be actually easier to control UFOs to make it easier for people to spot them.

It's incredibly difficult just to get past the first screen of the first level not just because of the horrendous controls, but you also get bombarded with bats that kill you in one hit. You also get stuck on stairs a lot, and you still have to manually aim your arm cannon to hit shit with rocks. And any little goddamn pixel you drop from, you fall over and get dizzy. This is meme-worthy.

The Genesis version is indeed horrific, but the CD-i version fucks you in the ass harder than most of 2020. The whole IP in general belongs in the deepest depths of enteral damnation and must never rise again.

1/10