Every 100 years, Count Dracula arises in Transylvania in a black mass ritual brought by his circle of heretics. He terrorises and abducts the populace, spreading black magic of cruelty. Will you, a descendant of a family line of vampire killers, be able to stop him?
I remember when Arin Hanson used to talk about game mechanics and how "Akumajou Dracula"(or "Castlevania") has wonderful tactility. The whip mechanic is snappy and feels right, and so do all the jumping and climbing trajectories, rigid as they are. Both crouching and jumping have a lot of practical and mechanical use, and both help you either avoid harm or reach out with your whip, predating this necessity in Zelda II. And it's great how everything in this game tries to be damn campy. I imagine the bats flying towards you are the same rubbery bats on a string coming in the 1931 "Dracula" film, and you got the whole cavalcade of stock Halloween creatures like the mummy, the Frankenstein monster, creatures from the Black Lagoon, skeletons and strange hunchbacks. I'm rather surprised there was no room for werewolves here, but what's in is cheesy fun nontheless.
And many of these enemies are utter dickheads. "Castlevania"'s so notorious for its difficulty. The Medusa often get paired with either bottomless pits or some projectile-wielding enemy. Medusa heads suck. And the strange, monkey-like hunchbacks especially suck during the run for your life at level 4, which also plays nasty environmental tricks by fooling you what's a real floor and what's a background element. So many of these foes seem insurmountable at first, and you can definitely study their patterns if you take your time and see how they react to what - but for a game as breezy and brief as this and with no window for some downtime(throug all of the game you're under a strict clock), it kills the mood in me to actually take my time with them. And often I get the daggers 90% of the time, which is just the lamest subweapon.
The visual direction of this game though, is truly unparalleled. I love how there's a small diagram of the castle every time inbetween levels, showing you where you are in that "SMB3" fashion. So many resources blend seamlessly to construct this truly ancient, gothic space, with magnificent chandeliers, pillars, and archways everywhere. They always blend with the foreground elements seamlessly which drives you to a double take. And level 4 has this superb view of Dracula's hideout in the distance, under the moonlight. It's such a powerful moment and a deliberate artistic choice to devote so many precious kilobytes of memory space to just a graphical element, putting even more emphasis in the oncoming culmination.
When you fight with Dracula in his darkened lair, it's so cold and stark. He appears silently and cuts a quarter of your health. It's the one part in the game where I would welcome the high precision needed to defeat Dracula, since every moment and every attempt to place one of the 16 shots on him is filled with more suspense than a cowboy standoff.
Drac puts out a cruel fight, but it's really the rest of the game's difficulty that deters me from this otherwise classic game and makes me moan with displeasure when I "have to" play it, and I'm far from the only person to feel this way. I'd feel more at ease if many of the perils weren't such bullshitty(hello, inflated spike hitboxes!), and if I didn't get the feeling that hearts were so scarce that I need to hang onto them for dear life.
Fortunately there are ways around it!
So first of all I did play this in the Famicom Disk System release. It has a saving system just like "Zelda" that is so cool. But it still keeps its merciless difficulty, which I do think is too much for the first time player. When Konami ported this game to the cartridge in Japan(and I mean Japan ONLY), they did put an added easy mode, which is a blessing. This easy mode makes bosses and enemies a lot easier to traverse, and it also gives you bonus hearts so you actually won't be scared of using the side-arms and removes Simon's damage blowback entirely: Meaning you can say goodbye to falling in pits, if you still have jumping precision.
A thing that takes it even further is "Castlevania Simplified", which is a hack for the US cartridge release(for the "Revision A" ROM) that also boosts your power, your hearts, gets rid of pits entirely(a bit too much for my taste), and lowers the enemy spam. For a lot of people accustomed to the OG this would be stupidly easy, but I think it's a hack that's amazingly servicable for people who are daunted by the difficulty and feel like they can't play "Castlevania" because of it. Well guess what - this hack's for you!
If I had to re-frame all of these versions into genuine difficulty levels I would say:
Easy mode: "Castlevania Simplified" hack
Medium mode: Japanese cartridge release, easy mode
Hard mode: Just regular ol' "Castlevania"
Expert mode: Beating "Castlevania" once and doing the second quest after it
Also, for the FDS version - no super cool and special music arrangements this time, I'm afraid. I think the music used none of the FDS sound channel gear and is instead completely identical to the NES chiptune. So besides the saving system I'd say the NES and FDS versions are completely identical.
(Glitchwave project #020)
I remember when Arin Hanson used to talk about game mechanics and how "Akumajou Dracula"(or "Castlevania") has wonderful tactility. The whip mechanic is snappy and feels right, and so do all the jumping and climbing trajectories, rigid as they are. Both crouching and jumping have a lot of practical and mechanical use, and both help you either avoid harm or reach out with your whip, predating this necessity in Zelda II. And it's great how everything in this game tries to be damn campy. I imagine the bats flying towards you are the same rubbery bats on a string coming in the 1931 "Dracula" film, and you got the whole cavalcade of stock Halloween creatures like the mummy, the Frankenstein monster, creatures from the Black Lagoon, skeletons and strange hunchbacks. I'm rather surprised there was no room for werewolves here, but what's in is cheesy fun nontheless.
And many of these enemies are utter dickheads. "Castlevania"'s so notorious for its difficulty. The Medusa often get paired with either bottomless pits or some projectile-wielding enemy. Medusa heads suck. And the strange, monkey-like hunchbacks especially suck during the run for your life at level 4, which also plays nasty environmental tricks by fooling you what's a real floor and what's a background element. So many of these foes seem insurmountable at first, and you can definitely study their patterns if you take your time and see how they react to what - but for a game as breezy and brief as this and with no window for some downtime(throug all of the game you're under a strict clock), it kills the mood in me to actually take my time with them. And often I get the daggers 90% of the time, which is just the lamest subweapon.
The visual direction of this game though, is truly unparalleled. I love how there's a small diagram of the castle every time inbetween levels, showing you where you are in that "SMB3" fashion. So many resources blend seamlessly to construct this truly ancient, gothic space, with magnificent chandeliers, pillars, and archways everywhere. They always blend with the foreground elements seamlessly which drives you to a double take. And level 4 has this superb view of Dracula's hideout in the distance, under the moonlight. It's such a powerful moment and a deliberate artistic choice to devote so many precious kilobytes of memory space to just a graphical element, putting even more emphasis in the oncoming culmination.
When you fight with Dracula in his darkened lair, it's so cold and stark. He appears silently and cuts a quarter of your health. It's the one part in the game where I would welcome the high precision needed to defeat Dracula, since every moment and every attempt to place one of the 16 shots on him is filled with more suspense than a cowboy standoff.
Drac puts out a cruel fight, but it's really the rest of the game's difficulty that deters me from this otherwise classic game and makes me moan with displeasure when I "have to" play it, and I'm far from the only person to feel this way. I'd feel more at ease if many of the perils weren't such bullshitty(hello, inflated spike hitboxes!), and if I didn't get the feeling that hearts were so scarce that I need to hang onto them for dear life.
Fortunately there are ways around it!
So first of all I did play this in the Famicom Disk System release. It has a saving system just like "Zelda" that is so cool. But it still keeps its merciless difficulty, which I do think is too much for the first time player. When Konami ported this game to the cartridge in Japan(and I mean Japan ONLY), they did put an added easy mode, which is a blessing. This easy mode makes bosses and enemies a lot easier to traverse, and it also gives you bonus hearts so you actually won't be scared of using the side-arms and removes Simon's damage blowback entirely: Meaning you can say goodbye to falling in pits, if you still have jumping precision.
A thing that takes it even further is "Castlevania Simplified", which is a hack for the US cartridge release(for the "Revision A" ROM) that also boosts your power, your hearts, gets rid of pits entirely(a bit too much for my taste), and lowers the enemy spam. For a lot of people accustomed to the OG this would be stupidly easy, but I think it's a hack that's amazingly servicable for people who are daunted by the difficulty and feel like they can't play "Castlevania" because of it. Well guess what - this hack's for you!
If I had to re-frame all of these versions into genuine difficulty levels I would say:
Easy mode: "Castlevania Simplified" hack
Medium mode: Japanese cartridge release, easy mode
Hard mode: Just regular ol' "Castlevania"
Expert mode: Beating "Castlevania" once and doing the second quest after it
Also, for the FDS version - no super cool and special music arrangements this time, I'm afraid. I think the music used none of the FDS sound channel gear and is instead completely identical to the NES chiptune. So besides the saving system I'd say the NES and FDS versions are completely identical.
(Glitchwave project #020)