Aaahhhhhh, that’s better. We have subweapons back, the controls work, it’s everything The Adventure should have been. At least, it’s everything a first attempt at a Game Boy Castlevania should have been, since it still has some flaws. The only subweapons to return are the axe and the holy water, the cast of enemies is still unimpressive, and there are a couple stages that aren’t great. Allowing players to tackle the first four levels in any order sounds like a great idea, especially for a portable game, but it’s questionable when a password system exists. It trades out the advantages of a linear difficulty structure in favor of allowing people to just turn on the game and play the stage they want immediately, which was usually reserved for games without save systems like Mega Man. It leaves the game feeling like it has four versions of “level two” strung together before the finale, instead of a traditional escalation in difficulty. Of course, these are all pretty understandable problems and workarounds given the limitations of the hardware, so that’s what keeps me positive on Belmont’s Revenge despite its mediocrity. It’s not a favorite, but if I played this back in the day after beating the first Castlevania, I wouldn’t have been disappointed.