I’m often told NES games didn’t have enough space for detailed backgrounds.

Well, Castlevania does and it came out in 1986.

I’m often told games in the 1980’s didn’t have infinite continues.

Well, Castlevania does and it came out in 1986.

“It isn’t fair to criticize an NES game’s questionable hit detection.”

Castlevania…

1986.

“NES games had to repeat stages.”

They didn’t.

Castlevania, 1986.

That is not to say Castlevania is a perfect game, but it is clear the developers were

not going to use the excuse of limited hardware to make a sloppy product.

Castlevania is remarkably polished, audibly, visually, and mechanically, and many of the

structural philosophies can still be found in modern gaming.

Perhaps this is why the game remains so popular among certain gaming circles.

Or maybe it is the unique set-pieces.

While the North American manual fails to give the game much context, the player assumes

the role of Simon Belmont, a vampire hunter wielding the Vampire Killer, a holy whip passed

down through the ages.

The goal is to defeat Dracula, who has been resurrected along with his castle in Transylvania.

In addition to Dracula, Castlevania uses many other classic monsters that have fallen into

the public domain, like Frankenstein’s Monster.

More mythical creatures like the Grim Reaper, Medusa, and Mummies are also featured.

Despite the primitive hardware and sprite limits, Castlevania does an commendable job

portraying these classic monsters on the 8-bit hardware.

Another interesting touch is the cohesiveness of the game world.

The opening cinematic shows Simon at the property gates, with Dracula’s tower way off in the

distance.

The 6 levels of the game do an admirable job creating a realistic path from the gates to

the tower, and it doesn’t take much imagination to understand where Simon is.

While the graphics are not realistic, there is a level of detail found here which other

titles of the era failed to match.

The ambitious style certainly aids in the game’s uniqueness and continued popularity.

Of course, a unique visual style and monster-movie set-pieces are not enough to make a game good.

So let us take a closer look at the gameplay.

Castlevania is a linear action game, with the player having to battle an increasingly

hostile set of enemies through 6 increasingly difficult stages.

While the whip is the primary weapon, Simon is able to utilize 5 sub-weapons to aid in

the journey.

Unlike the whip, these are limited use items, with the player needing to collect hearts

to power them.

The first thing I really dig about Castlevania is how most of these are shown to the player

on the very first stage.

The watch temporally stops time, freezing all enemies in place.

The dagger is a projectile weapon, firing straight across the screen.

The ax is another projectile weapon but at an arc allowing one to hit enemies above Simon.

The Holy Water ignites a small fire on the ground, while also freezing enemies.

And lastly, the boomerang fires across the screen, and returns, allowing for multiple

hits when used strategically, but isn’t showcased until the second stage.

Castlevania does a reasonable job with item placement on the opening stage as well, offering

the Holy Water in a convenient location, showing its utility in damaging enemies at a lower

plane.

More famously is the ax, the last item offered before the first boss.

Assuming a first-time player breaks every single candle in the stage, the ax is the

weapon one should end up with when encountering the first boss, which is incredibly efficient

against the airborne foe.

As a whole, Castlevania’s first stage does a great job easing the player into the action

without being overly tutorialized.

Candles are placed in the air, encourage players to jump and attack, a crucial skill needed

for future enemies.

Plenty of stairs are presented, letting players familiarize themselves with how to climb up

and down them, without there being an onslaught of enemies to try and avoid while coming to

grips with them.

And finally, players are encouraged to explore, with both wall meat and a double shot being

rewarded inside of breakable blocks.

Sadly, like many games of the time, there is no real clue to which blocks can be broken.

One initially just has to swing the whip at everything and then memorize the locations

to save time later.

Thankfully, as Castlevania is a sidescrolling game, rather than overhead, there are limited

possibilities as to which blocks might contain goodies.

But still, later games handled it better.

Moving along, Stage 2 ups the difficulty significantly.

Castlevania’s notorious bottomless pits are introduced here.

While the first stage has a certain flow to it, where one could mostly press forward with

little regard to the terrain, players now need to stop and assess the situation.

One might want to attack an enemy before leaping across a platform for example.

Moving platforms are also introduced.

The initial one thankfully has a platform underneath it, reducing the possibility of

a mistimed jump, but the margin for error decreases as the stage wears on.

This brings us to the jumping itself.

It is primitive.

Pressing the button longer will not yield a longer jump versus a quick tap.

Simon either jumps straight up into the air or makes the same arced forward jump, no matter

what.

While a dated concept for sure, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with the approach.

The lack of any control basically eliminates any sort of debate on if the jump is too floaty

or too weighty.

Simon has a predefined arc, and that is that.

Thankfully, the level design in Castlevania is designed around the specific arc and never

requires more from the jump than what is available.

Platform spacing is uniform, moving platforms always have a decent width allowing for some

slop, and enemy behavior never requires additional precision.

While I found the arc somewhat rigid when I first attempted to play the game, it is

something I’ve grown accustomed to and it honestly feels like second nature.

I never found myself longing for more control, as the game is expertly designed around the

jumping limitations.

So, if the first stage is an item tutorial, and the second a jumping tutorial, then it

only makes sense the third stage is a combat tutorial.

While the zombies in the opening stage were mostly harmless, things really pick up in

stage 3.

The hunchbacks jump around erratically, bone pillars are placed after pits, and the birds

like to dive at Simon from an incredibly awkward angle.

Timing then becomes key to success.

The player can whip the bone pillar projectiles, however, one must learn their timing, as button-mashing

won’t cut it.

Same goes for the birds.

One can jump and attack, dodge the bird and then attack, or use a well-timed sub-weapon.

If one doesn’t take the time to learn the patterns, a grim fate awaits.

I suspect even the most novice of players will be able to clear the first three stages

of Castlevania.

There isn’t anything too taxing here, the bosses are easy, and while there is likely

some frustration to be found for the uninitiated, I don’t believe anything here is impossible.

However, the final three stages ramp up the difficulty significantly, and not always fairly.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to jump on the moving platform, have a bat spawn,

and then promptly get knocked off the platform because the whip is too high to hit the bat.

The player can actually control where the bats spawn.

It appears on the side of the screen the player is facing, and at the same level as Simon.

However, if ducking, the player might miss as the bat changes its altitude.

Honestly, it feels cheap.

Another annoyance is the sometimes random nature of Castlevania.

Usually, the items found in the candles do not change.

Therefore a player can reasonably expect certain items to always be found in the same spot

on every playthrough.

This is critical as certain sub-weapons are vastly superior in some scenarios compared

to others, especially bosses.

Therefore, when a hunchback randomly drops an ax during a hectic segment of stage 4,

it can be incredibly annoying.

Hunchpbacks won’t drop other weapons either, just hearts and axes.

Of course, one hopefully won’t make the same mistake on subsequent playthroughs, but

Castlevania is an intense game requiring fast movement and quick decisions, and the weapon

drop behavior seems counterintuitive to the game’s philosophy.

The random drops aren’t always a bad thing though.

On this run, I managed to retain the Holy Water, and the bone pillars on the next screen

dropped a double shot, and then a triple shot, on my way to the final boss.

Stage 5 was especially perplexing, with both a skeleton and a hunchback dropping a watch,

ruining my current credit.

So why does the randomness bother me so much?

Well, the boss of stage 4 and 5 are incredibly difficult.

While I can beat Frankenstein without the Holy Water, it sure makes things a heck of

a lot easier.

Death, on the other hand, I cannot beat straight up.

So when the randomness takes away my choice of weapon, I find it rather annoying.

Speaking of stage 5, this is when the utility of the Holy Water becomes most apparent.

The 5 sub-weapons in Castlevania are not created equal.

The more one plays Castlevania, the more obvious it becomes the Holy Water offers the best

value to the player.

Generally speaking, the ax and the dagger will hit an enemy once.

The cross has the potential to hit an enemy twice.

But the holy water… can do far more.

However, each sub-weapon costs just a single heart to use.

There is a real lack of balance here.

It seems the more powerful weapons should cost more hearts to use, but that is not how

it works.

The watch actually uses 5 hearts, as if the developers thought the watch was the most

game-breaking sub-weapon, but I can not for the life of me understand how the developers

reached this conclusion.

However, it isn’t just the Holy Water in and of itself that can be game-breaking.

Rather, it is the double and triple shot upgrades.

These allow players two use their sub-weapon two or three times at once.

Without them, the player cannot use the sub-weapon a second time until the first one leaves the

screen.

With them, the sub-weapons become dramatically more versatile.

And in the case of the Holy Water, completely game-breaking.

Bosses which were previously painful, are completely neutralized.

Now, one could argue if a player manages to retain the Holy Water all the way through