Year: 1987
Genre: Platform Adventure
Few names in the video game world are associated with so rich a canonical history as "Belmont," the surname of the vampire-hunting family from the acclaimed Castlevania series of games, and though the storied background and heroic legacy of the Belmont family has been expounded in the sequels, prequels, interquels and alternate timelines, this is where it all began.
Right here - at the least shitty NES title screen of this whole blog. |
"Whelp - this vampire's not going to kill itself." |
Castlevania is about a vampire hunter's quest to "destroy forever the Curse of the Evil Count," although, "forever" is something of a subjective concept to the undead. While the expanded universe canon would eventually place Simon as the fourth Belmont to take on Dracula chronologically (so far), the original Nintendo manual is pretty lean on explanation. In fact, Simon's name isn't even mentioned in the English language version of the manual, although he is cited in the end credits as "Simon Belmondo" (and, moreover, "Simon Belmont" was circulated widely enough in other media to be well-known).
Gameplay is pretty standard Nintendo-era platform fare. Simon moves with a sort of steadfast plodding dignity, and once he begins on a jumping trajectory, he has no power to change it. When he steps off a platform, he plummets straight down, though he never takes falling damage, save for when he lands in water or falls off the bottom of the screen. Frankly, if one were to judge this game solely on Simon's platformer credentials, it would definitely not be at the top of the list. His only redeeming quality from a purely platformer perspective is his health bar, which is frequently made irrelevant as plummeting off the bottom of the screen is the most common cause of death and kills you instantly.
This is me, dying AFTER the boss fight is over. This happens more frequently than I want to admit. |
Pictured: the owls for Harry Potter, carrying unwanted messages as usual. |
John's Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0. It isn't an exaggeration to say that this may have been one of the most influential games of all time and for good reason, but it's also fair to say that the gameplay principles could stand some polishing, even for a game from the NES era.
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