After Super Castlevania IV the series took a hiatus for a few years. As a loyal Sega Genesis owner, I loved the next entry in the series, 1994’s Castlevania: Bloodlines, the first to appear for the Sega. The music and graphics were slightly behind the SNES, of course, but the game made up for it by letting you choose from two characters and amping up the gore levels to Sega standards. Even the plot tied into real world history—on the eve of World War I, an evil sorcerer revives Elizabeth Bathory, who in turn starts a plan to revive Dracula himself. The heroes, John Morris and Eric Lecarde, equipped with the classic whip and a super-deadly spear, respectively, set off across real European locations, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Versailles Palace on a mission to once again put Dracula to rest. It’s chock full of typical Castlevania action, and many purists consider this the last “true” Castlevania game.
To many, the series achieved perfection with 1997’s Symphony of the Night for the original Playstation. Here the series returned to the ideas in Castlevania II and crafted a non-linear, go anywhere game filled to the brim with weapons, power ups , and unlockable secrets. This time you played not as a Belmont, but as Alucard (get it?), the super emo-goth son of Dracula (who made his first appearance in Castlevania III). Alucard could turn into a wolf, a bat, or mist, and was an all around badass. So much so, in fact, that the game is ridiculously easy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a blast from start to finish and deserves its reputation as one of the greatest games ever made, but there’s simply no difficulty. By the time you get to the end, Alucard will be so powerful that he could brush off a nuclear war with the wave of his sword. Not even his dad Dracula can stand up to him.Symphony of the Night is worth playing now for the cheesy voice acting alone. You’ve never heard bad acting until you hear Dracula speak the immortal line, “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!” Voice acting aside, the game’s presentation is top notch, and despite my love for old school CV, if you play just one game in the series, it should probably be this one.
I am probably alone in my enjoyment of Castlevania for Nintendo 64. This was the series’ first excursion into 3D, and a lot of the jumping and fighting was indeed awkward. But the game also had a lot of fun adventure elements, the chance to fight vampires other than just Dracula, and many endings and ways to play. Running through a hedge maze while being chased by a chainsaw wielding Frankenstein’s Monster is easily worth fifty bucks, if you ask me. If you bother to check game reviews from the time the game came out, you’ll find that they’re almost universally positive, but today game writers would have you believe they hated the 3D Castlevania from day one. Not so, I’m afraid.
Chastised by the failure (imagined or otherwise) of Castlevania 64, the game retreated to the world of the 2D handheld platforms—the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS. For the last ten years, with the exception of a few mediocre PS2/X-Box games and an ill-advised fighting game for the Wii, Konami has simply copied Symphony of the Night again and again and again for the portable platforms, and the character designs have gotten farther and farther away from their Gothic horror roots. Current Castlevania “men” are designed to look prettier than any girl I’ve ever met—I understand that that’s popular in Japan, but it’s starting to get more than a little weird.
At E3 a few months ago, Konami announced an all new 3D Castlevania game for X-Box 360 and PS3, Lords of Shadow, that promises to be more than another Symphony of the Night clone. With professional voice acting, a gritty medieval setting, and a promise to take the series back to the action oriented roots of Castlevania and Super Castlevania IV, this game is certainly one to watch. (Though it could just be terrible again, resulting in another glut of Symphony of the Night clones and possibly the death of Castlevania on the mainstream consoles. So let’s hope it’s good!)That got very lengthy, but I’ve been waiting to write about these games for a while. What better time than Halloween to recall the glory days of opening the classic silver Konami box and taking an 8-bit trip to Transylvania?
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