This one is obvious. What kid didn’t dream of waking up on Christmas morning and finding a brand new Nintendo under the tree? Only kids who already had Nintendos, and by 1990 there were a lot of them. I was a little late to the Nintendo party. I knew a lot of people who already had one (or had the similar, lamer alternative, the Sega Master System), and I had played it casually for a long time at different people’s houses. But among my close friends, I was the only one to own a genuine NES and (very soon) a large library of games. In fact, it’s a little surprising when I look back now how quickly my bundle of Nintendo related crap accumulated. I only had it for about 18 months before I moved on to Sega Genesis, but in that short time I accumulated a disproportionate amount of games and fun.
The Nintendo was one of the very last presents I opened that Christmas. Christmas of 1990 was the Christmas of MC Hammer and the Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons, and I was fortunate enough to add a brand new Nintendo to that embarrassment of riches. It came with a note saying I had to share it with my dad, but other than the original Super Mario Brothers my dad has been unable to figure out a single video game, so I’m not sure what the purpose of the note was. Early on, my parents would play Mario in the other room after I went to bed, and I still have good memories of listening to them argue about the best way to get past King Koopa (as we called him in those days). Sometimes my dad would even come home from work excited because he had learned some new secret from a co-worker. That phase passed quickly, however, and for the most part I had the Nintendo all to myself. Initially I spent all of my time on the three games I got that Christmas: Mario and Duck Hunt, of course, along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Fester’s Quest. Both of the latter games have more than earned their reputation as some of the worst games on Nintendo, even though the Ninja Turtles were so popular that everyone had that stupid game. Standards of video game quality weren’t quite up to their modern standards yet, and I made do the best I could. I enjoyed Mario, but it never quite clicked for me the way it did with a lot of people; it wasn’t until I got Mario 3 a few months later that I really plunged into a Mario game. I also, to my later humiliation, loved the Zelda cartoon series, so much so that I wanted to make it into my very first live action movie, and so a snow day rental of Zelda 2 (not the original) became one of my earliest Nintendo highlights. I was always, and perhaps foolishly, interested in games with established characters and plots, hence the ownership of the terrible Ninja Turtles game.
Somehow, despite the terrible games, I became a big Nintendo fan, and, even more stunningly, my house became a Mecca for other 3rd graders seeking a chance to enjoy time with the sacred gray box. In those days we had a fourth bedroom upstairs that was almost exclusively reserved for playing Nintendo, and it became our club house. Far removed from the rest of the house, it was a place where the kids could learn and study the craft of Nintendo relatively free from adult interference. Shortly I added some new games to the repertoire—Gremlins 2 (yay!), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Good One, and of course Super Mario Brothers 3. The Nintendo age had truly begun. It’s funny—there was nothing more important to me that Christmas than getting a Nintendo, and I have dozens of great, unforgettable memories associated with that thing, but when I think of that Christmas it’s the lesser presents I remember more. Like The Simpsons Sing the Blues, Gremlins 2, my Ninja Turtles Tiger handheld game (remember those?) and my MC Hammer tape. 1990 was more about all the crazy cartoon fads that were exploding in the elementary school pop-culture scene than any big gift. The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe Nintendo might not have become the phenomenon it was were it not so closely linked to all those exploding fads. There were Simpsons games, Ninja Turtles, games for just about every movie and property to come along—most of those games were terrible, but I’m sure they helped sell Nintendos as much as Mario did.
I’ve written more about 1990 than any other Christmas, probably because there were so many popular characters and TV shows swirling around back then. Only in a year as vibrant with pop culture kiddy confection could something as wondrous as a Nintendo be only one among many memorable gifts. What an awesome time to be 8 years old.
There’s been so much already written about this game that I almost don’t want to get into it, but since I spent an entire Christmas break playing it, I can’t ignore it. To my shock and horror many of the people writing about and remembering Ocarina of Time these days were just children when the game came out eleven years ago. It’s hard for this seasoned video game nerd to believe that there are adults out there now whose first experience with Zelda was Ocarina of Time. I was no kid when it came out. I was sixteen, almost seventeen, with a host of problems I considered very adult, and yet the game still found its way to being one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time—one of the last games that was ever quite that much fun.
You might call Christmas of 1998 my first bad Christmas. I’m not sure what made me so unhappy that day. By that point Christmas had lost a lot of its luster, and I think I would have much rather been asleep on Christmas morning than downstairs opening presents. As a kid I’d forced my parents out of bed at 6 a.m. to open presents; by 1998 they had to practically drag me out of bed at 11:30. Despite all the problems I thought I had as a teenager, life was actually relatively simple: Bed good, not-bed bad.
So I wasn’t overflowing with Christmas cheer that year. I believe I spent the day on the sofa with my hands across my chest, grudgingly opening every present as it was handed to me without so much as a nod to the rest of the family. I don’t remember desperately wanting Zelda that year, at least not enough to justify my teenage surliness, but every time I opened a box that wasn’t Zelda I got angrier and angrier. Throughout my life I was always a very well behaved, jolly child who was happy with any gift as long as I was with friends and family—I guess all my childlike selfishness finally came out that Christmas after years of hibernation. For what seemed like hours I got nothing but socks upon socks upon socks, and I got moodier and moodier and moodier. Finally, only one present was left, from my 13 year old sister. I had no hopes for it, but this story wouldn't make much sense unless it turned out to be Zelda, which of course it did. I wish I could say my mood didn’t suddenly elevate when I saw the familiar gold box. I wish I could say that my brooding teenager vibe came from something other than desire for a Nintendo game, but that would just be dishonest. The moment I got the game, I was on cloud nine. So maybe I was still a kid.
In my defense, it’s an incredible game. It probably seems dated now, but at the time it was the most expansive adventure I had ever seen on a console—it sure blew away anything else on the Nintendo 64. For the first time Hyrule felt like a real world, with real 3D towns and cities and characters and monsters. Every area had its own unique inhabitants, from the Gorons on Death Mountain to the Gerudo Thieves in the desert. Older Zelda games had been nothing more than flat 2D maps, and while the earlier games were great, Ocarina left them all in the dust. For the first time you could jump on a horse and run across a seamless world firing arrows and jumping fences. With few exceptions, console games before this had been confined to levels, stages, and areas. Coming from those games to Ocarina of Time was like discovering the world was round. This game took everything that was great about older Zelda games and perfected it while adding a host of new stuff to the mix. The whole time travel gimmick was one of the game’s big selling points—it actually takes place in two different Hyrules, seven years apart. By traveling back and forth through time you can alter events in the different eras, and discovering what effect your actions can have is one of the game’s many highlights. It’s not used as often as it could have been, but it works. Mini-games also abound, from target practice to fishing to horseback riding; if anything, there’s too much to do. Since there’s a musical instrument in the title (though I’m sure this game was the first time 99% of the audience heard of an ocarina, including me. Funny pronunciations were rampant) you’d expect music to play a huge role in the game, and you’d be right. Ocarina of Time has some of the most memorable themes from any game I’ve ever played, and it doesn’t even included the traditional Zelda theme! You have to actually play different songs on your ocarina during the game, so they worm their way into your brain by necessity. I haven’t played the game in many years, but I still catch myself humming “Zelda’s Lullaby” (actually from A Link to the Past) or “Saria’s Song” from time to time, not to mention the great incidental and location specific music. Later on, when I watched others play the game, I noticed that they simply just jammed on the buttons when playing the songs, like they were inputting a secret code, without any effort to match the tempo. If you play the game like that, you’ve never even played it. Making music is part of the fun. One of my best friends also got the game that Christmas, and the thought that he might get to the end before me was just unbearable. When he first called me to talk about it a few days after Christmas, we were both at the same spot. That would not stand. From then on, I devoted myself entirely to playing Zelda: Up until 4am every night, up again at 9am to play some more. By New Year’s Eve I’d beaten the game and unlocked every conceivable item and area. When school started up again and I talked to my friend, I discovered he hadn’t had the chance to play the game for a while and was still in the 3rd dungeon. I suppose I overdid it.
I think I played through the game another four or five times that year, but like everything you do more than once it got less interesting each time. But that one playthrough alone gave me more enjoyment than hundreds of other games combined. I probably say this about every game I praise here, but when a game’s that good you don’t remember playing a game, you remember being there. Few games have given me the same sense of place as Ocarina of Time. The game has been out for eleven years now, and in all that time I’ve only met one person who had anything bad to say about it. It’s one of those rare games (or movies, or books) that gets every single thing right. With a game that good, maybe my whiny emo-kid behavior was justified, right? Maybe all the emo-kids you see out there today just need a Nintendo 64 and Ocarina of Time to chase the blues away. It sure doesn’t hurt.
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 Nightclones and possibly the death ofCastlevania 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?
When I was in elementary school, fantasizing about the long distant day when the Super Nintendo would become a reality, Super Castlevania IV was one of those games that kept me up at night with anticipation. I saw pictures in magazines, but I really didn’t believe any game, on any system, could look anywhere near that good.
But it did. It may seem old-fashioned now, but when it came out in late 1991 it was a showpiece game for the Super Nintendo. Some of the extra graphical touches are a little gratuitous—I’ve yet to figure out exactly what I’m inside when the room is spinning like a barrel in the fourth level. It looks cool, but that’s about it. No matter what you think of the some of the graphical bells and whistles, there’s no question that this game is visually leaps and bounds ahead of the NES games. The transition from 8-bit to 16-bit was as revolutionary in its time as the change from 2D to 3D gaming would be a few years later, and one need look no further than Super Castlevania IV for evidence.
It remains unclear exactly what the storyline of this game was supposed to be, but most agree that it is essentially a remake and expansion of the first game. You again play as Simon Belmont on a quest to kill Dracula. This time Simon’s hair is brown both in the game and on the box, plus he’s upgraded his wardrobe to a suit of stylish black armor. For some reason, instead of leg armor he wears a very short armored skirt, but we can forgive him. I guess fighting Dracula requires a lot of flexibility. Thanks to the Super Nintendo’s power the new Simon is also several times taller than his NES incarnation. He actually looks like a human being, his animation is much improved, and he moves less like a bag of rocks. Outside of Simon the game sports great new graphical touches all over. From the ghostly horses in the background of stable level to the eerie dining tables in the first level of Dracula’s castle, the designers put in so many little flourishes that you’ll be noticing something new on every playthrough.
Like the very first Castlevania, this game is completely linear, though like Castlevania II and III some of the stages take place outside of the castle itself. If losing the freedom of Castlevania II and the choices and companions from Castlevania III seems like a step back for the series, Castlevania IV makes up for it with absolutely stellar side scrolling action. This is the only Castlevania game ever where Simon’s whip actually works like a whip instead of just a long stick. You can attack with the whip in any direction, and even, in some instances, swing from it like Indiana Jones (though why Dracula would fill his castle with objects specifically designed for whip swinging is beyond me). All this versatility makes the game slightly easier than the NES classics, but there are still plenty of opportunities for the gnashing of teeth.
Enemy design really shines in Castlevania IV as well, once again owing to the Super Nintendo’s improved capabilities. By this time it was finally possible to have giant bosses that take up the entire screen, and some of the boss monsters, like the giant golem and the twin sea serpents, are particularly memorable. I personally enjoy the bizarre creepiness of the dancing ghosts at the end of level 6. There’s something about a ghostly couple who are equally intent on dancing as they are on murdering the player that’s very effective. Only Dracula himself is a little disappointing. After so many innovative bosses, the fight with Dracula, who has essentially one form (he even gives you life, for the love of God!) is pretty anticlimactic, as is the overused “collapsing castle” ending. At least in Castlevania II and III we got a little bit of badly translated text to go with the scene.
Last but not least, special mention goes to the music. The Super Nintendo’s music chip was one of the big reasons it finally won out against the Genesis, and with the already stellar tunes of Castlevania the system really delivered. “Vampire Killer,” “Bloody Tears,” and “The Beginning” from the previous three games all make their triumphant return here, each one more fleshed out and powerful than ever before. In addition there are plenty of new tracks, each one just right for the level. The standout from this game is probably “Simon’s Theme”—it accompanies the very first level, and puts one in the mood for some cheesy Universal Monster slaying adventures.
Castlevania IV is one of the best games for Super Nintendo, but it was the end of an era. Soon the popular series would go off in a new direction once more, and these classic action games of the past would be forgotten.
This game is widely, and with good cause, considered to be the greatest of the NES Castlevanias and one of the greatest NES games, period. IGN recently voted it 5th in its list of the Top 100 Nintendo Games of All Time. It’s easy to see why. This game took the series back to its level-based, side scrolling roots, then cranked that up to 11. If anything, this game is even harder than the original Castlevania; fortunately, as in Castlevania II, there are passwords to help ease the pain of failure. No longer did you have to leave your Nintendo turned on for hours to beat the game.
Instead you have to leave it turned on for hours to get through the punishing and lengthy stages. Whereas the original game had only six, Dracula’s Curse has nearly three times that many, depending on how you play the game, and they are all much, much longer than in Castlevania. Luckily, and here is where the series took another innovative turn, you don’t play through every level in every play through. After completing certain stages, you are given a choice of where to go next. This isn’t just a matter of picking which order you do the levels, like in Mega Man. By picking certain stages, you effectively block off others, and it might take as many as four times through to see all the game has to offer.
This story takes place 200 years before the original Castlevania and introduces a new member of the Belmont family, Trevor. You wouldn’t be able to tell that from looking at him, though. Trevor’s sprite is almost exactly like Simon’s from the original game. Back is the drab brown costume and brown hair, and back is the inability to jump worth a damn. But in Castlevania IIIyou’re not limited to one character. Depending on which path through the game you choose, you might run into Syfa, a wizard, Grant, a high jumping pirate, or Alucard, the son of Dracula who would later appear in his own game, the classicSymphony of the Night for the PSX in 1997. Each of these companions had their own abilities to help make things a little easier, and since you could only have one with you at a time the feature offered even more incentive to play through the game multiple times.
And you’ll definitely want to play through the game multiple times. Everything is improved from the first game. The graphics are more intense (just check out the stained glass cathedral in the very first level) the bosses are bigger and more challenging, and the music is the best ever—so far. This is one of the most difficult games on the NES (out of the ones that are realistically possible to beat, anyway) and it took me years of trial and error to finally take down Dracula. (This time, you have to fight three of his forms!) What’s great about the NES Castlevanias is that no matter how punishingly difficult they can get, there always is a way out, and you’ll rarely feel cheated. There’re still those rare instances, of course, where you’ll throw the controller at the screen after an unavoidable bat slams you off a platform to your death.
Dracula’s Curse was a great swan song for series on the NES. It took the excellent platforming of the first game, mixed in a touch of the choose-your-own adventure feel of the second, and added a whole lot of little touches of its own to create a classic. Time would tell if the first game on Nintendo’s new Super Nintendo system could fill Castlevania III’s colossal boots.
Alone among my friends, I liked Simon’s Quest more than the original Castlevania, and not just because it was much easier. Like Zelda II and Super Mario Brothers 2, Castlevania II took the series in a completely different direction. It’s my understanding that at the time, companies were still unsure how to deliver sequels—whether gamers were attracted to the style of game itself or to the characters and setting, and so many of these early sequels diverged mightily from their predecessors.
The plot was a direct continuation of the first game. After killing Dracula, Simon Belmont discovers that the power of Dracula is still alive and well throughout Transylvania. It just so happened that Dracula put a curse on Simon with his dying breath, a kind of vampire failsafe if you will, that if Dracula died Simon, along with all of Transylvania, would fall ill and die. The only way to break the curse? Resurrect Dracula and kill him again! So Simon sets off on a quest (get it?) to collect the scattered remains of Dracula, put him back together, and kill him once and for all (or until the next game in the chronology.)
Castlevania II was the first game I ever played without levels. Instead of progressing through a six-stage castle, Simon had the whole Transylvanian countryside to explore. There were forests, caves, villages, swamps, haunted mansions, deserted cliffs, and, only at the end, the ruins of Dracula’s castle. This time around there were more adventure and RPG elements in the mix. You had to figure out where to go and what to do (not a simple task, and almost impossible without a good Nintendo Power at your side. God Bless the marketing geniuses at Nintendo Power, huh?). The actual gameplay might not have been as hard, but figuring out where to go next sure was. The pathetic translation didn’t help either. Townspeople were supposed to give you clues, but they ended up referring to things that aren’t even in the game, when they make sense at all.
But this game had a lot going for it that often gets overlooked by people put off by the change in style. I loved exploring a haunted, storybook version of 17th century Romania. With a little imagination, it was easy to transfer the confusing 2d game map into a full scale world. When you’re a kid, the best games are the ones that provide a great jumping off point for imaginary elaboration. The game had a day night cycle, and every time it switched the music changed and the enemies got tougher. Even the towns were no longer safe, as the once friendly and poorly translated villagers were replaced with putrid zombies. (As a child, I thought the townspeople transformed into zombies, making the game all the more creepy, but it turns out they’re meant to be hiding in their homes while unrelated zombies ravage the city.) Part of the strategy was getting through the game in a set number of game dies. If you took too long, Simon could actually die of his wounds in one of the first instances of a game having multiple endings.
The game had a very limited soundtrack, but it did introduce “Bloody Tears” one of my favorite Castlevania tracks. The graphics are a bit more generic than in Castlevania—all of the mansions look the same, but the forests and mountains of the countryside are appropriately atmospheric. Simon himself has gotten a nice visual upgrade, with a svelte red suit and a new black hairstyle. (Although on the game box he’s a blond, after appearing to have brown hair on the first Castlevania’s box. The series has never been big on consistency. I think in his latest appearance his hair was bright red).
Castlevania II is often considered the black sheep of the NES Castlevanias, but it’s one of my favorites. I love the time factor, the giant world map, and the challenge of having to figure out where to go next. It’s one of the main contributing factors to my love of vampires and Dracula in particular. It might feel quaint now, but at the time this game laid out a huge, haunted, and mysterious world, and left the player free to go where they wanted. It was a design ahead of its time, and though it is quite popular now, Castlevania would return to a more traditional style for Castlevania III.
In the days when NES ruled the world, the Castlevania series was the best place to go for slaying ghosts, zombies, and other horrors. Despite their fiendish difficulty, the games are well deserving of their status as classics of the NES era. The plot was fairly simple: A guy with a whip sets out to fight his way through the monsters of Dracula’s castle and finally kill the Lord of the Vampires himself. For a young fan of Universal Horror monsters and all things Gothic and spooky the series was a no-brainer. I have great memories of going down to a friend’s unfinished basement to play the original Castlevania for the first time—if the shiny silver box and the cheesy picture of Dracula on the cover didn’t hook me, the game itself quickly removed any doubts. The atmosphere, the music, the gameplay, and yes, even the challenge made the experience memorable. In honor of Halloween I’m going to take a look back at the three NES Castlevanias, and even discuss the series’ triumphant entry into the newfangled sixteen bit era with Super Castlevania IV before examining where the series has gone since its heyday.
Castlevania (1987)
It started with Dracula, a castle, and some dude with a whip. If you read the instructions, you learned that the hero’s name was Simon Belmont, scion of a long line of vampire-fighters, and the whip was actually an enchanted artifact designed for one purpose—the eradication of vampires everywhere. Konami was already on my radar in a big way in the late 80s/early 90s when I first played this game. As the makers of Contra and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle arcade game, they were, as far as I was concerned, the only major 3rd party developer in town. Here was a game that had everything. Zombies? Check. Ghosts? Check. Medusa? Check. Dracula? Of course. The first Castlevania was only six stages, and if you’re a pro it can probably be beaten in about half an hour. But most of us were not pros at age 8, and in those early NES days six stages was more than worth the game’s fifty dollar pricetag. I was no terrible Nintendo player, but it took me years (years!) to finally beat the Grim Reaper and move on to stage six, and that’s when I was lucky enough even to get that far.
The game had no passwords, so if you turned off your Nintendo you were stuck going all the way back to beginning. Cheap deaths were common: Many times, fully powered up and charging through mighty enemies left and right, Simon Belmont found himself knocked off a platform by a run-of-the-mill bat, at which point he would plummet like a rock to his death. That’s right. Simon Belmont must have weighed somewhere in the vicinity of 500 pounds, because even a fall from a low platform would send him hurtling to the ground as though sucked there with a vacuum.
But aside from the punishing mechanics, the game was a blast to play. In addition to the whip, Simon could grab four subweapons—the useless knife, the axe, the cross shaped boomerang (I guess the cross helped put some added hurt on the legions of the damned), and the all powerful holy water, a weapon so mighty that proper use of it could even render the impossible Grim Reaper boss helpless. The levels themselves, all of which took place inside different parts of Dracula’s castle, were appropriately spooky, with ruined statues, crumbling walls and faded curtains making excellent use (for the time) of the Nintendo’s capabilities. Only Simon, who was a squat, all brown little blob, got less than stellar treatment from the graphics folks, but he serves his purpose well enough. Then of course there’s the wonderful music. Konami went all out with this, and it remains one of the series’ hallmarks. Sure, the Mario and Zelda themes were more iconic, but Castlevania managed to evoke the sound and fury of a full on pipe-organ into the tiny NES cartridge, and that’s just during the first stage. The music is evocative even today, and I’ve heard plenty of full orchestral soundtracks that don’t come close to matching its 8-bit simplicity.
If you somehow managed to climb through Dracula’s castle and defeat the Count himself in both his forms, you were treated to one of the most anticlimactic endings in an era of anticlimactic endings. The castle just falls down. That’s it.
That’s okay, though. Castlevania II was on its way.
This one is obvious. What kid didn’t dream of waking up on Christmas morning and finding a brand new Nintendo under the tree? Only kids who already had Nintendos, and by 1990 there were a lot of them. I was a little late to the Nintendo party. I knew a lot of people who already had one (or had the similar, lamer alternative, the Sega Master System), and I had played it casually for a long time at different people’s houses. But among my close friends, I was the only one to own a genuine NES and (very soon) a large library of games. In fact, it’s a little surprising when I look back now how quickly my bundle of Nintendo related crap accumulated. I only had it for about 18 months before I moved on to Sega Genesis, but in that short time I accumulated a disproportionate amount of games and fun.
That phase passed quickly, however, and for the most part I had the Nintendo all to myself. Initially I spent all of my time on the three games I got that Christmas: Mario and Duck Hunt, of course, along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Fester’s Quest. Both of the latter games have more than earned their reputation as some of the worst games on Nintendo, even though the Ninja Turtles were so popular that everyone had that stupid game. Standards of video game quality weren’t quite up to their modern standards yet, and I made do the best I could. I enjoyed Mario, but it never quite clicked for me the way it did with a lot of people; it wasn’t until I got Mario 3 a few months later that I really plunged into a Mario game. I also, to my later humiliation, loved the Zelda cartoon series, so much so that I wanted to make it into my very first live action movie, and so a snow day rental of Zelda 2 (not the original) became one of my earliest Nintendo highlights. I was always, and perhaps foolishly, interested in games with established characters and plots, hence the ownership of the terrible Ninja Turtles game. 
It’s funny—there was nothing more important to me that Christmas than getting a Nintendo, and I have dozens of great, unforgettable memories associated with that thing, but when I think of that Christmas it’s the lesser presents I remember more. Like The Simpsons Sing the Blues, Gremlins 2, my Ninja Turtles Tiger handheld game (remember those?) and my MC Hammer tape. 1990 was more about all the crazy cartoon fads that were exploding in the elementary school pop-culture scene than any big gift. The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe Nintendo might not have become the phenomenon it was were it not so closely linked to all those exploding fads. There were Simpsons games, Ninja Turtles, games for just about every movie and property to come along—most of those games were terrible, but I’m sure they helped sell Nintendos as much as Mario did.
