Skip to main content

Retro Rebound: Castlevania II - Simon's Quest

Recently I had this kick where I wanted to play all of the old NES games that I played as a kid. I also decided to do little write ups for some of them in a new segment I'd like to call Retro Rebound! I took some screenshots of my adventures too! Consider these posts an homage to my friend Dave's site, 8-Bit Memoirs, who's site is purely dedicated to old school gaming.

In Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, you play as an adventurer named Simon Belmont who was cursed by Dracula. He learns that he will die unless he finds five different body parts of Dracula in order to resurrect him and seal the curse.

Castlevania II was one of the first games to allow free-roaming, incorporating an action/adventure gameplay and adopting some RPG mechanics. (remember those annoying games that only let you progress to the right and not left?). Every kill garnered you experience points and with enough points you'd gain a level, extending your life bar total. If you're familiar with Castlevania titles, you'll know that the whip is your best friend. As you travel to new towns, you'll be allowed to upgrade your whip, strengthening the hits that you deal out. As you do more exploring, you acquire an array of new weapons, some which are more useful than others. The game also incorporates a night and day system, where enemies are easier to kill during the day, but at night, a curse empowers them making them a lot tougher to kill. To top it all off, the game included multiple endings depending on the time it took for you to finish the game. I don't know if this is the first game to adopt this idea, but it must be one of the first at least. Keep in mind, this was all done in 1988!

Don't mind if I do! A townsfolk lends me a tip.
Notice that he says, I "must" not that I "should" rest in the church.


My dad bought the game for us when I was 6 years old and I remember some parts of the game freaked me out. I know it's hard to believe, but when I was a kid, I was terrified of anything horror or horror-related. As I grew up, I started to appreciate my fears more. Anyhow, this game is littered with all sorts of scary beings like skeletons, mummies, zombies, werewolves and of course Dracula. The one thing that scared me the most were these green ghoul type creatures who would dart fast from left to right. They weren't hard to kill but were just scary to look at.

The aforementioned green ghoul!

Thanks to the password save system and a generous life bar, the game is not too difficult. The game is pretty great but it does suffer from a few drawbacks. The poor translation job from Japanese to English left American gamers with only cryptic clues to guide you along your adventure, making it easy to get lost or confused on where to head next. It's still a fun game and I'm still amazed that this was made in 1988.

Comments

Beka said…
Oh man, those graphics are so nostalgic. I only like playing old games...the ones I remember as a kid.

Pac Man. Mario. Tetris. Asteroids. Duck Hunt. Blades of Steel.

Hehe!
Dee said…
HA. Wow, this brings me back. :)

Popular posts from this blog

THE ARTIST!!!!!!!

The Artist is director Michael Hazanavicius ode to the silent films of yesteryear. Not only focus on a silent movie actor and movie making, but it in itself is also a silent movie. The movie follows a silent movie actor named George Valentin through the rise and fall of his career. At the start of the film, we see George as this superstar celebrity; he loves the glitz and glamour of being a famous actor and soaks in all the attention he can get. He loves having his photos taken and being adorned on the front pages of newspapers. He is THAT kind of celebrity. At the premiere event of his latest movie, he bumps into one Peppy Miller – a young woman with big ambitions and dreams in Hollywoodland. The lives of the two intersect and an attraction immediately blossoms. The romance could only go so far as Valentin is a (happily?) married man. George’s superstardom reaches its height at a precarious time. And as the 1920s are ushered out, so are silent movies. The new decade brings w...

Finally, the Xbox 360!!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I received an Xbox 360 for Christmas from my dad. A great present it was! I've had 3 weeks to enjoy it so I guess I can give you my impressions of it now. First the controller. In truth, I haven't felt a controller this comfortable in my gaming life before. As a child who grew up on the 8-bit generation, with just a directional pad and 2 buttons, there was quite a learning curve getting used to using two analog sticks at the same time. You might say, "Hey Lam, how bout the PS2? You have that machine, and that has analog sticks". True, but of the twenty or so games I have for that, all of them used either only 1 analog stick, or allowed the option to switch on to the directional pad. Using 2 sticks at the same time was at first just uncomfortable. This made for all sorts of trouble as I was playing Gears of War . Luckily for me, I had computer controlled teammates that watched my back. I love the Media Center capabilities...

DTV Madness: Jack Brooks - M.S. and Gingerdead Man 2

Okay, honestly, I think this will be the last DTV post for a while. One man can only take so much shit. I'm only human, I have feelings too. These two movies pushed my limit. I'm going to be in DTV-detox for the next month or so. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer I thought that with a title like this, it couldn't fail. I thought that with a poster like they had, it couldn't fail. Then I realized something... I failed. I failed in thinking that this movie had any hope. I was expecting some fun horror, mixed with comedy in sort of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer kind of fashion with a bumbling hero and smart quips. I mean, with a title like Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer , was I wrong in expecting a variety of monsters get slayed as the title suggests? It didn't help much that the monsters looked uber cheesy. They looked like something right out of a Power Rangers episode. But to their credit, at least they stuck with practical make-up and effects rather than CG. The mo...