Retro Rebound: Castlevania II

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.

Mark Waid's IRREDEEMABLE (Issues #1-7)

(Note: be warned that this review is on the spoiler heavy side, so read at your own discretion if you don't want the story spoiled.) Since I was a teenager, I always had this dream that I would become a quirky movie director and I'd make a bunch of crappy little horror movies to start with, but that my first big movie would be this anti-superhero movie. I dreamed up of an Apocalypse Now -like movie using existing Marvel superheroes where Captain America would go mad, slaughtering the innocent and go into hiding somewhere 'up the river'. There would be a detective like character (possibly superhero) that would be after him, interviewing his former teammates to find out what made the all-American hero go mad. Imagine my surprise when I started reading Irredeemable . Although not exactly the story in my dreams, it's pretty close. I started reading the series this past weekend upon the glowing review that those geeks over at iFanboy put up a few weeks ago. As far a

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3!!!!!!!!!!!! (PS4)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is Activision’s latest entry into the bestselling Call of Duty franchise. Developed by Treyarch Studios, the Black Ops subseries of Call of Duty games has been considered by many as the best of the COD games. Whereas Black Ops 1 and 2 were direct sequels, BO3 seems only to be a spiritual sequel to its predecessors. There is no direct or clear continuation of story from the previous entries. Rather it takes the ideas of mind control and manipulation, and spins off its own story. It’s a futuristic world, where humans are infused with technology (much like Robocop!) and fight alongside and against robots. This time around, you assume the role of an unnamed soldier, who together with your partner Hendricks and a CIA agent named Rachel Kane, track down a former Black Ops commander named John Taylor as he and his former squad appears to have gone rogue destroying CIA sites around the world. The story will take you to Singapore, Egypt and ev

The League of Denial (2013)

The topic of concussions in sports is a dialogue that’s been growing the past number of years. Do a search on ‘concussions’ and ‘football’ and you’ll get several thousand hits on the controversy that’s surrounded the sport. It’s a challenging topic as the research is all relatively new, and the topic itself challenges the mentality and philosophy adopted by football loving Americans. Now, I’m not a fan of football or NFL but when I saw this book lying at the local bookstore, my interest was piqued. Although I’m not a fan of football, those that know me know that I’m an unabashed fan of prowrestling. Talks about concussions are also quite a hot topic even within the prowrestling sub-culture. Earlier this year, one of the hottest wrestlers of the current era, Daniel Bryan, retired early at the age of 34 due to a history of concussion related issues. Interestingly, he was not permitted to return to the ring due to the disapproval by WWE’s medical director – a doctor by the name

The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

Search This Blog