So last night I played Castlevania on NES and Super Castlevania past midnight, checked socials later to find.... Ghost in the shell japanese voice actress Atsuko Tanaka passed away.... aw.
So Ghost in the shell is a pretty, pretty big deal, given its a contributing factor to a lot of the cyberpunk genres notable features as well as projects such as the matrix. The original 1995 film blew the minds of audiences that year and showed what adult animation could accomplish.
Well, the voice actress for the main character was confirmed to have passed away at the age of 61, a woman by the name Atsuko Tanaka. Kindest regards are given to her family on what is a sad day.
Bit of a bummer way to start a post huh? Well that cant be helped I suppose. If you havnt looked into the Gits series, maybe consider giving a look.
So Konami has a pretty bad reputation nowadays, since they've ended up ostracising one of their most notable and well respected developers for... reasons Im not entirely sure, and burning the bridge on gaming to focus on gambling machines, only to start to come crawling back. I wonder about the management of that company and what led them to make such awful decisions. I suppose the release of the castlevania and contra retro bundles and the upcoming silent hill 2 remake looking like it may be good is starting to change some minds but I do hope people never forget the shit they pulled.
So Castlevania? On NES? Generally regarded as a classic on the system and there were times were I've played a bit here or there but never got further than the 2nd stage. I decided for last night, i'd try to beat it without using save states and try to beat it legit. I got to the 3rd stage before I decided to abandon that. Castlevania is hard, of course it was, a lot of games back then were hard. And some folks may try to chime in saying that "gamers" back then were a different breed and had skill.
Thats a fucking lie and I hope enough time has passed that we as a society admit that. It was never about skill, it was memorization, going through sections of a game repeatedly until you learn where all the enemies spawn, where the best items are and whats the best route to take until you're able to complete a game without dying once.
And this was possible because you had more time to dedicate towards beating a game as child, along with having not many games to play at the time. Being an adult with more responsibilities along with a wider selection of games to choose from, means you're not gonna spend a lot of time learning one game. I sure as hell cant, even with save states.
Since the game was on NES, you only had two buttons and a dpad. So naturally you can only whip left and right with using items requiring you to hold up and pressing b. The game does demand some precision since a good number of enemies in the game tend to be small like the medusa heads, ravens and the hunchbacks. Those bastards were an absolute pain to deal with, especially since the whip has a slight delay in the attack animation. It doesnt come out immediately, belmont does a wind up first then a whip so if a projectile was coming towards and you whip too late, you'll get hit before you whip and you'll feel like a twit.
I made it to Dracula phase one before I just gave up, I didnt feel like banging my head against that wall tonight. Since it was yet midnight at that point I decided to switch to Super Castlevania from the SNES, A game I first played on the wii through Virtual Console. And man, Super Castlevania just feels so much nicer to play.
A main arguement for why older games were difficult was due to the rental market. If you rented a game and beaten it, you werent likely to buy it which does mean less revenue for the publisher. And games were fairly short to complete if you knew how to beat them so upping the difficulty seemed like a nobrainer way to pad the length. But overtime games got bigger, stories more grander and worlds more expansive. So I guess overtime that necessity was being used less and less overtime, as developers were able to build bigger and bigger games. Atleast thats what I think.
But Super Castlevania just feels a lot nicer to play for two big reasons. One being that the difficulty was toned down a bit and feels a bit more fair. Before, you had to know where turkey legs were hidden to recover health from your mistakes but here, you can also get a small chicken leg either from a candle or dropped from an enemy to recover a small bit of health. Less than the wall turkey but still health recovery nonetheless and therefore, a bit more allowance for mistakes. Still has its challenge though especially in the platforming but there were less occasions were I felt it was bullshit.
Second is that it controls way, way better since you can whip in 8 directions. EIGHT. Left, right, straight up, diagonally up on left or right, you can even jump and whip down. And if you held the button down, you can keep the whip out and twirl it. Lil noodle. Lil vampire killer noodle.
Items in both games are useful and becomes situational in some cases. The crosses and stopwatch were essential to get through a lot of sections in NES were in Super, I just stuck with the crosses especially since I have the upgrades for them. On the subject of items, it becomes another challenge just to keep an item you wanted. If you end up dying, you lost that item and if you got it before a checkpoint, you aint getting it back unless you game over. And if not that, its when you whip a candle and another item drops, you'd need to be careful not too stand too close to a candle and wait for the item to despawn before you go foward.
I stopped Super when I was at the clocktower because it was already past midnight and I didnt want to spend more time up just to finish it but I atleast feeling pretty pleased. I didnt feel that way when I dropped Castlevania on NES.
One final note before I wrap it up, the Castlevania retro collection I have on switch has a number of the classic games before Symphony of the Night, the nest trilogy, Super castlevania, the genesis game and the Game boy ones. The game boy being regarded as not being too great The sames one that got remakes on the Wii through wiiware but never got ported anywhere else, not even for this collection. You know what you got instead? Kid Dracula... Kid Fucking Dracula......... Konami is Konami I suppose....
Anyways, thank you for reading, I will see you tomorrow. Feel free to leave game suggestions and/or feedback, anons are currently on.