Castlevania (Halloween)

What is that godawful noise? It just woke me up from the deepest of sleeps. Surely you know it's not easy to open your own coffin and crawl out after months of slumber since the last LIIGHTEFFOG article.

Oh, I think I can see it now. Could it be... No! Darned, the noise comes from Halloween, and it's already managed to creep very very close, unnoticed! There's only a little time, so here's a quick take on my perhaps dearest Halloweeny game of all time, Castlevania.

Castlevania is a video game series that saw its first beam of moonlight in 1986 on the 8-bit Nintendo. On the whole the games are 2D action platformers where you fight through hordes of mythological beasts to get to beat Dracula himself. The contribution of Castlevania to video games culminates in the term "metroidvania" which describes the kind of exploratory action that both the later Castlevanias (and obviously also the Metroid games) have defined through the decades.

My own first encounter with Castlevania games was probably Castlevania II: Simon's Quest on a friend's Nintendo back in the late 1980s. I'm not sure if it was that game exactly, but I have a faint memory of an obscure side-scrolling platformer where I could talk to people and had no idea where to go. I guess one of the greatest achievements of Simon's Quest is that it prompted AVGN to start his hilarious series of video game criticism.

But it wasn't until 2008 that I got in touch with Castlevania. Another friend handed me his Nintendo DS and a couple of games to try out, including Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. I was hooked from the get go. The beautiful pixel art, the groovy pop music, the RPG-like elements, the finely crafted action platforming gameplay, the multitude of different monsters, weapons and items to explore. Everything melded into one big cauldron of greatness. Since then I've eagerly reached for any Castlevania game that I could easily get my hands on: Circle of the Moon, Order of Ecclesia, Super Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood, and the list continues.

After slashing through a number of Castlevania games, the series has become defined to me by its recurring themes. Each game has its own backstory. They are all about beating Dracula, but the setting, time and main characters change. All the games are connected through a multitude of familiar things. One of the most thrilling is the weapons. The most common weapon of choice is the whip. In some games it serves also as a deeper gameplay element. For example, Super Castlevania IV lets you swing your whip around freely with the D-pad, which is an effective way to clear weak enemies around you, or to hang on to ledges when the floor is no longer stable to stand on (a hint of Indiana Jones there).

The music also has its recurring themes, with songs like Vampire Killer or Bloody Tears being featured in just about every installment of the video game series, each time in a slightly different rendition. Michiru Yamane was a long-time composer on the series. If you're interested in a deep but entertaining analysis of Castlevania music from a theoretical point of view, I recommend 8-bit Music Theory.

Castlevania is thematically a good fit for Halloween. Killing the greatest of vampires might be the ghoul in the games, but the games are crawling with other equally mysterious beasts and demons of all kinds. Your all-purpose adversaries include skeletons and animated bodies of armor. Skeletons tend to try to hit you with bones thrown at an arc. They are easy enough to whip down. Bodies of armor are often much tougher and sport spears and axes, sometimes of massive proportions. A later enemy boss is very often Death. I still find it equally curious and humorous that you will kill Death on your way to the bigger boss, Dracula.

For the most part, the games take place in Dracula's castle. It's an enormous building with many differently themed areas. In the true metroidvania style, you need to explore early areas and defeat mid-bosses to unlock skills and items that give you access to further areas. Usually the first areas include Gothic halls. One trademark ghastly interior design element in Castlevanias is the omnipresent candelabra. You can break them to reveal hearts and other collectibles.

Dracula's castle comes with a selection of traps. You could fall into a pit of spikes. There's often also a clocktower that contains huge gearwheels that you have to jump on to reach higher ground. To make the task even more difficult there are always Medusa Heads flying across the screen, either knocking you back, or sometimes petrifying you.

This huge Golem is only an easy, early mid-boss.

Already early Castlevanias managed to create an exciting game world despite the limitations of their 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. The joy of discovery comes from small details. Slam your whip at an innocent block of wall, and you might discover a hidden stash of food to replenish your health. Stand on a certain spot, and you might erect a stairway to an alternate route through the level.

I'm also fascinated how little it takes for the 1993 game Castlevania: Rondo of Blood to create little physical gameplay puzzles. In one place there are big boulders rolling down the stairs. Getting hit by a boulder hurts badly, but it's safe to stand on top of one. The staircase is too steep to climb by jumping alone. The trick is to jump on top of the boulders as they come rolling down, and use them as stepping stones to reach higher ground. To complicate the effort, another trademark enemy, the minuscule but annoying Flea Men, travel on every other boulder, throwing you off balance if you don't whip them down first.

With the boulders and Flea Men, there's also the occasional flying Larva Skeleton!

The older Castlevania games tend to be mostly linear platformers with distinct levels that each end up in a boss. They all pose a challenge, but once you learn their tricks, they are more or less straightforward to complete. It was in 1997 on the original PlayStation console that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night showed a new, shinier direction for Castlevania games. It presented the player with a large, more freely explorable game area and RPG-like leveling mechanics. Together they provided vastly more replay value for a single game as players play the game in their own style. Revisitable areas offered secrets to discover through newly gained abilities. This is the hallow spirit of metroidvania games. You can experience this drastic change in gameplay in Castlevania Requiem, a PlayStation 4 double re-release of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. The former was originally released in 1993 on the PC Engine Super CD-ROM System and is a direct prequel to the latter.

Last year Castlevania expanded into an animated series on Netflix. Just recently its second season was launched. The series is exciting to watch for a Castlevania video game fan like me. The animated series incorporates many elements from the video game series, small and large, but doesn't limit itself to mimicking the action-heavy monster mash. One of my favourite references to the video games was that in one episode the heroes had to navigate a vast underground construct using huge gearwheels as stepping stones. You can also spot familiar characters and monsters, and the classical Belmont weapon.

The animated series has characters with complex back stories and motivations that unravel as interesting plot advances. Perhaps the greatest elevating point of the animated series is its voice acting, and especially that of the main character, voiced by the great Richard Armitage, known for example for his role as Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit trilogy. He manages to conjure a lot of life into the character of Trevor Belmont, and makes me cackle with excitement as the main characters exchange snarky lines. By the way, you don't even have to be knowledgeable in the video games to enjoy the animated series.

The Symphony of the Night boss duo, Slogra and Gaibon,
make a faithful reappearance in the animated TV series.

The spirit of Castlevania games lives on in the new Bloodstained series that is being led by Koji Igarashi who was the main man behind the Castlevania games ever since Symphony of the Night when they really took off and until Iga left Konami who still owns the rights to Castlevania. If anything I wrote here piqued your interest, be sure to keep an eyeball out for the upcoming Ritual of the Night, and maybe in the meantime dig into the recent tasty appetizer, Curse of the Moon.

-Ville

Enemy sprites taken from Castlevania Wiki