The Castlevania saga is one that has ubiquitous influence across the gaming industry even today, with it being part of an entire genre descriptor – Metroidvania. After a successful release on the Famicom in Japan, the first Castlevania game released in 1987 in North America for the NES and became an instant classic. The mix of precision platforming, satisfying action, some of the best music of the console generation, and a pastiche of gothic horror imagery instantly set it apart from its competitors at the time. The game tasks Simon Belmont, a vampire killer, with hunting down Dracula. He goes through 6 stages comprised of 3 smaller levels each, killing the bosses of each stage along the way, including Medusa, Frankenstein’s Monster, and Death. While it’s possible to get through with just Simon’s basic whip, he also has access to his iconic subweapons, from time stopping watches to enemy freezing holy water, which are all powered by hearts you find while playing through the stages. You’ll definitely need these, as the game is brutally difficult, with countless bottomless pits and spike traps and agile enemies around to give you a bad time.
Castlevania is kind enough to give you unlimited continues, but you have to start at the beginning of the stage you were in, which can be fairly annoying. What’s more annoying, though, is a game breaking bug that forces you to start from the very beginning on earlier cartridge versions of the game (known as PRG0 versions) – if enough objects are onscreen at once, the game can freeze and force you to reset. This is a massive problem, as the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, the easiest way to play the game now, chooses to emulate a PRG0 ROM instead of a fixed PRG1 one. This glitch is most common in the hallway before fighting Death and in the actual Death fight, unanimously considered the hardest stretch of the game, so make sure to make a save before that point if you’re playing the Anniversary Collection.
As for the actual game, the first 3 stages are impeccable – they perfectly escalate in difficulty while always being fair. They never expect any precision platforming or for you to have a specific subweapon or for you to grind out hearts by monotonously going back and forth between rooms. To play the first half of Castlevania is to understand the essence of it that puts it on “best games of all time” lists, or at least “best games on the NES” lists.
The second half, too, is perfect – perfect at escalating bullshit. Like a frog in slowly boiling water, you’ll be lured in by the flawless game design of the first three levels and think to yourself “might as well finish it” until you eventually end up on your 50th try . The fourth stage is well thought out, at least until the boss – Frankenstein’s creature and his minion Igor. The creature doesn’t do much, but Igor jumps around and throws fireballs and is generally a prime example of bad enemy design in a game designed around precise, slow movement. The fifth stage features the hardest stretch I mentioned earlier – two axe knights throw projectiles at you while medusa heads constantly spawn and move sinusoidally across the screen, with 4 mistakes leading to your death. After this is the fight against Death, who spawns scythes that move all across the screen and do massive damage. To add insult to injury, even when you defeat Death, these scythes can kill you before you advance to the next level and send you back to the axe knight hallway. Some Castlevania fans will argue that this section isn’t that bad because you can use the holy water to cheese the knights and Death by keeping them frozen in place, unable to do anything as you wail on them with the power of God, but this is to argue that because a fundamentally broken part of the game can be countered by another fundamentally broken part of the game, they cancel out and make the game good again. The final stage has some more bullshit platforming and then you fight Dracula. But before you do, everyone suggests walking back and forth between screens to farm hearts so you have a greater chance at beating the unfair boss fight. The first phase of Dracula is fine, since he does the same attack over and over again, but it takes a comically long time to take him down. Then, he turns into a creature who jumps around and shoots fireballs at you (getting déjà vu here), but this is much, much worse than Igor because of how much bigger this monstrosity is. The best solution, once again, is to use the holy water so you can finally jump out of the boiling water.Does Castlevania deserve its status as a classic? Definitely – it was much better than most of its competitors and forced everyone else to step their game up. But now? I would suggest playing the modified Castlevania Simplified version or the Famicom Disk System easy mode before diving into the original, and even, then, future titles like Castlevania Bloodlines and Castlevania Rondo of Blood are far, far better designed.