31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 6 (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest)

SURE, I'LL TAKE YOU TO A GOOD PLACE!
HEH! HEH! HEH!

Now this is more my speed. No utter confusion like I had in trying to write about Species. I know this game well. Very well, as it turns out! Actually, now that I think on it, I'm pretty sure our story begins in 1995! On that same family trip where older people watched Species and I watched Free Willy 2! Sometime during it, we went to a flea market and I got three NES games. Gremlins 2, The Adventures Of Bayou Billy... and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. That's right, my Castlevania experience begins here. Even that's inaccurate to say, though. Me and my sister never called it "Castlevania II". We called it Simon's Quest. Now, this game's much maligned (and we'll get to that haunt in a moment) but there are two reasons why it stuck out in my mind as a gem and classic in my very small NES collection. One, I had no idea of the broader Castlevania series of action platformers and thus had no preconceptions of what Castlevania was "supposed" to be. Two, my sister bought me a Nintendo hint book which had a chapter on Castlevania II. I never beat it because it didn't detail the whole game (notably, the infamous tornado puzzle isn't mention), and yet it's stayed with me all these years later. Let us paint some broad strokes and look at Castlevania II... oh hell, let's just go all the way back to 1995 and call it Simon's Quest, huh?

This game is a gothic 8-bit masterpiece in mood building, if nothing else. Certainly "Bloody Tears" has gone on to be a Castlevania staple, but everything about this game evokes the feelings of this time of year. Deadly lands filled with monsters, traps, and all sorts of forks in the road. Oh yes. It's an open world of sorts. What always struck me was that it almost feels like a nonsense space. The "forks" in the road involve staircases leading down, and I'm sure it was artistic intent given the limitations of side scrolling. As a 10 year-old, it just felt like half the towns were underground and yet outside with blue skies. It didn't actually make any sense, and I kind of love that. There's no safety in this game, and that's represented by the day/night system. You know. WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE. I didn't give a shit about having to wait back then, and I kind of don't now. You really do suffer during the night, as everything has twice the health and the towns are abandoned, swarming with zombies (I called them witches for whatever reason) and preventing you from going into a church to heal. There's no escape. You just have to wait out the night until the sun comes back up. Poor Simon Belmont has been cursed for being a hero in the previous game, and the actual game reflects this... as well as its reception.


Yes, it can't be understated: This is the nexus point that gave birth to James Rolfe and the Angry Video Game Nerd. His exaggerated opinion of flaws in an ancient Nintendo game have been picked up as pure gospel by the masses. An already divisive "black sheep" game that strays from the formula of its brethren (until 1997, at least) was judged guilty by the court of gaming. Unlike, say, Metroid II or Zelda II, Castlevania II is at least guilty of some flaws. It does have rather obtuse puzzles and its hints aren't well communicated... and when you're not dealing with translation goofs, you're dealing with NPCs who outright lie to you. An interesting and bold idea, to be sure, but not one that actually gels well in the culture of 1987 computer gaming. There's no real way to tell who's lying and who isn't, no alternate hints to be found for certain puzzles, no nothing. Still, there have been fixes. ROM hacks, mostly, and thank goodness for that. Castlevania II does not have the problem of Metroid II where too many people are trying to shove its square peg into the round hole that is The Rest Of The Series. Castlevania II Redacted makes the text go by faster and gives you coherent clues. That's nice, I guess. You could do that. Or use a walkthrough. Whatever. I'm in no place to judge, as I've ended up beating and loving the vanilla game countless times. I have it all in my head now and I don't mind the day/night transitions, so I have no real stake in this. More to the point, I'm realizing that most of my first forays into big series have been with unconventional entries. There's this, but my first delve into Zelda was Zelda II. I played Metroid II in 1995 on that same trip along with a bunch of other Game Boy games my cousin's boyfriend lent me, and vaguely remembered it as a cave exploring game for about ten years afterward. All of these outliers are cherished games to me, so gaming culture as a whole branding them as outliers and bad games for it kind of puts a sour taste in my mouth. Still, I'll always have Castlevania II and the associated memories from 1995 and beyond. Even if it's been blacklisted from the Good Game Table, I still have a place for it in my heart.