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Konami
Today is the anniversary of the first publication of Bram Stoker’s immortal (no pun intended) novel, “Dracula.” Now, I’m not a die hard vampire junkie. I didn’t goth myself up for the opening night of the “Twilight” movie (though I have heard good things about the books), and the only entertainment value I found in “Interview with the Vampire” is in the fact that IMDB lists “Whore on Waterfront,” “Pimp,” “New Orleans Whore,” and “2nd Whore” as four the film’s twelve most important roles. That’s not to say that I don’t understand the appeal of these creatures of the night. There are at least two forms of vampirtainment (it’s a word…don’t look it up) that have successfully sunk their fangs into my jugular: anything with the name “Joss Whedon” attached to it, and any game with the word “Castlevania” in the title.
The original “Castlevania” was the first game I purchased for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) back in 1987. For some reason, I remember the scene vividly. I was out Christmas shopping with my parents, completely fired up because after shopping we were going to see The Governator in “The Running Man.” I was sitting in the back seat of the car, reading an issue of Howard Chaykin’s “American Flagg!,” when I looked up and saw a poster in the window of Toys R Us, depicting the box art for Konami’s “Castlevania.” The image, seen to your right, was and still is iconic. It depicts everything you’ll ever need to know about every iteration of the “Castlevania” series. Behold, the spectral form of Dracula and his towering castle, looming over the figure of Simon Belmont, embodying equal parts Conan and Indiana Jones. I had to have it, just like I’ve had to have eighteen more installments in the ensuing twenty-two years.
The game lived up to, and far exceeded the expectations raised by the box art. No game I played before it before it offered such an enormous variety of enemies, from vampire bats and bone flinging skeletons to cannons made of dragon skulls and flying, disembodied Medusa heads (those damn, damn, damn flying Medusa heads). To combat this menagerie, Simon was equipped with an array of weaponry the pixilated hero of “Adventure” could never imagine; knives, boomerangs, holy water, battle axes, crucifix smart bombs, and of course his trademark chain-whip. You’d need all of these to work your way to Dracula through bosses like Frankenstein's Monster and Igor, a pair of Mummies, a skeletal dragon, and Death himself. Combined with the ever changing look of the different levels and the top-notch musical score, it was almost enough to make up for the emotionally crippling level of difficulty.
This was a few years before the advent of “save points.” If you got to the second to last level, died at the hands of the Grim Reaper (or more likely, those damned flying Medusas), you got to go back and enjoy the whole thing from the beginning. Considering the absurd number of hours I spent on this game, I’m a little embarrassed to see Jeremiah ‘Retro2DGamer’ Jones burn through it in an effortless fifteen minute speed run, as seen below (courtesy of brh1186). There was one evening in particular, when my parents were away, and I spent somewhere in the vicinity of eight hours playing, but not finishing “Castlevania.” I recall it quite well, since that’s also the first time I specifically remember getting a migraine.
So, twenty-two years later, what is “Castlevania’s” legacy to me? I have nineteen different versions of the same game (and let’s be honest, we die-hards prefer our monster slaying sequels to be cut directly from the same cloth as the original…none of this fancy pants 3-D foolishness). I’ve purchased three different consoles (Sega Genesis, PS1, and SNES) and three generations of GameBoys solely because they were the exclusive delivery system for the new installment in the series. Last but not least, I can possibly thank “Castlevania” for the onset of the chronic migraines that plague me to this day. On the plus side, I can take sumatriptan for the headaches so I don’t hate the migraines anywhere near as much as I hate those @#$%ing flying Medusas.
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