Castlevania Retrospective Part 2 - 16-bit days
At the end of the 8-bit era Castlevania had achieved immense popularity after the Super Nintendo launched anticipation began to build up for the first 16-bit entry in the series With Super Castlevania IV Konami decided to return to the original Castlevania for inspiration retelling the story of the first NES classic starring Simon Belmont.
However the designers went above and beyond remaking the original in 16-bit form. When the player enters Dracula's realm and Simon's theme kicks in they know they're in for a treat the first five stages are comprised of the path leading up to the castle and in this section the gloomy art style of the game becomes evident which is complemented by the atmospheric music once inside the castle the levels branch off into a haunted library and even a treasure room where you face a giant bat composed of gold coins and jewels.
The boss designs are nothing short of impressive considering the wide variety of bizarre creatures. There's even a boss named after dancers Paula Abdul and Fred Astaire. In order to make the experience less frustrating the game designers broke the gameplay mold for which the Castlevania series had become known.
For example Simon now has full control over his jump arc and can strike his whip in eight directions you can also use your whip as a shield which is invaluable to fend off those dreaded medusa heads Or use it to swing over pits at certain points. Like most of the earlier SNES releases the developers were keen to try out the mode 7 technology but they were really well put to use in the game.
The fourth stage in particular is a real tour de force of mode 7 effects. With rotating chambers and a giant scaling level guardian an interesting fact is that the mode 7 effects could only be applied to the background layer so to bypass this shot coming the programmers made the boss visuals part of the background Super Castlevania IV easily ranks among the top entries in the series and catapulted the franchise into the 16-bit era Akumajo Dracula for the Japanese home computer the x68000 featured the return of Simon Belmont in one of the more obscure releases in the series The game borrows from Super Castlevania 4 in terms of visual art style although Simon moves notably slower making the game particularly challenging to this day Simon Belmont is still the character with the most appearances of any of the Belmonts his character sprite was also redesigned for the PlayStation port of the x68000 entry Castlevania was mostly bound to Nintendo consoles during the 8-bit days although in the 90s konami opened up and started developing for competing platforms Castlevania Rondo of Blood was developed for the pc engine CD it was a game that marked the beginning of the Dracula X sub series directed by Toru Hagihara who worked as a programmer on Castlevania 2 A century after Simon's triumph over Dracula a group of townsfolk possessed by the darkness conspired to revive the vampire led by the dark priest Shaft once restored to his former self dracula takes revenge against the belmont family by locking Anette the girlfriend of simon's great grandson in his gloomy castle Richter Belmont takes up the sacred whip a powerful family heirloom to save his loved ones.
Rondo of blood was stylistically a significant departure from super Castlevania IV sporting anime cutscenes a more vivid color palette and controls that more closely resembled the 8-bit titles The game starts with a nice homage to Simon's quest: in a village in flames you will walk into an ambush of skeletons the new backflip jump is immediately put to use.
Another new ability is the item crush a powerful sub weapon attack that damages all enemies on screen in return for a decent portion of hearts some stages have hidden paths that lead to alternate levels. Finding them is required to save the four trapped characters one of whom is Maria Renard the sister of Richter's girlfriend Annette once you've managed to rescue Maria in the second stage she becomes available as a player character Maria is able to harness the power of celestial beasts to fend off Dracula's troops overall she controls more smoothly than Richter and her double jump and slide allow her to reach hidden areas.
Freeing all characters introduces a new challenge to the game as well as an added dose of replay value Rondo of Blood was another brilliant Castlevania game but sadly one that many Western fans missed out on after a failed attempt to bring the game over to the US due to disagreements between NEC's US distributor and Konami Richter's Adventure finally hit shelves in the West two years later on the SNES The game was named Dracula X in the US and Vampire's Kiss in PAL regions the story and graphical style remained intact but levels were completely redesigned rumor has it that the game had to be altered in order to avoid copyright infringement with NEC unfortunately Maria was dropped as a playable character most likely because Dracula was less than fond of the prospect of being defeated by a small girl wielding doves the SNES port failed to make an impression during its original run despite being a great Castlevania game in its own right the Megadrive saw another strong title called Vampire Killer, Bloodlines or Castlevania the New Generation depending on the region the game said itself apart from the previous games in a number of ways for starters the adventure takes place largely outside of Transylvania with the vampiric countess Elizabeth Bartley planning to resurrect Dracula she intends to harness the powers of darkness from all over Europe to succeed the new setting proved to be a nice change of pace and allowed for differently themed stages and enemies you can choose to be either John Morris descendant of the Belmont family or Eric Ricard a distant and wealthy relative.
John's whipped can be used both as a weapon and as a grapple to swing over obstacles. Eric's Lance the Alucard spear is a powerful weapon which allows him to pole-vault to greater heights each character's special ability forces them to take different paths through certain stages an interesting fact is that John is the son of Quincey Morris who fought Dracula in the original Dracula novel by Bram Stoker.
Similarly to super Castlevania IV players could look forward to a number of special effects in the game including a giant falling statue and even a Leaning Tower of Pisa the programmers were somehow able to realize the mega drives full potential without the use of dedicated hardware like the SNES.The sub weapons were handled slightly differently in this outing.
It's easier to see which candles hold sub-weapons hearts were also replaced by crystals which perhaps seems more logical the US version called Bloodlines is as the title might suggest more bloody than the PAL release and is also notably harder in the Japanese version Eric has a more androgynous look almost giving the impression that the character was originally planned to be female the game was developed by the same team who worked on Rocket Knight Adventures and Contra for the Mega Drive and the music was composed by mature Michiru Yamane who would later work on Symphony of the Night in an interview she revealed that she felt quite a bit of pressure since the games were already known for their great music but despite the pressure she managed to squeeze an innovative orchestral sound out of the mega-drive as a result of these changes to the series Castlevania for the Mega Drive remains a fresh installment and maintains a strong presence among the top outings of the series.
