Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 255: Castlevania's Oddballs

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

Jeremy Parish summons the eldritch forms of Castlevania experts Kurt Kalata, Rob Russo, and Kevin Bunch to discuss the enigma that is... Castlevania games that don't fit into any other specific grouping, like Haunted Castle and Bloodlines. Spooky!

This week in Retronauts, what horrible games to have a curse. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. Jeremy Parrish. And this week, I have people here to help me in a hotel room. It's not as dirty as it sounds. I'm at Long Island Retro Game. No, yes, that's right. Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. It's been a long day. And we're going to talk about some video games. And specifically, we're going to talk about some Castlevania video games. So who do I have here on this Castlevania-related podcast other than Kurt Kalata? And why are you here? I ran the Castlevania dungeon when I started in high school in 1997. So, Rand, that means past tense? Y'all, it's around. I haven't updated it since 2011. I mean, that was when they made the last castle thing the game, wasn't it? That was when they revealed Lords of Shadow.

Oh, well, that's a good time to turn out. Yeah. Tune out. Yeah. Anyway, yes, also hear from the same podcast as Kurt. Oh, hi. This is Rob Russo, aka Xerxes. I do hardcore gaming 101's podcast.

And finally, over in the corner. This is Kevin Bunch. I do the Atari Archive video series on YouTube, which has nothing whatsoever to do with any of what we're talking about. But we've all played some Castlevania games, right? Oh, yeah. I love Castlevania. Yeah, but do you love these Castlevania? We've talked about all the Castlevania's, I think, that are good and cool and fun and that we love. But there was more to Castlevania than just great games. And sometimes it behooves us to take a step back and say, you know, guys, you tried. But we've got to commemorate these because there are some likable moments.

And some of these games are actually good. Some of them are not. But even the bad ones have something about them that you have to like, even if it's just like, oh, that one musical theme in that one stage was cool. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about Castlevania Games that no one loves. So when it comes to Castlevania Games that no one loves, we should probably start by talking about the very first unloved Castlevania game, which debuted back in 1988, a mere year after like a year and less than a year and a half after the series launched. And it showed up in arcades, and it was so bad that when it came to America, they called it haunted castle. Which is interesting because that's like the most, that's the closest, like, they can get to Accomajo Dracula, I think.

like Akamajo is like what, Demon Castle, Devil Castle? Yeah, yeah. Devil Castle Dracula. And if you don't want to translate it you know precisely and don't want to reference Dracula, then that's about the best you can do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's accurate enough, but why didn't they just call it Castlevania? That game was already

out in America and it was pretty successful and popular. Castlevania's history of naming conventions, especially in Japan, has made no sense. Like, there's no logic. They could have stopped it right here, though. And it could have not been a problem, but who knows? But in In arcades, this was called Akamajo Dracula, right?

It has their four, four naked Alkomadro Dracula games, I think. There's the original one, there's the MSX, there's the arcade game, there's Super Famicamacan. Isn't, yeah, but then also the 68,000. Yeah, so five, there's probably one other one that we're forgetting. Yeah. Yeah, that's confusing. There's a lot of Evil Castle Dracula's that are all kind of the same thing.

This is kind of the same thing, but so much worse. Yeah. It's the same scenario in that you're. a guy who's presumably Simon Belmont except this time he has a wife, an almost wife. It's a strangely like Ghost and Goblins-esque. I love it so much.

So what's the set up here? So you're the beefy dude. You're walking down as a groom. You just walk, presumably, out of the church. Simon Beef Man. He just got married. He's still wearing a tux. He's wearing a tuxedo.

But this takes place in like 17th century Romania, right? So he's wearing a tux in like 400 years ago, like 3 years ago, like 3. 300 years before tuxes were invented. Yeah, he looks like he's a trendsetter. Unless it's actually a modern-day Castlevania. I guess. It doesn't really give that impression, though. But sure, why not?

Yeah. Why not? And then the vampire, presumably Dracula, comes out and steals away his bride. So you actually hear the wedding marsh. It goes, do, do, do. And then Dracula goes, wah ha, ha, ha. No, that's not what he does. He goes, woo, ho, ho, ho.

It's terrible. That was really good. Thanks. Simon just stands there mildly angry before you, apparently. he throws off his tux. He throws off his tux to reveal the fur bikini underneath. hops into the fray, yeah. I almost wish that he went through the game in the tuxedo. I think that would have made this more distinctive. I agree. And at least more visually amusing. I don't know. This is a strange game because it is kind of Castlevania. It has the same general beats,

like including the fact that, you know, eventually you have to cross a bridge where there is giant bats. But everything is so hateful. And there's also weird stuff. Like there's one stage where you're walking and all of a sudden you're like transported to another dimension and ghosts attack and then you go back to it like it's just never happened they never come back to it i mean can i have all the different teams in different places so this like really didn't have any involvement from the people who made the nintendo games no they were busy being shuttled off to fitness centers so they just gave it to the arcade team and i know that it must have ran into developmental difficulties and it just did it do you know that or are you just speculating no it did because in one of the

untold a history of Japanese game developers. They interview a guy that I think was one of the artists. He's like, this project ran into a lot of trouble. I was brought on in the last month to sort of cobble things together. Oh. That explains a lot. Okay. And yeah, just everything about it is really stiff.

Like, at this point, only really the first, like, two, like the MSX-2 and the Famicom ones were out. But they feel like they didn't interpret Sprite really well. Because, I mean, it's hard to, like, look at that old brown Simon Bell Or even the black and red and peach wall art color one and see what it's really supposed to look like at a higher, you know, higher color depth, higher resolution. And he doesn't look good. No. I mean, that's always been a problem with higher res Simon Belmont.

And I like the fact that for Castlevania Chronicles, they were just like, let's just make him a goth raver. Why not? Yeah. That worked. And the controls are, like, they were always stiff. It just feels stiffer than usual. It's kind of odd that they actually seem to stick to some of the Castlevania-like style in a way because they've got, you know, the stiff walking. I mean, they get some of it right.

Some of it does feel like a proper Castlevania. But it's just, and they have to make the sprites bigger, right? Because it's an arcade game. You've got to use that. I just don't understand why people wanted to play these games in the arcades because it's the worst possible place to play this kind of game. It kind of makes sense. I mean, it had an opposite check from a lot of Canami games because, Contra and Russian Attack, and those all started out as arcade games that, you know, brought to consoles, and this one had the opposite journey.

But even, like, then, like, the Contra at the time, like, the arcade Contras, I didn't think were very good. And the Nintendo one is where the NES ones were much better, yeah. Yeah. It was a weird style phenomenon. Yeah, but, like, by the time this came out, Castlevania 2 was already out in Japan. Yeah. I've been out for nearly a year. And it was a completely different style of game.

And, like, you know, in a lot of ways, this feels, this game feels like a throwback. It feels more primitive. It feels worse to play than the original Castlevania, which on NES is just so fine-tuned. It's just a miracle of video game design. Everything is just, it just works together. This is not that. I kind of feel like the biggest problem with Haunted Castle is just has such a hateful level design, you know. Yeah.

It's just really designed to suck your hoarders. Yeah. It has all of these traps that just jump out. out at you. And if you don't know they're there already, you're going to get hit, and then you're going to eventually die, and then you throw in some more money. And it just doesn't work well for Castlevania. And there's different ROM sets for it that have different levels of difficulty, but I think it just like changes the damage output and maybe how often you can continue. So in certain versions that you can't... That's something you should just fix on a dip

switch anyway. Yeah. That's weird. I don't know why they did that. I mean, some of them are definitely regional. Like, one will say Hauna Castle, one will say Akamad or Dracula. But Canami was always tuning games differently for different territories, I guess just based off of what they thought the market needed.

But I mean, Honda Castle, the only difference was like the difficulty versus their shoot-em-ups where they were, like, radically alter the way that they played. Yeah, there's only so much you can do with a style of game. And I guess that was the challenge they came into

because, you know, Castlevania on NES is, like I said, it's very fine-tuned. And, you know, once you get into kind of the rhythms and learn sort of where the enemies are going to be attacking and what patterns they have, it becomes like a very fluid kind of game despite its stiffness, whereas this, it doesn't have that. And I think that's because, you know, if you get good at Castlevania, then you can breeze through it without taking too much damage, without losing lives. You can't have that in an arcade game. You have to make, you know, you have to get the

quarter pumping going. I feel the proportions of the characters are off. Like that's just like, your whip doesn't feel as strong as it is? Yeah, the hitboxes and the proportions and the ranges and the damage output, it all just feels off. But also just the way enemies are placed and the way you can react to them, none of it feels good. No. The subweapons aren't terribly useful in this one.

Like they just hit at weird angles and they're unusual too. Like you're throwing a bomb, like a literal bomb. But I mean, you have like the cross weapon in this one, right? Like the one where he actually picks out a cross and then shoots a laser out of it. You get a sword in the game, too. Yeah, that was definitely before they established the whip as like the really main weapon. But, I mean, it was established from the start, and Castlevania too had a whip. Yeah.

I mean, it wasn't like they had, there's no lore behind the whip. No, there was no lore, but it was definitely like, that is what Castlevania does. You got to do to the whip and it gets turned into a chain flail and then a long chain flail and then maybe it can catch fire. And he is on the cover with a whip. Yep. I don't know. That's weird. There's other stuff that's like kind of, as I think Kevin already mentioned, like the kind of gotcha traps, which is not a Castlevania thing.

Like as the games got more sophisticated, they would do more like surprises where like something happens. But the games typically don't, correct me if I'm wrong, Kurt or Jeremy, but I don't feel like Castlevania games, the classic ones ever would just throw something at you like that where they would just like, oh, guess what, this wall is going to fly apart and hit you with pieces of it. Generally, it's pretty good about not doing that. It usually wants to tell you what's going to happen. It's like, oh, these are lowering spike platforms. Like, you see it well before you reach it, and that way you have time to think about it, because it is a very deliberate game design. Yeah, the best Castlevania games, and most of the Castlevania games, are good about

broadcasting things. You have to be attentive, and there's no guarantee that even if you see a trap or a hazard is coming that you can avoid it or, you know, defend against it, but at least it gives you the opportunity, whereas this does not. It's just like, oh, by the way, you just took a lot of damage. Tough luck. So this game has stuff in it that So that kind of game design

That they used in the classic NES games That's why it's one of the rare platformers that has stairs You don't put stairs in a platformer Because normally that's going to just get in your way Right But they're as Jeremy I think has pointed out You know they like to have the platforms Aren't just floating in air usually in Castleman

They try to ground it a little bit They had a cinematic ideal in their mind And part of that is just the deliberateness And the slowness of walking upstairs So this game has that. The stairs aren't quite as sticky, I think. It's a weird feeling to them. And again, it's because the proportions are off.

Yeah, but you can walk up them that way, but you don't have the same, like, time and warning about obstacles coming in at you as you do. So you feel like you're always being surprised by something that you had no way of knowing was going to get there. And so adding the stairs and other elements of the classic games, at this point, they were just the first two games. It doesn't really work in this one because of that. I agree. So where did you guys first play this game?

You've ever actually played it in the arcade, or did you... Have you ever seen it? You have played it in the arcade. Oh, you said Galloping Ghost, right? Yeah, Galloping Ghost has a copy of Haunted Castle. It's the U.S. extremely hard ROM set. So have you ever made it to the second level? Not on that.

I made it to the second level on the arcade archives, for the case. No, maim. Like, the moment it got mad at a meme, I was like, I've run a castle by any website. I need to me on top of this. I'm breaking the law. for justice. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I have, but I can't, I wouldn't, uh, swear to it. But I know that I, I, um, saw Contra everywhere. And I felt like I'd seen, I remember seeing other Konami games. I was like, this is an NES game, right? So I'm pretty sure that's, I did see it. But I

definitely never played it because I was too young. I didn't have any money. Yeah, I've, I've never seen this in the arcade myself, but, um, I did discover it on PlayStation 2 when it was released by Hamster as part of the Oritachi Arch. series, and I was very excited. I was like, finally, this Castlevania game, the one Castlevania game I've never played. I can import it and play it. And, uh, like, I was working at oneup.com at that point. And my boss, Sam Kennedy was really excited. So I imported it. And it came in. And we sat down to play and we were like, oh, what, what is this? So like, I played it through and I didn't get to the, the ending, but I did make it to the bridge. And that was when I ran out

of coins or credits because even the home version limits the number of coins you can have and there's no easy cheat code or anything in that version. So yeah, I saw the bats and it was just like total BS. So what we did then is sat down. We watched the Superplay video that was included on the game disc and we're like, oh, okay, that's what the game is like if you have everything memorized and play it that way. Cool. To be fair, though, you didn't have that much further to go. It's just a really long bridge. Right. It's a long bridge full of BS. And And then I'm assuming there's a clock tower I can't remember. That's the end.

At the end of that bridge, I think, is Dracula. Yeah, that's right at the end of the game. They didn't even do the clock tower. It is the most phoned in level I've ever seen in a Konami game. It's literally just the bridge that you walk across and it crumbles in every couple of seconds. There's a bat that shows up and I think the same spot. It is really pathetic. But this game isn't like there's some things I notice in the game that it does, that are laudable, I guess.

For instance, there are some background details that they put in. there that are cool. And they hadn't been done because they couldn't be done on the earlier games. The first level, when you're walking through everything and you have the, what do you call it, the monsters that come out of the trees. Yes. And the first level mid-boss, I guess, where it's a brick that sort of shoots itself across the screen. It's just, it's very bizarre, but. Yeah.

At least kind of interesting. You have the crumbling tombstones. I was thinking more like there's, I think it's the very first Castlevania, a giant painting that weeps blood, literal bloody tears. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is the first time that pops up. And you see some of those, like, reused, like, that whole level again with the trees pops up again in the X68,000 game. But isn't, isn't, doesn't Carmilla or whatever, Carmilla from Castlevania 2, she's not a painting, but she's like a face that floats around, cries a tear of blood that then explodes into a burst of five. Yeah, yeah, that's her attack, but it's not like the painting trope, which is.

Yeah, I mean, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it's more like just the cool things that you see in the background of the castle that makes it seem spooky and mysterious. And you mentioned this right away, Jeremy, but I actually kind of love this. It's the weird mirror dimension you go through for just a couple seconds. It's so inexplicable. You fight angels or harpies or something. And then when you get to Dracula, there's one of the same ones that just appears for a second, I think. It feels like this is a game where they spent a lot of time working on the grace notes and not enough time working on the fundamentals.

Yeah, I still think it's kind of fun to play. Like, yeah, the level design is terrible and it's got some. weird hitbox issues. But, you know, it still kind of feels a little like a Castlevania game, at least enough that I can enjoy it for, you know, 10 minutes at a time or whatever. It feels like a high-grade bootleg. Yeah. It does. And it's still got the cool music because the music was by the same guy who did Castlevania 2 and even reuse a couple of its tracks. And it sounds really good. Yeah. I do love me some FM synthesis. Yeah. You got to hand it to the bad Castlevania games. They still have good music. Usually they do.

I really like just the, there's some charm to there's just the weirdness of the half-finishedness of it. Like, you notice how in some areas of the castle, there's just the furniture is huge. There's like decorative furniture, but it's for people who are like nine feet tall. And it's never explained. Like, and then, you know, doors will just be huge and you'll see, I think maybe you see some eyes behind them sometimes. I don't know. I found that kind of weirdly creepy, like in an unsettling kind of creepiness. Yeah, it's like one of those, uh, 3D games where they didn't really think about the,

the protagonist's height, so everything is gigantic, but this is more deliberate because you can't just, like, scale up the protagonist. You know, you're designing things with pixel art. So they must have known the size of the hero. So if you had two different people on different sides of the cubicle, I never talked to each other. Yeah, so they hate it like halfway through, right? You don't know. I mean, but I wouldn't surprise me, but I'm just speculating. It just seems like there were people who are not communicating with each other. My question is, my question is, did this game come out before Splatter? Was this, was one in a response to the other?

It was February 88, so I think they came out kind of around the same time. Wasn't Splatterhouse like mid-88? Yeah, I think so. So I don't think that, you know, that's enough time for Namcoa to have said, well, let's make ourselves rip off in three months. It's just interesting. They both had the idea of doing like a horror, you know, sort of platformer, sort of brawler type of game in the arcade at the same time. But even compared to, like, other games, I think we're out, like, Black Tiger should have been out, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's 87, I think. Rost on was out. I mean, those feel like, I mean, they're really difficult. They're barbarian action like castle. Yeah, shirtless sword action. But they, they don't feel like, they feel hard, but they feel like you could get good at them. And that it's maybe I have like rose tinted glasses. Oh, Black Tiger is ridiculously hard.

Yeah, it's true. Okay, never mind. I withdraw that. But you can buy stuff with Zinni, so that's important. Yeah, it's true. But if you don't buy the right stuff or? Then you're screwed. You're screwed.

Yeah. Don't catch the gnomes. I mean, there's other. little details that you think like um for instance i noticed that when you fight dracula he shoots knives like dracula doesn't use knives uh simon doesn't have a sword when dracula disappears before his final form he disappears in like the form of like a like a flame cross that shouldn't be happening they just did that because in japan that looks creepy right they don't but later on they kind of worked out their religious symbolism yeah there's like three or four problems with that

and then his final form it's just a giant head that appears in the like no no just a giant face that appears at the lower, like, left corner of the screen and occasionally, like, shoots out bats at irregular intervals, not like special bats, the same bats you've been fighting the entire time. So a swing and a miss. Yeah. All right. Now, on to the next game, I think, Rob, you said that you can't have stairs in platforms because they slow it down, but that was a Castlevania thing.

But this next game proves you wrong because it's the Castlevania game they got rid of stairs. It is Castlevania the Adventure, or if you choose to read it as the logo is written on the box, the Castlevania Adventure, which was released in October 1989 for Game Boy in Japan and then a few months later in America. And it does not have stairs. It has ropes. It just has ropes. It's a weird one. I really wanted to like this game when, you know, when Game Boy launched, I really wanted one. I didn't have the money for one. So I was very envious of my friends who had Game Boys and one of them brought his Game Boy to school on the bus, and he had this game with it, and it was the game I wanted to play most, because I loved Castlevania. I loved Castlevania, too. And I was like,

there's another Castlevania game, and I got to play it. And I played it and said, you know, I don't actually need a Game Boy right now. It's okay. I'm fine. Yeah, I had a family friend that they, for whatever reason, just had hundreds of Nintendo games, and I was so jealous of them. So they had a Game Boy, and we spent, like, the entire party trying to play that game. I don't think we ever beat the third level because it is it's pretty hard of castle viny the adventure that's um that's the one with the falling ceilings right it's the spike trap the spike trap yeah that's about landing up and then spike keeps jamming in you yeah that's about where i stop too yeah it's it's it's it's it's crazy hard and not in a fun like interesting way it's sluggish and awkward and the power

mechanics work the wrong way. There's no sub weapons. You can power. You can get a flame whip, which is kind of cool. Like, it actually shoots fireballs across. If you get hit, it goes away. It goes away. I think they had to do that. I think they were making certain concessions that at least you can tell they were thinking about playability on the Game Boy. I feel like the fireball whip that shoots a projectile is kind of an important one. It's not like it was that powerful, though. It was good to beat like enemies from across screen. But when you're fighting a boss, it wasn't like super useful. You didn't have a lot of time to react when you saw something coming towards you.

And that just gave you a chance. You know, because you're just, like, when you play it on a Super Game Boy, it seems really weird, because it's like the world's emptiest castle. There's, like, nothing happening. It's very empty. It seems like everybody's working from home that day or something. Oh, and, you know, I didn't even, like, traffic jam. They couldn't commute.

On the, the recent Castlevania collection, like, when you play it on an HGTV, you really see, like, how ropey its programming is. Like, it doesn't even sync properly, like, the screen. Like, there's all such a screen tearing. Yeah. Well, no, I think that might be a, you know. Castlevania collection issue. I remember, like, just being super

sluggish. It is really sluggish. Even on the Game Boy. Yeah, I mean, you know, I play this most recently on Super Game Boy, and even though things, like, clocked 3% fast, it still feels like, why, what is wrong with this arthritic man? Why can he not walk faster? And the notes

on the anniversary collection, they were like, well, we had a meeting to discuss the failings of the first game. Like, yeah, they knew it was bad. But since it was a launch window game, like, it was probably something that was really just tossed together as quick as well. Yeah, I mean, that is the thing. You have to really, you have to be a little kind to this game because at the time, handheld gaming was, it wasn't new, but the idea of handheld gaming on par with the NES, like a functional NES game on Game Boy, you could take on the car, like on the road with you, hold in your hands,

play with a couple of batteries. Like, that was a tall request. And even if they were a little bit weird or still cool to have? Yeah, I mean, something a little bit different, too. And, and, you know, they tried to really keep the spirit of Castlevania, even if they made a lot of concessions. And you look at this compared to Super Mario Land. This is not as good a game as Super Mario Land, but it's more, like, visually ambitious. They didn't want to compromise the Konami, you know, the house style, the, the kind of reputation the company had for great music, great art. And that is somewhat to the game's detriment. But they really made the effort, and that's commendable.

I went through it a couple years ago, because for whatever reason, I decided to play through a lot of the classic Castlevania games around September and October. And this one, just, I know it's, the audio is lovely, and it's visually

really impressive, especially for an early Game Boy game, but it just has such a brutal stage designs. I mean, we talked a bit about the spike stage, but describing the Spike stage, does not really do it justice. Are we thinking about the same one?

Are you talking about the one that's like the ceiling lowers down? Yeah, you have these like screws walls and stuff. As you're going through the stage, like the spikes follow you. Yeah, so when I'm thinking of where you're crawling up like a vine and then there's a part of it. Yeah, that's a third level. And even before that, there's a spot where you just need to jump onto platforms that will fall as you jump on them. And it shouldn't be difficult. And they have enemy layouts where they're just clearly placed there so you'll lose your fireball.

Yeah. I mean, this is a game that gives you lots of invincibility power-ups, which are very rare in Castlevini games, gives you lots of health pickups, which are hearts, by the way, you don't use hearts for sub-weapons because there's no sub-weapons, and you don't eat meat for health, you don't eat meat for health, you pick up hearts. I mean, it gives you lots of these things because it knows that this game is going to mess you up in an unfair way. Yeah, I mean, I will say in defense of one of the spike areas. I do think probably the coolest level idea they have is the one where it's like the screw shafts that you have to,

that are tightening the vice sort of where the spike ceiling is coming down. You've got to whip and destroy the screw shafts. And then it goes back up until you get to the next day. I think that was a cool idea. And they give you just enough time to actually pull it off. Yeah, it's really tight. Like that's the whole thing about Castlevania the Adventure is it has like no tolerances for any kind of misstep or failing. Like you make the slightest mistake and you are screwed.

Pixel perfect jumps. You mentioned the platforms that fall. Those are so hard because you have to like. stand on the absolute edge of the platform next to it and then jump and then immediately like I mean as soon as you make contact and register with that platform you have to jump again and there's going to be multiples of these in a row and you have to start out just right and jump just right so one there's footing underneath you that you can jump off of because they start to fall and then you can't jump and two that you're going to have clearance to cross the gap

it's so hard and not in like a fun interesting hey you need to learn this kind of way just like get it right and don't you dare make a single slip up don't be one pixel off which is not easy on like the P green classic Game Boy for sure at least since it was so slow it was you can kind of sorry see it

it's the Gradius 3 effect yeah But this is a game that I don't think, you know, the sluggishness really works to its benefit. I think this is a game that I don't think, you know, the sluggishness really works to its benefit. I think this is a game that needs a little more speed so you can respond to things more quickly. Like, there's a point at which slowdown is actually detrimental to the experience. And I think this crosses that line. And it's not even like, I don't think it's, I don't know, is it, is it a technical thing

or is it a deliberate design decision? Is it just like the Game Boy Power processor was so underpowered? I think it's technical just because of, you know, the general shakiness of the game, the game feels. And the fact that its sequel is not super fast, but just feels significantly better. And the crazy thing about this game is that the programmer was Masato Maigawa, who would found treasure. He was the programmer. And he was a super brilliant programmer.

He was a genius. Yeah. He probably still is a genius. I don't know. I haven't seen him do anything lately. And then, yeah, like the composer, well, he, yeah, you can't, you, Norio Hanzawa, like, his work here is impeccable. Yeah. Well, there's a couple different composers, but he was one of them.

Yeah. It does sound really good. Yeah. The soundtrack is super, super, super, super good. Yeah. One of the biggest disappointments for me with Castlevaney the Adventure Rebirth, I'm happy that they just were like, whatever, to the actual game design. Yeah.

But then the music has nothing to do with the original soundtrack to the game that this was ostensibly based on. I'm like, I mean, these are nice FM synthesis remixes of NES and, you know, super NES music, Genesis music, but I kind of want to hear all this great music from the Game Boy game done up in this style. What happened? They did the first level theme, but it's only on the soundtrack album. It's not in the actual game. Did any of these, I know they recycled tunes a lot in the series. Like, have they ever brought any of these back?

I think they brought back a couple from at least Adventure 2. Yeah, I mean, the Rebirth did have one of the tracks from Belmont's revenge in it. Yeah, but I mean, like, for the Castlevania Adventure, any of those tunes come back, because it might be like one of the few games they haven't, like, gone back and reused the tunes for. I feel like there is some somewhere, but I mean, like, when they rearrange stuff, it's hard to tell sometimes. Yeah. Harmony and Despair used a bunch of stuff in the portable games. And then there was that iOS puzzle game that probably had all kinds of remixes in it. That was, I think it was almost all the music for something in the night.

Oh, was it? Yeah. Encore of the night. That's what it was. Yeah. I'll recheck, because the problem is I don't know the names of these songs, unlike the other cast. Battle of the Holy was the first. The Battle of the Holy or Battle of the Holly. Bell of the holly. I see it written both ways.

I think it's probably a holly. It's holy, but... Yeah, because I think the soundtrack album had it holly. But, like, they have soundtrack CDs for the Pachinko machines now, because that's the Castlevania, you're getting kids. That erotic violence. Yes. So, but they have a lot of, like, reuse stuff.

They maybe, maybe have something. They had some cool track names, like praying hands, I think was one of them. It was, they were a little too religiously themed. So in the sound test for Belmont's revenge, it just changed to, like, BGM one, BGM2. even though they were written in English in the Japanese version. Bright Seeds, I think, was another one. Like, if you listen to some of the, like, the Dracula battle, they had some tracks for it in there. That's the heavy metal one, right?

Yeah, those are, love that. Those are horrible albums. So, I guess, like, the ultimate question for this game is, like, would you rather play this or, like, a rip-off, like, eight-eyes? I would play Haunted Castle before I went through adventure again. Yeah. I don't know whether I... Yeah, I don't know. That's a tough one.

It is really... I feel like at least eight-eyes has some interesting ideas that are utterly fails to deliver on, but it's trying. By God. By God, it's trying. This is what I do. Sorry, I'm doing. No, no, no. That's a good question. Bad Castlevania or... Like, mediocre rip-off.

Yeah. I mean, I say Holy Diver, no question. Holy Diver over the... Yeah, that game is also balls hard, but it feels like I could finish this if I had many hours to spare. It feels like it's rewarding you for getting further because the game is worth seeing. At the very least, a hard game has to be worth seeing the rest of the game. And you're not here to say maybe the lamest of Dracula fight yet?

I think so. I mean, Kurt Kooch probably give me better examples of like even worse. But if it's lamer than the giant head that shows up. Is it worse than the Circle of the Moon final battle? Because I hate that. I can't even remember that one. I like that one.

I like that one on like jet skis flying around. I hate that one so much. It's really garbage. The first one was kind of, I don't know, it's been a long time to actually finish it. But the first one was just kind of like the old one. And then you were sucked into the other dimension where there's a

gigantic one. Okay. That's the right one, right? I don't know. We're talking Circle of the Moon? No. No, Castle of the Moon is like Dracula's on like a jet sled or something. He like flies through the air and then vanishes and then reappears and like streaks across

the room and he's throwing bats at you the whole time. It may not be a well-designed battle, but it is Dracula on a jet sled. I was on a, I made it sound cooler than a day, sorry. It was on a Game Boy Advance that I was next to a lamp trying to squint at, so. Okay. This one had the Dracula who just teleports around different platforms, right? And then he has a second form that's basically like the first form. Yeah.

It's like it blends all together, but I seem to remember that one in one of the blood. It is my true power, which is exactly the same as my. My legs are gone. That's it. We're going to shoot. I'm going to shoot bats at you or something. All right, so Castlevania, The Adventure, not great, but they did kind of do an apology in the form of Castlevania 2 Belmont's Revenge. Not all of these games on this list are best.

bad, and this is a game that is not bad. It's hard, and it's not amazing, but by comparison, it's definitely the high watermark of Castlevania on Game Boy. I mean, it's basically everything that was wrong with Castlevania Adventure turned right. It feels much better. Yeah, it's weird. It's like Castlevania, Belmont's Revenge is kind of like Castlevania does Mega Man. Yeah. Because you can start by choosing from four different stages, and then there's two other stages after you complete those for. Yeah. And there's no advantage to doing them in any order. Like, you don't, get anything. It's just something that neat that they decide to give you. And all

the stages are distinct. Like, they are not themes that you see in other Castlevini games. There's like a castle in the clouds made of crystal or something. Yeah, the Crystal Castle. There's the plant one. The plant castle, the rock castle. Oh, I thought it was the dirt castle. You're right. It's rock castle. I mean, leave a rock around long enough. It'll become dirt.

True. What I like about it, though, I mean, it's seemingly like, yeah, it's not like Mega Man where there's a point to going to one before the other, like to get the proper order of things. But it is, I think, useful for gay boy games because it gives you a chance number one to practice the ones you're having trouble with and number two if you're a kid it's like there's probably one of them that gives you more trouble than the other ones and it's going to be different for every kid so you just

start you know somewhere else and then you do that one last it's also not a super long game but it has a password system which is smart for a portable game right yeah yeah I mean for me I always started with the levels that gave me difficulty so I could just get them out of the way and then everything else would be a breeze from there oh I was a slacker and the stage is feel pretty smooth in this game, you know? Even the ones that are difficult, like, you can understand why you died and you can kind of figure out, okay, how do I get past this puzzle? They brought back the subweapons, too, but only two of them.

Which two? I can't confuse, right? Because they actually change in between territories. The dagger is gone. Because no one's flame weapon. It sounds pointless. The other time dagger is good as when it's Grant's default weapon in the Japanese version of Castle 93.

Yeah. So I think that's the Holy Water, right? And then the Japanese version, I want to say, had the cross. And the American version had the X. And I, like, there was, unless it was just like a revised version that the Japanese developers decided to change. Or they looked at the cross and like, well, we can't use this, even though it was in the other games. And they just decided to change to an X real quick. But you know, the X, I feel, works really well in this game.

Yeah, I think it is more useful. Really? Yeah. That's a change of pace. Yeah, because you can use it to hit enemies above you, whereas, I mean, the boomerang is more powerful, but the X is more versatile. And, you know, the game was originally designed with the boomerang in mind, so, you know, enemies coming at you from weird angles, you could catch him with the axe without really threatening yourself. Yeah, I mean, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you play a game in a way that it wasn't intended for, and it just makes it really hard.

But I guess that's not the case here. Yeah, I don't think there were enough enemies on the screen in this game for it to really, them, to put much thought to, like, when you would have the axe or not, right? Like, you know what I mean? They still can't do that. But you don't see the, you don't see the artifice behind the game as much. much because it's nicer. It is interesting that they brought the ropes back. And I think that tells you that the ropes are there to solve like a visual problem

they were having with the Game Boy. Like it was too much screen space was being taken up. They very intelligently kept the main character's sprite pretty small so that you could use most of the screen area. And I think the stairs would have made that just too difficult. Right. Yeah. That makes sense.

But yeah, the game plays faster. It's smoother. It feels more responsive. Like, I don't know. In the Castlevania Adventure, Castlevania the Adventure, controlling Christopher, not Simon, just feels really, really frustrating all the time. Like, he's just not doing what you want and everything has to be so precise, so perfect, that, you know, that sort of recalcitrance on his part just makes the game unnecessarily difficult. So I appreciate the fact that they kind of stepped up and said, let's not do that. One thing that's interesting about this game story-wise is it does, it never noticed this before, but it does pick up right off of the very ending of the Castlevania Adventure because at the very end, you know, you defeat Dracula, the castle crumbles because he's a load-bearing boss, right?

And I didn't make that up. I wish I did. That's good. And then at the very end, I think you see a bat fly out of the rubble. In this game, I think the premise of the story is that you did kill Dracula because Dracula comes back once every hundred years. in every hundred years he comes back every 20 years. It's like I don't really know what he wants.

But apparently it's the same thing as NES Castlevania too, where it's like you kill Dracula, but like his lingering evil is still around. And he kidnapped your son. He kidnapsed your son. He got to fight him at the end. And your son, it looks like he's wearing a tux to me.

But that is probably not what you're going to tell. Is this like the grand unifying theory here? He's wearing a white tux like it's prom night in 1979. But it's really weird. The, uh, the comic. book that they put out is actually based on like the Castlevania Adventure slash Belmont's revenge. That was the Dark Horse

Comic. It was the American comic. Yeah, the American one, yeah. Why on Earth? And they did this in the 2000s. Yeah. Let's go back to the good stuff. It's like at least when they made the cartoon series, they based it off of Castlevania 3, which means, you know, that's like the one. It's the most dramatic. It's kind of obscure

if you came in the series with like symphony in the night because it's not that branch. But it's recognizable because you get Alicard. Yeah. You have a Belmont in there. It would be cast of characters. And it's a pretty ideal way to start it all. Yeah, and there was also, you know, the curse of darkness to build on.

So, yeah, there was an episode I did last year where I interviewed Adi Shankar, the producer. And it sounds like he has, like, a grand scheme as long as they'll keep, you know, Netflix will keep throwing money at him to basically travel through the entire Castlevania timeline. So we'll see. I mean, I'll just take a really quick aside just to talk one more thing.

Like, what I notice about this is that there are people who are not like diehard gamers who like the, Castlevania cartoon on Netflix. Like, to me, I'm okay with it. I think the writing in it seems a little bit... Warren Ellis-ish? Yes. Seems a little unnecessarily grim, dark.

And then, like, unnecessarily humorous at the wrong times. But it has gotten, like, the kiddos involved. I'm not the real kiddos, but, you know, like the 20-somethings. People who, to me, are kiddos. The millennials. Yeah. I mean, I was impressed by that. I was like, that's pretty cool.

Play some Castlevania. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't crazy about the first season, but the second season, I was like, oh, you know what? They get it. I'm impressed. But when's Grant Dynasty going to show up? He's kind of shown up already. But I don't think they've named him. But there's definitely like a pirate

mummy-looking guy who's under Dracula's thrall that they've had to fight. Yeah, it's a start. So there's that. Grant always gets the short shrift. And Donna Saro. All right. So I said that we're not talking that we're not talking only about bad Castlevania games. And this next game

proves it because it's Castlevania Bloodlines, which honestly could probably just about you know, support its own episode. This may be the last game we end up talking about here because it is kind of the unloved Castlevania game. It's only been recently reissued

for the first time on the Castlevini collection for you know, current consoles. But, you know, there was like a 25 year gap in there where it basically was not available to buy, except on Sega Genesis? It's weird.

It's a great game. It's such an inventive, technically impressive game full of, you know, like sophisticated mechanics and varied gameplay design. I don't get what Konami's aversion to this game was, but I'm glad they finally brought it back.

You should write an article about it, Jeremy. I should. Oh, wait. The first I googled just to see if anything popped up again in your Polygon article from like it was a year ago. It was a year ago. It was like a year before like almost exactly a year to the day

before the Castlevania collection was announced. I found it the other night and I was just like, okay, I'm deleting that from the notes and that. All right. This is the best 16-bit Castlevania, in my opinion. I think it's the second best, but it's a good runner-up. We should get to that later. We do have to talk

about the Rondo of Blood Blood-Line's comparison, but we've got to talk about what makes Bloodlines bloodlines. Yes. It's different. It's very Sega Genesis. It's very Konami on Sega Genesis. It's Contra the Hardcore, but for Castlevania.

Exactly. As far as people understood like this, Rocket Night Adventures and Hardcore and Bloodlines were designed by at least some of the same people. So they have that same sort of, like, I've had people ask me, like, were they the same people from Treasure? And they're not, because Treasure started before all these games. Yeah, Treasure had, they had made their exit. Yeah, so they're different, but they were just the people that were sort of out of

Canami that. Sorry. They were the people who are still around Kanami that were still really, really good programmers and loved that 68,000s. It is, uh, it has a really cool setup because it separates itself out from, uh, it's the wrestling. And it takes place in, like, 1917, early 20th century on that time of World War I. And, like, the castle, the Castlevania Castle isn't in it. Nope. Technically.

And instead you're going to different European countries and fighting in their. landmarks normally I hate this in Castlevania I don't like it when you're outside of the castle but if you're going to do it this is a cool way to go all in yeah the story is does anybody else want to do the story? No go ahead all right so I think in the game her name

is Elizabeth Bartley yeah but she's based on a real life probable cousin to Dracula named Elizabeth Bathroy who was like a real mass murderer and horrible person and later on there were like legends that she like bathed herself in the blood

of virgins to have eternal youth or something. She died in prison. But she arranges for the assassination of the Archduke Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Serbia in 1914 and has precipitated this giant war as a way of gaining the power of all the misery she's creating.

So she can resurrect Dracula. So she can resurrect Dracula because, as we all know, that's the main thing you do in life in the Castlevania world. Everyone needs a hobby. Everybody's evil planet. And it's like, you know, it didn't work the last like five times, but this time. And it doesn't have any Belmonts in it.

Yeah, it has the son of the American guy who killed Dracula in the Texan. Yeah, this actually brings Brom Stoker's novel that created Dracula into canon. Yeah, it's weird because, like, Quincy Morris in a lot of adaptations of Dracula is the character they delete. So, like, I was kind of useless until he kills Dracula. Yeah, he was just like one of, this weird hick that's there. And he's like, oh, y'all, I'm going to stab Dracula. Yeah, he was just like some one of what, Lucy's like suitors, I think. Yeah.

And he didn't do much until the end, but he heroically sacrifices himself. And this one kind of recons it so that his kid's, his kid was in the bushes watching him as he died. Also, he had a kid. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, it was a kid. He was a loser, but there was some, yeah, it's complicated. He's an American kid, presumably, that was chagging along with him. Who knows? But also that now the Morrises are apparently cousins of the Belmont so they can use the whip, it's just not very well.

Yeah, because, well, Kojiigarashi, when he started creating all the lore behind the series once he came over it, he sort of tried to close that particular plot hole by saying that, you know, wielding the vampire killer whip is what killed Johnny Morris, and there's this whole, I forget exactly what happened in the plot of that game. Yeah, you have to, like, fight the spirit of the Belmonts, and then you were able to wield up without it killing you. No, I mean, even then it can, it, like, drains your life, but it won't kill you immediately. Yeah, but that's just because he's not a Belmont. My favorite part of the whole, like, incorporating Brom Stoker's Dracula into it, which, in my opinion, is, like, it's an important book, but it's kind of a dull book. And imagining that after all the adventures we've had, like, right, like, I think the game before it would still be Symphony of the Night, maybe. Or maybe it's Circle of the Moon. Yeah, maybe Circle of the Moon has been, like, decanized or something.

I thought it was, like, Order of Ecclesia was the one before this. It doesn't matter. All of those things are way more exciting than Brom Stoker's Dracula, which is basically Dracula moves to England because he wants to buy an apartment or something. Pretty much. That's it. And then he starts murdering people. Well, that's what it does. And then Tom Waits is involved somehow.

And Ciano Reeves gets to have like a vampire orgy or something. I can't remember. That part is cool. Brom Stoker. He did get actually married by an Orthodox priest for that movie. So anyway, the Johnny Morse is actually the worst. worst character in this game. Because there's him who has the whip. And then there's

Eric Lecard, the Spaniard with the, I don't know if that green stuff was his cape or his hair, but he is super fun to play as. I mean, Johnny Morris put the new twist on the Belmont style, because he does have a more dynamic, versatile whip

approach. It's more like Simon and Castlevania 4, but faster and a little, I don't know, like a little less limited in terms of where he can swing from. Yeah. Like, you know, there's only so many grappling points in Castlevania 4, but here

there's a lot more surfaces. And I played through it for the longest time without realizing that. And it wasn't until I streamed it. And people were like, hey, you know you can swing any time you want, right? I was like, oh, that's how I get over this gap. Okay, thanks. There's a couple of branching points where, depending on the skills, because he can latch on to things and swing over it.

And Eric can pole vault. So there's a section where you have to scale straight upwards. But there's only one or two points in the game where that ever actually happens. The pole vault. Yeah, he's using the, uh, The Alicard spear, which got mistranslated a little bit to like the Elkhard spear. Yeah, it ended up in Symphony of the Night. Yeah, but it's got such great range on it, and he can twirl it back and forth.

I remember the Allicard Spear, the spear that he used in Castlevania 3. No, wait. He's three fireballs. What's up with that? Um, I don't know. aside from the fact that he's a Spanish guy's name is Eric, maybe it is. I mean, you might know. It's short for Enrique.

Yeah. Okay, Enrique, yeah, but, and then I always thought, like, why did they call him LeCard? Is he supposed to be, like, like, a branch of, like, like, Alicard's, like, distant family or something? It's not a Spanish. The guy's been around for, like, 500 years, so, like, he could have multiple families. You know, they thought it sounded cool and didn't realize it wasn't actually a Spanish name. Yeah. He's like, what do we put on the birth certificate?

He's like, don't say Dracula. I mean, there's a, there's a guy named Ralph Belmont, so. Yeah. Oh, there's. Ralph Belmondo. Ralph Belmando in the 1500s. I've got a weird one for you if we make it out of this. But, yeah, I mean, I always thought maybe, because he looks kind of like, he's like a pretty boy.

They had to change his face in the American to make him less like anime, like be shonen type pretty boy. One of the coolest things about the re-release is that they had the characters that they had like designed but cut out. So they had Yoko Belnades who in the way that they designed her was sort of like Grant and that she could climb on walls and through daggers and stuff. and the other one was this sort of Viking dwarf named Bolt Erickson who just travels around with this

This isn't the like the Switch game The Xbox 360 game No the collection Yeah the collection Yeah If you look at the supplementary materials They have the whole sketches that they did It's super

Like that was the coolest thing to see about it So Yoko they brought back for a game For Eric Sauer Yeah Like when you got to play at her in Don of Sorrow She played like Sifa did Which made more sense And whatever they envisioned her to do in this game

But, yeah, I was like, wow, that name and concept actually existed for like a decade, and Koguchi Yagrashi just went back and revived it. But yet not Erickson. So I guess sort of like Gileas Sunderhead from Golden Axis. Yeah, he sounds like a Contra hardcore character. And I really hope somebody brings him back somehow. It's a shame they didn't use a cameo for Contra hardcore and have the werewolf with like the sunglasses and spread gun. He could have shown out. Yeah, he was a were a werewolf.

He doesn't make him a boss. I mean, a spread gun, but. You're already fighting a skeletal. German machinists. Oh, something I didn't realize until I read about it recently was that there was actually a design contest for fans from a Mega Drive magazine where they submitted sketches and they used a couple of them. And one of them was probably the stupidest enemy in the game with these little like beetle robots

on wheels and they're totally out of place. And you're like, oh, so it was a contest winner. It's like when you see somebody who was obviously not an actor who just ended up like getting an on-screen role somewhere. You know, this game, like, it also kind of follows that Konami Genesis style and that it has so many mini bosses. And they're all like, a lot of them are technical marvels. Like this whole game is a Genesis technical marvel. Oh, yeah.

Like the tower stage is pretty incredible. But then you have like the boss that's just a giant machine puppet sort of. Yeah, you have the, like the magical gear monster. Yeah. It's very strange. Like, it was meant to be more gory. especially because Super Castlevania 4 had to deal with the Nintendo censorship so there wasn't a whole lot of blood

but they still took it out and this one was allowed to be a little bit gory so when you stabbed a zombie their top would fall off or when you died as Eric like your spear flung in the air and then impaled you which is just like an extra unless you're playing like the European version yeah then that was just too violent the fountain at Versailles becomes a fountain of blood

when you walk by it yeah but then you have like the that's the night at the end of first level, which is done by those segmented sprites, and then you knock off its arms and it sort of, like, tries to kick you, like, the knight from knee and Monty Python. Yeah, I mean, I think we got to talk about, like, the levels in this, because they're really creative about

using the different, like, areas in Europe. So there's like... Well, in every level feels different than the other. There's a lot of variety in the game. Yeah, I mean, it just, the ideas seem like they're just running, like, just not running out of ideas, the opposite. They had their cup runneth over of ideas, their idea cup.

And the, like, You know, just the stuff, like, for instance, like this, the giant wolf battle, right? You've seen this before in Castlevania, this kind of boss. You're in, like, a Castlevania type thing. You've got the giant windows. He howls, and then, like, shards of glass break out of the window panes and land on you. It's really cool. Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, yeah, I said the Castle, wasn't in it. I guess it is. It's just the first level, though. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of almost the same, right? Yeah, it was the intro, because that was redone in a whole bunch of different games. And just, like, the stage is like, okay, so you go to Italy. and you're in the leaning tower,

but it's literally, like, swaying back and forth. Yeah, I mean, this was definitely Konami is showing off its, we can do this on Sega Genesis Chops. Like, I kind of feel like there was a one-upmanship happening with this game versus Super Castlevania 4. Super Castlevania 4 made use of, you know, the Super NES's tech tricks to, I think, memorable effect. And this game, you know, it didn't have the built-in hardware capabilities

being on Genesis that the Super NES offered. But they were like, you know what? We can still do crazy stuff. with this 68,000 processor, this hardware, we can, we don't need a super NES to pull this off. And they did some pretty incredible things. After Tregs it, they had to represent. I'm remembering, it's one of the last stages in the game where the camera is sort of split in different points of the screen. There's never been any explanation as to what was happening, but it's a cool look and effect.

And it's screwed up emulators for a long time. And it's really hard to figure out where you need to jump properly. Like, it's such a neat little sequence. It's like a broken mirror. Yeah, I kind of like that. You get to go to like a munitions factory, like a German army munitions factory, which is like kind of the one time you realize, oh, this does take place during World War I. It takes place a year before the war ended. And that was cool because they do like have like, you know, more mechanical type enemies and bosses, like the weird dumb gear thing.

and but I do feel like that's kind of like the horrors of war like what's like creating the evil of the Dracula's cousin or niece or whatever she is in this one and that's kind of cool and then you go to Versailles and as I think Kevin said earlier it's like you've got the what's it the Latona fountain Latana I can't remember what it's called I'm not cultured I wrote it down for this very lateona fountain and it's it turns into a blood fountain in spawns monsters and the guard gardens of Versaia, like giant overgrown rose bushes that drop huge, like, rose boulders somehow on you. And it's so imaginative. And it's not surprising to me that they didn't really go back to the style of Castlevania game too often because it's hard to top this kind of creativity. It's weird. In Japan, it was conceived as a Dracula guidance sort of game. And they didn't even have either a Castlevania or Akamagra Dracula name. It's called Vampire Killer over there. Again, just with the branding of that series, was so puzzling.

Like, it's obviously a Castlevania game, so it makes sense. But I guess they looked at it and thought it was too weird as far as its atmosphere and was like, well, it needs a totally different name. They might have intended it to be more different than it turned out to be, I think. But they were clearly trying to make something because even, like I mentioned the munitions factory, that's the clock tower level, but with different machinery. Yeah. So instead of being based around gears, it's based around pistons. Yeah, I mean, Contra, the Hardcore was not called Contra over there. It was just the hardcore.

No, it was called Contra. Was it? Well, they added the the, the, the hardcore. I thought it was just the hardcore. No, that's Contra. I think you might be thinking of the Xbox 360 sequel. That was Hardcore Uprising. Yeah, yeah, that one was the one like that.

That one dropped Contra. It did, and everyone dropped it. That's too bad. Let's never speak of it again. You also had a Contra website, right? Or is that somebody else? Yeah, he's the guy. He would know.

I'm going to be able to be. So, uh, Yeah, even though Konami kind of dropped bloodlines for a long time, 25 years, they didn't totally forget about it. And it seemed to have informed a lot of Koji Igarashi's work, even though he didn't create, you know, another game in the style. He built on this story with Portrait of Ruin, which is a direct sequel to this, which makes it like the, you know, sequel to the sequel to the novel Dracula. Bram sukers. Yeah, it's just crazy. But, yeah, you know, I think this was kind of a pivotal game for the series in some ways

because it's the first game that Mityu Yamanai composed for. Yeah, when the soundtrack is again is excellent. Extraordinary, I would not say. She knocks it out of the park. Yeah. Yeah, I interviewed her about it and she said she was really nervous about working on this game because, you know, when she started working on it, it was, you know, just a project that she was given. And she was talking to someone at the company and they said, oh, you know, that series has a

reputation for like the best music so you really have to you have to really have to deliver here so that's that's what she had to she and she she did it and then she did such a super good job that she came back symphony night and then she defined the musical styling so yeah basically yeah pretty much i mean some of these songs do reappear in symphony and i right oh yeah yeah a couple reincarnated soul well something that i didn't use too much directly no but this later games have shown up all over the place yeah but like i feel like the ones that did show up later i always feel they sound best. Maybe that's just my bias towards the Genesis sound chip. Oh, no, I agree. Yeah, I would back that up.

That's my favorite thing is just like the explosion sounds on the Genesis and it's the sound of the instruments. Always sound great. Although this game had weird sound effects. Like, it didn't sound like they were using the sampled sound, so it was all done with the FM. And it sounds strange. Yeah, that's true. Or the noise. Some of this, yeah. What a great game. I do like how the public attitude toward this game has sort of changed since it came out. Because at the time, you know, the Genesis was viewed as technically inferior to the Super Nintendo.

So this was just going to be the inferior game because that's like how children in magazines viewed this sort of stuff. Is there a difference between children and magazines? But as more people have gone back and played this game, like among the fan base, Castlevania Four is definitely not as highly regarded as it was. Because it's kind of got a reputation as like a fun house. Just not only in its atmosphere, but it's just really easy. And some of its bosses really aren't that well designed. You can stroll through. Yeah, it's pretty much the first goofy, actually.

Yeah, 8 or 9 level game. You go to the treasury stage and there's just like goofy-looking ghosts flying up constantly. Yeah. What's going on? So, like, over time, the more people play this. Like, this is still kind of like a weird game. But people have appreciated more from a design perspective. And I think now that more people have gotten to play it because of the Castlevania collection is, you know, getting the reputation it's finally deserved.

I'm glad that my Polygon article was ahead of the trend. I was ahead of the pack. The last chance you had, really. I got to keep it up. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, I want to see this game have the kind of reputation Rondo of Blood has, because, I mean, they were both out of print and unplayable for the longest time. And Rondo kind of came back first, so people were able to finally play it and realize,

oh, hey, this is a great game. This is as good as the reputation says. And I think, you know, Blood Lines finally has that opportunity. I mean, this is the one. even more so than Rondo Blood that I would say like for example to the person who caught the cartoon series and it's like oh I want to see Castlevania what that's like if you're not going to start with like the you know the the Symphony of the Night style games I would go with Bloods as your first one because it's it's a lot easier to get used to than like Rondo Blood is kind of difficult and and the NES games are really pretty difficult especially for people who didn't grow up in that era this one especially if you play the Japanese version where the normal mode on that one I think is is the easy mode on the American version. This actually has difficulty levels. And it actually skips over some of the bosses, like the harder ones.

Interesting. Yeah, this is actually a game that has two chances this year to catch the public eye because there was the Gazalvanian collection. And it's also included on the Sega Genesis Mini. So, you know, all of a sudden, we've got like an embarrassment of ridges here. So there's really no excuse not to check out bloodlines. It's been difficult to play for a long time outside of emulation or spending 50 bucks on a cartridge, but now it's quite readily available.

So give it a try and try both characters because they do play pretty differently. And remember that Johnny Morris can whip and swing with his whip. That's important. All right. So back to the bad stuff, Castlevania Legends, the final Game Boy game. See, I can't really say this is bad. I don't think it's really boring. Yeah.

I don't think it's good. Yeah. It feels like a huge step back, you know, from Belmont's Revenge, which was like six or seven years older. It was, I mean, because that was the time where the Game Boy was super old and was really only getting a spike of resurgence because this was after like Pokemon where people were digging out all their Game Boys again. And they just did like, well, we made some Castlevania games and Sinton Nights around.

So let's make a new one. Yeah, it came at a weird time because Castlevania Legends launched on Game Boy, the original Game Boy. It came about 11 months too early to be Game Boy Color, and it came a few months after Castlevania Symphony Night basically set a new standard for the series. So nothing about this game, you know, presented well. It just felt, it uses the same play style as the early Game Boy Castlevania games, but those were early. The console, the system was capable of so much more by this point. People had really tapped into its potential. And it's not as, much of a technical messes. The first one was, like, the speed is fine. It's just really boring. And at least those games had an outstanding soundtracks. This one doesn't. It's really dull. You're back to no subweapons, although they do have, like, a kind of a replacement for it. There's a magic system. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you finish the bosses and you get magical spells that you can cast. Yeah. I mean, there's like a subquest to get the best ending, which is kind of interesting, but it's like the levels themselves just aren't fun to play through. Was it just me? Or is that where you collect, like, the various items that don't seem to have any other use?

I think that's the one. Like, the old Castlevania subweapons you can collect, but you can't use them. The stages do branch out in weird ways. Yeah. You do have the backtrack some, actually, interesting. Because I don't think that was planned as being like, let's make it like Symphony of the Night or anything. But it is there.

It just, the stages seem so long to me. Yeah, they are. I mean, they kind of tie Sonia Belmont into the Alicard backstory for this game. Yeah, it's implied that she's the mom of the Belmont family. like she and Alicard get together and have lots of little Belmont babies. But they've read Condorow, which is a shame, because she's the only playable female character in the series outside of, you know, Shanoa from Order of Ecclesia and...

Syphah. Oh, right, Seifah, yeah. And Charlotte. There's not a lot of representation for the ladies. I guess there's Maria also, if you want to count that. But she's the only playable Belmont woman, that's for sure. Yeah. You know, she's a pretty cool design character.

Like, she looks cool. Her Sprite is pretty good. Yeah, I think because of that design, that's why they brought her back for the Dreamcast game, which ended up getting canned. Yeah. It's a shame. I remember that's why I wanted to play it at first when it came out. It's like, oh, really? It's like the first, at that time, it was like the first, canonically the first Castlevania game.

And it's about, like, you know, a lady Belmont. And I just thought, oh, that's cool. And then, you know, I didn't end up getting it. And it's good that I didn't because it's not great. Well, nobody bought it. And, like, a lot of those old. like late gen Game Boy games, especially collectible ones, it's super expensive.

Yeah, it's crazy because I remember seeing this thing in like the giveaway bin at Target for like $15. And then all of a sudden it was $300, $500. That's how it goes. Zaney. I would not pay a lot of money for this game. No, but there's no other choice. You have to.

I know we mentioned the music in these games is always like a high point of the game, even the rest of the game is bad. I feel like the music in this one was really dull. It's boring. I don't remember any of the music in this game. It remixes some of the old tracks because the other ones didn't. But otherwise, it's super bland. Even the remix, it just sound like they really just do not.

It's very phoned in. It's probably like a project that was done that kind of tossed together real quick. Yeah, this was the same team that did Circle the Moon, right? Was it? I thought so. Wasn't it? Casey Nagoya? Oh, Nagoya, yeah.

Sorry. I can't keep track yet. I can't keep track of me, to be honest. I thought this was the same team that did Circle the Moon. I know that Igarashi'd later decan and I circled the Moon, too. Did he not work on that one? I thought Seagled Moon was done by, like, the Nintendo 64 team. That says an entirely different.

Yeah, because, like, if this is, if this is by the same people that did Circle the Moon, like, the magic system kind of returned for that in a more experimental and dynamic way. And you also have music that basically consists of remixes. Yeah. So, like, I feel like it has a lot in common spiritually. And also, the level designs are kind of meandering and the gameplay is kind of boring. So, like, even if it's not technically connected, it sure seems like a spiritual connection. I liked Circle Lemon better than this one.

I felt like Circle Lemon is totally better, but. I don't want to totally throw that one under the bus. But this one is just like. I'm willing to mingle it a little under the bus. That's fair, but shoot to wound. Yeah. With this, yeah, I really wanted to like this one. I did find it, they were trying to do something interesting.

I just feel like they didn't have enough variety in the stages. And as we said, like he kind of expected more from Castlevania at this point. even if it was maybe more than the Game Boy could handle. Yeah, I think it needed a little more time to really cook. Or more time to wait for the Game Boy Color to launch. That would have been good. They had to have known that was coming. What were they thinking?

I mean, I don't know. It's really weird that this game just kind of happened. It just kind of showed up. The late Game Boy era was so weird. Like, I was starting to get into portable games at this point, finally, and following this stuff. And I was like, I don't know about this. It got Mulmanian instead.

and I'm happy to do that. Yeah, I remember this popping up a Nintendo Power and just thinking, what is this? Why is this game coming out now? Who is this for? It's been five years since the second Castlevania Adventure game. Yeah, that's, I don't know. I mean, in the end, it's really, the problem is it's just forgettable. It's like, it's not so terrible.

There's nothing, you can't talk about it the way we talked about haunted castle, which is amusing in its. Right. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. But sometimes the greatest antipathy is reserved for the game. that are not remarkable in any way. Because you can't really say much about them. Like you can gush about a great game or just like rage about a bad game.

But a mediocre game, like, it's just kind of there. It's lukewarm. And that makes me angry. I didn't have to pay the money for it. So I'm less angry. I wish I had stocked up on the $15. Yeah, that's true. So the next game on this list

So the next game on this list going chronologically, I think we can rage about if you guys have played it. And that's Castlevania the Arcade. which came out in February 2009. We're skipping ahead more than a decade to a point where Konami was like, what the hell is Castlevania? Because it was somewhat

popular in America, totally overlooked in Japan, and they were just like, what are we doing? And I think that extended to the company in general, but also the Castlevania series. So you ended up with this really strange arcade game, and I have played it back when it first came out in Japan,

and I remember almost nothing about it except that you had, it was kind of like a time crisis-ish game and that you were like using a controller to use it like virtually whip the screen and you would see these like slash marks across the enemies you were attacking but it didn't really stick with me I don't know yeah I remember more about trying to find it in Japan because I went there last in 2011 and there was a website where it would show where the remaining machines were and it was in Osaka and I think it was the Shinsai Bashi where there's this big long underground just mall is just a tunnel

of stuff. And it was somewhere down there and we never found it. But like the round one arcades have started opening up around here. Two years ago in Pennsylvania, I saw it. And I played it a little bit and took some video of it. And again, it's just, it's very just puzzling about how it came about. It's weird. It is a very weird machine. I got to play it at Galloping Ghost in Chicago because they have a machine for some reason. And it's like you said, you have the slash marks from the whip, but the whip detection isn't very good. Yeah, and you also have subweapons, which are sort of... Yeah, because

it's a light gun game where you don't have a gun, kind of. And you run through those daggers so quickly, because so many enemies are in such awkward places to hit with the whip that you just are forced to throw a dagger at them. So is it like House of the Dead, but you're swinging your arms around? Yeah,

kind of. But I mean, when you say swinging your arms around, you're not like flailing your arms. It's like a Wii remote. Like, they probably could have imported this to the Wii. Like your wrist, basically, whist. Like, if it wasn't for the fact, like, I think, like, from a technical standpoint, it's probably stronger than the, what that we could have done. But, like, if the game wasn't obviously, like, a 30-minute arcade experience,

they could have probably imported it. Yeah, they could have done this instead of judgment. Yeah. Probably would have been better received. The best I can say about it is that it's two players, and it's kind of a trip to play with another person if you're not taking it that seriously. There are three characters, but they didn't give them names. there's the vampire hunter, there's

Lady Gunner, and then there's the Little Witch. And the Little Witch, I think, is secret. Like, you have to unlock her somehow. Could be, because I only remember the two characters. Yeah, well, like, I had only, like, read about the game and the advertising thing had three characters. So when I did the Cassafany book, I put three characters in. And when I played it, there was only two.

And there's some, like, you either need to use the, like, the emusement pass card. Or it might not even be possible to play as her anymore because of some. weird internet thing it has good music again good remixes not that you can hear it in an arcade not that you can no i could not hear the music to this yeah i'm just imagining like in the day and age we live in now if we were to find this and attach actual like cords to the end of these fake whips play two players that could be hilarity yeah i mean you could really hurt somebody it is really funny with two people even with a whip that doesn't have anything on the end of it i remember you had to like like enter into it it was one of those sort of cabbages yeah It's got like an enclosed space And there's like a curtain around it Yeah, the Silent Hill thing I see a couple of games that were like

That they're the same sort of set up Yeah, they still make stuff like that That was they still have it's like Yeah, I still see them in like Chuck E cheese Because it's a little too old But like sort of modern arcades Yeah like Luigi's Mansion arcade game Is kind of built that same way

Yeah even in Japan They still make space for those things I think partly because like photo booths are still Sort of thing so like why not have another booth I don't think this, there was some flyer, I think, for it in the UK, but I don't know if it ever actually got like a overseas edition. Like, it may have been text marketed. And machines obviously made the way over here, but I don't think it did very well for them, obviously. And it should not have it.

No, it's not a forgotten classic. It didn't deserve success. But I don't want to end this episode on a down note. So let's look at two games that are actually pretty good. And wrap this up, the two more. the unloved Castlevany games that deserve a little more love. The first of which is Castlevania the Adventure Rebirth, which we mentioned earlier. This was developed by M2 as part of Konami's Wewear series. They released Rebirth games for this, Contra and Gratius. And all of them

are basically like, hey, here's a 16-bit game in the series that you've never played before. That's weird, huh? And they all have like FM synthesis soundtracks. So, like, what are they supposed to be representing? I don't know, because they don't look like Genesis games. I guess they're supposed to be like arcade games. It's weird. Sort of X68,000-ish. Yeah, I guess so. That might be it. It's hard to say because all these Rebirth games are pretty good, but I don't think M2 had the best pixel artists because they are hard to find.

So visually, they don't look as good as they should. They don't look ugly. No, but they play well. Yeah, they did play very well. The weird thing is, though, that this is called Castlevania the Adventure Rebirth, but the only connection it has to Castlevania the Adventure really is that the protagonist is Christopher Belmont. other than that it's like super small details like you have a flame whip it has the the rolling eyeballs which are sort of yeah but i mean like the levels the levels completely different yeah there's many more levels and none of them are the same as the the game boy game it's not even close it's weird because uh the gradius game was like a pseudo remake of the game boy nemesis and this one is supposed it was like a pseudo remake of uh one of the msx games yeah i thought i thought that was like nemesis 3 or something no nemesis for game boy doesn't have anything to do with that it the MSX Nemesis.

Yeah, Nemesis for Game Boy is just Gratius. Yeah. The We were, the game is based on the storyline of the MSX games. Yeah, it takes them out. But, like, the level themes were the same. I mean, there's only so many Gratius levels of games. Yeah, I mean, there's so many of them that recycled anyway. But, yeah, this one has nothing.

I don't know why they picked this one. Maybe it started out as a remake in there. Like, you know what, this is bad? What if we did something different? What if we made this fun? And they did. And, yeah, it's a game that, unfortunately, is no longer available to purchase anywhere.

If you don't have the game having been purchased, like if you had not purchased the game on Wiiware, who knows if it'll ever happen again. I would like to see a Wiiware compilation reissued, but who knows if they'll do that. Yeah. Who'd like that Wiiware, kids? Although, I don't know.

All the collections these days have been done by M2, all the Konami collections. So you think it would be a, yeah, you could be like, hey, why don't you guys just, you know, reissue these games that you made? Yeah, I'd be okay with that. I mean, everyone was expecting that D.

was, would show up in the anniversary collections that they didn't. It was a little disappointing. Surely M2 has to have the source code for their own games. I mean, they've got to, yeah, they'd have to do a compilation of just the rebirth games. Rebirth, rebirth, or something. I don't know. I thought this game was good, but not as good as most of 16-bit games. Like, it's not as messy as Dracula-X Super Nintendo was, but it doesn't have anything really interesting in the way that,

any of the other ones did. Yeah, it really feels like just kind of an attempt to scratch that nostalgic itch. Yeah. As opposed to like, hey, this is the next Castlevania. And I feel like a lot more of the modern games that go to that style, their level designs are much longer. Like, even if you look at something like Shevel Night, which is obviously supposed to be like a Mega Man style game, the levels are just longer.

Too long, honestly, in my opinion. Even the Mega Man 11 is the same way. Both of them. Yeah. They need to like learn that brevity is with soul. And the same thing with Bloodstained, the new one. Curse of the Moon or the other one? The Rescher-Side one.

I can't get the name straight. I think that's curse to the moon. And again, the levels again are just like three, four times as long as they were before. Yeah, I think it works better in that one just because there's a lot of branching paths. Yeah, there are. There's a lot of different ways to approach each stage with different characters. So that feels a little more justified. But, yeah, I agree.

This does fall prey to the, I don't know what it is. is like this this habit that people who work in the retro style suffer from where they're like oh stages have to be really long well no most stages weren't they were like three or four minutes if you know what you were doing and that's fine like anything more than that is kind of exhausting and it's it was probably memory issues just because they had to be so small but also just designed because you were expected to play them over and over it because it was a tough game I would rather have like 30 four minute levels as opposed to a dozen levels that take you know 15 is to be it. It gets tedious.

And this definitely falls victim to that. I concur. Yeah, there's not super a lot to say about it. Yeah, it's just kind of a Lamberthene level. Like, you can keep going through different doors and only just these circles if you take the wrong one, which isn't anything that was any of any of their Castlevania games, but it's not like a new thing. It's the only Castlevania game I've seen someone get a time over on a stage in. Wow. Well, that's something.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it feels to me like, you know that fan remake that was actually finished of Metroid 2? It looks like that kind of kind of kind of, I don't know if it actually was, but it does feel like some of the graphics may have been ripped from the Game Boy Vance games. They're in some of the same style. They did that on Symphony of the night, didn't they? They like ripped some graphics off of the. Oh, yeah. The sprites. I mean, there were like so many sprites that were taken directly from Dracula X. Sounds like we're already talking about the next game, huh? Yeah, yeah, let's go ahead and

end up on the ultimate act of Castlevania Recycling, Castlevania Harmony of Despair, which was, I think, a greatly misunderstood game that is really cool, and you have to play it with the right people, but the point is you have to play it with people. It's not a solo adventure.

It is a multiplayer time attack that is basically travel through every Castlevania game. Here's like a big mashup in kind of a Symphony of the Night style exploratory format. Even the original Castlevania's castle is a DLC. It's kind of wild and it's kind of a mess, but it's really creative and a really different take on the Castlevania thing. I really like it.

I think because one of the major emphasis of those games was loot, like not as much as like Diablo or any of those sort of games, but they sort of looked at that and looked at Monster Hunter and we're going to create this weird sort of hybrid mashup of these two types of games. But if you weren't familiar with what? That's also a Castlevania game. Yeah. But I didn't, like, I didn't understand what Monster Hunter was. Like, for a lot of the time, like, that was kind of just a Japan-only phenomenon. So it's difficult to communicate that to people.

And again, so if you just download the game and play it single player, you just, you know, think it's garbage. Because it's not played the way it's supposed to be played. But then again, I never played online because, I mean, I wasn't paying for online. Right. Yeah, I mean, it is a game that needs to be played online with other people. And you team up with like three other vampire hunters and you travel through the castle and you unlock certain achievements or, you know, goals and open up pathways and team up to fight big bosses. And like all the crazy bosses from Symphony Night and all the other games are there. So you've got like, you know, you'll bump into Legion or there's Beelzebub, the giant like rotting corpse covered with gigantic flies.

So you just like the first time you play through East Stage, you don't know what's going to be there. And it's really interesting. Yeah, like I said, I really enjoyed it. It's an interesting attempt to create a very low-budget Castlevania game. Like, I'm sure Igarashi had, you know, 10 cents in a bag of skittles to make this game. But he definitely tried to do something new and different. And it's a really unique take on the franchise that, you know, yeah, just bring something new in while at the same time feeling very familiar. I like that he was such a big fan of Getsu-Fumadend that he brought it back.

That's crazy. Yeah. Getsu Fimauden was this old regular family com game where you were like the lunar warrior and it was the easiest way to describe it is sort of like the Teenage Muti Ninja Turtles. Yeah, it was kind of like the basis for Tien Tee. Yeah, it's like they looked at that game

and like, well, this game, which is heavily based on Japanese folklore and this stuff was not going to fly. Getsu Fumadin was a four player or like you had four characters like in Tee, right? No, it was just the one guy. Oh, just it had an overhead map. But the overhead map was more maize-like compared to the – well, I mean, they got a little bit more maze-like as you got later in the Turtles game.

But it was a little bit more – there were more styles to it, too, because he had all the different sides growing levels, but they're also, like, first-person, dungeon crawler things. But the character controls a lot like Leonardo did. So there's that sort of similarity there. And he ended up as a character in the game, and there's a whole level that's based off – they wrapped all the background tiles and from it. That's cool. Yeah. Have you played it, Rob? I play Getsu Fummedin. No. Harmony of Despair.

I have not. Okay. But I can tell the way you describe it, like this is kind of why the series didn't really go anywhere is because they weren't doing enough stuff like that. It's just trying something like to just see whether it'll get enough of an audience. You know, it's like just taking like a popular concept elsewhere. Like you got Dragon Quest Builders, which isn't like maybe super popular, but it seems to have fans. I think it's, I think it's doing pretty well for itself. It's picking up. I see people discussing the second one especially.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's an example of a game that's like, it's taking something that, you know, it's not literally Minecraft and Dragon Quest. It's very much its own thing, but it's taking an idea that's popular elsewhere. We look at that sort of, you know, negatively sometimes like, oh, they're just trying to jump on the bandwagon, but sometimes that's how innovation works. And maybe Castlevania's problems are that it didn't do that enough. It did that once with something of the night. And then they just kind of, like, even at the time, like, that was like nowadays we're living in embarrassment of Metroidvania. It's like, there's. Like, there's. There was so many of them. Right. And back then, like, it was, they were consistent. Like, almost every year you were getting one with the GBA and the DS. But at the same time, it did feel like they were getting a little sale.

Like, they were innovating. Like, they were definitely changing stuff. Not always for the better. But they didn't feel different enough. And then, of course, you look back on them now and you're like, ah, we didn't get that style of game for like a decade. You didn't get to miss it. Yeah.

I mean, it isn't always well received either. Like, for some reason, Metroid Fusion still has this big stigma against it because it's a little bit different. But it's actually really clever. Yeah, now I think because there was no other 2D Metroid games at the time. So it wasn't what people wanted. But now that you're not those games that fulfill that void, then you look at that and you can appreciate it being its own thing.

Yeah. There haven't been a whole lot of games that have tried to do the Metroid fusion thing. Lots of games that tried to do Super Metroid. Yeah. But not Metroid Fusion. And, yeah, so, I mean, I haven't played this game that we're supposed to be talking about. But it's like that to me is like what I'd want to see if they brought it back. I don't want, like, Pichenko, Castlevania.

I don't want fighting game. Castlevania, like, and I also kind of don't want, you know, Curse of the Moon or whatever. I can't remember which one it is, even though we just said so. Like that, like, I kind of like it, but I don't want Castlevania to do that again either, like, to go like classic style. Yeah, I like that take on it. It was, it was fun to do it once. Yeah, I wouldn't want another one because it would just be pummeling it to the ground. Yeah, I don't want a new Super Mario Brothers of Castlevania, I guess, like, which I don't dislike New Super Mario Brothers.

Might put me in the minority, but I just don't feel like Castlevania would benefit from that at all. And actually, New Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe is the, I think, second best-selling game of 2019 so far. So you're not in a minority there. The minority among game podcasters. Okay. But game podcasters are the worst. Yeah, we are. It's fine.

We all love new Super Mario Worlders here. Yeah. I think we could all pick one of them that we like. But anyway, yeah, I just, I don't know. I feel like the series could definitely go somewhere else because a lot of his charm is just in its kind of setting and tone. in like the slight silliness and then the weird horror elements and hey Frankenstein's back kind of thing. The new blood sign really leans into the silliness. You have the weird cat demons that pop up and the, have you played it all?

No, I'm kind of waiting until they get the. Yeah, same here. There's an enemy that's just like a woman shredding on a guitar that's riding on a chariot. Fantastic. All right, well, that's cool. I'm cool. That's my vote, yeah. I would just like to see the series like lean back more into the original

premise of this just being an homage to those crummy old uh hammer films hammer films and universal films like that was a really fun take on castlvania and they really dropped it after the first game so it'd be really nice to like if they brought castlvania back again for whatever reason they should just uh do that more to create a license game based off that old 80s movie the monster squad and do it sort of in the style of castlvania do like monster in my pocket yeah another cana another canami classic yeah that don't mistake that for pocket monster though totally different no all right well that has been castlevania's weirdos and i think we've uh actually pretty put a pretty good capstone on this

episode with our thoughts on what the series should be and should do so i think we'll wrap it right here so guys thank you for joining us for this adventure through the unloved cruft of castlevania the cruft California, I guess. No, that doesn't work. You should talk with that, Trexin. Yeah, Trexin and retired. Trexit was, yeah, I went, I shot, I, I flew too high. Good night, everybody.

Once a month. All right, or once an episode. I'm tired. Okay. So, guys, tell me where we can find you on the Internet. So people who enjoyed hearing your thoughts on Castlevania, you can hear your thoughts on other things. Oh, hey. Like I said, the name is Robo.

I go by Xerxes for some dumb reason, because it's like what I named myself in all my Zelda games as a kid and stuck because I'm an idiot. I do the hardcore gaming one-on-one podcast, the top games of all time, and you can find us by searching for hardcore gaming 101 or going to the website, which is great. I'm also on the website and on Twitter at HG underscore 101. I'm on Twitter as at Uprasaurus. I also have the YouTube channel Atari Archive and a Patreon under patreon.com slash Atari Archive. And I'm Jeremy Parrish.

you can find me at Retronauts doing Retronautic things. And you can find Retronauts at Retronauts.com on iTunes on other podcasting devices. And you can support us by going to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. And for a $3 monthly subscription, you can get every episode. That's six or seven episodes a month in high audio quality with no advertisements. And you'll get them a week early. So it's quite a cool deal. And it also helps feed me. So it's good for both of us, really. So I highly recommend that. But even if you don't support us on Patreon, you can still listen to the episodes for free. So that's just the kind of people we are. We love you. And we love Castlevania games, even the weird kind of wonky ones. So go home, play some

Castlevania collection. And yes, enjoy. Because even in the bad games, there's something interesting and good. You're going to be able to be. Thank you.