Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 320: A Castlevania Deep Dive

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Jeremy Parish, Shane Bettenhausen, and Nadia Oxford break quarantine to return to Transylvania for an in-depth look at the original Castlevania for NES and its many, many alternate versions and remakes through the years. Art: Greg Melo

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network, a collective of creator-owned and fully independent podcasts, focused on pop culture and video gaming. To learn more and to catch up on all the other network shows, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This week on Retronauts, when you see a hunchback, you must whip it. Everyone, welcome to Retronauts, episode 315, I counted this time, and I am Jeremy Parrish, counting for once. And I am here in North Carolina without other people. They're in other places. Yes, we're recording this under pandemic protocol.

we're going to be doing episodes like this, I think, for a very long time. And that's sad, but what's not sad is that this is going to be a fun episode with fun people on a fun topic that we all love, and it's going to be great. So who do I have? Who's the regular calling in from California? Hey, T-Frog, far from the West Coast. This is Shane Bloody Tears, Bettenhausen, happy to be back in quarantine. We're taping this in.

week 10 of quarantine for our listeners in the distant future. Yeah, maybe, hopefully, distant future. I think people will remember this year pretty well, even if everything turns out well, even if everything is good again. People are going to remember this. We're going to be optimistic and imagine that future Castlevania historians are looking back on this time. Yes.

But, Shane, have you talked to a doctor about that tear issue you've got? It's a tier issue I don't want to get rid of because it's a jam. Oh, okay. It's a total jam. All right. And who else is that? This is Nadia Oxford from U.S. Gamer, staff writer, and co-host of the Acts of the Blood God podcast, and I promise to be fun as hell. Wow, fun as hell. Wow. Amazing. She promises it not to be depressing at all. Nope. I work at it. Well, the thing is, this is a good topic to be fun about, because, again, it is a series that we all love. And that is Castlevania for NES. Now, you may be saying,

yourself, Jeremy Parrish, you have already recorded an episode on NES, Castlevania. How dare you? But, sir, that was like seven years ago. That was a long time ago. That was forever. That was a long, that was ancient history. Seven years is actually 70 years in pandemic time. And on top of that, we have a different perspective on this now. There's, there's things that have come to light, things that I personally have played finally, that I'd never had the opportunity to try before. So this is not like, the previous one we did a long time ago, 2013, I believe, was the NES-Castylvania trilogy. This is not that. This is just NES-Castlvania. And this being a time of hardship for many people and great

stress and frustration, we just wanted to do episodes, you know, some episodes on topics that are near and dear to us and try to bring a different perspective to things. So I think we'll be able to do that. I think that will work this time. And so we're going to jump right in. And we're talking about not only Castlevania for NES, but also the other versions of that game. By my count, there are four other versions of NES Castlevania. For other platforms, you know, they're not, we're not talking about ports. We're talking about other attempts to create a game based around sort of the structure and template and content of NES Castlevania, because that was kind of a progenitor. You know, it came out

first and Konami has gone back to the well many times like they went back many times within the space of less than a decade to say let's do that again and I think I just want to interject I think that that unique revisionist take at the time is one of the reasons that I think made me like the series so much because there wasn't a lot of that in the 80s and 90s that was still pretty new you know that's true yeah yeah this was before reboots uh were even a thing right sequels were still kind of new, let alone multiple remakes. Right. And they did eventually try to do the reboot thing with Castlevania Lords of Shadow, but that doesn't count.

Right. This is something different. This is basically them just saying like, we created this game for a system based around the limitations of that system at the time. But what if we took that idea, that concept, and explored it with new technology, with, you know, the ability to do more and see where it goes? And so that's where you have the five games that we're talking about this episode, NES-C-Cassilvania, Vampire Killer for MSX2, Haunted Castle for Arcades, Supercastlevania 4 for Super NES, and Akumajo Dracula, aka Castlevania Chronicles for X68,000 home computers. Ah, what a wonderful lineup. I'm excited.

I am very excited myself. Shane, I think you were about to say something? Well, I was going to say that Castlevania NES is unique that at that time, and I think you and I are old enough vintage to remember what it was like when it was new. there wasn't too far apart from the arcade versus Castlevania and you know we later find out vampire killer almost at the same time which is fairly weird that like all these things kind of came together simultaneously

and also a haunted castle you know a few years later but like the fact that two and a half similar games were all made at the same time early on is a weird thing and like that's always struck me estranged and like I think both of us came to vampire killer much later and it's it's almost impossible to imagine what it was like to have played that on its original release. I would just like to interject and say I am older than God, and I own it. So I understand all the retro talk. So how did the two of you first come to know Castlevania? So how did the two of you first come to know Castlevania?

Like for myself, I was not, it was not really a series that I paid any attention to or a game that I paid any intention to until I saw previews for Castlevania 2 in Nintendo Power and said, whoa, that looks really interesting. Screenshots of Castlemania in, you know, Fun Club News did nothing for young Jeremy Paris. You're like, oh, a side-scroller with the Barbarian fighting. Fun Club News did not exist at that point, sir. This was 1987, 88. Okay, so like, so you didn't know that Castlevania existed. There weren't magazines aside from Nintendo Power. and this game came out before Nintendo Power. Right, right, right.

And so it wasn't featured in Nintendo Power. It was only in the official player's guide, which I didn't get until later. So, you know, just going by the artwork on the front, I was like, well, I like the silver, but I don't know. Wait, did you not have a... The name sounds stupid. Did you not have a mom and pop of rental shop where you could rent everything? No, rental shops weren't a thing at that point. We're talking really early.

Jeremy, I grew up in the hauler. I'm from Kentucky. We had rental shops by 1987, I'm pretty sure. We had rental shops, but they didn't start... selling video or like offering video games, at least not that I'm aware of for a while. Wow, I find that so intriguing that you literally did not know about Castlevania until Casmania too. I also did not get an NES. I could not find one to buy until like New Year's 1988. So almost immediately after, you know, they started, they started promoting Castlevania

too, you know, by that summer. And I was like, whoa, this seems really interesting. And being the nerd that I am, I'm like, I need to go back and play the first one. I'll say that perspective I find really interesting because that's a perspective that people don't think about that back then, you know, pre-internet, pre-games being super mainstream, like a good game could exist, be kind of popular and you literally wouldn't know it existed at all. Oh, yeah, that happened to me all the time. Like, I got my NES quite late, so I missed out on a lot of really popular games until the 90s. Yeah, discoverability was definitely not what it is back then that it is today. And so, yeah, as a result, I was intrigued. And so I was like, I need to find this game and play it.

And it was really hard because back then you had chip shortages. And so I looked high and low, literally across the country until I, you know, it took me months to finally find it. But once I did, I was not disappointed. It was exactly what I actually was better than what I had hoped. It was really just shockingly good. But, yeah, Nadia, where did, how did you come to be smitten by the Castle Viny Bug? It's funny. I'm a little bit similar to you in that.

I actually first played Castlevania 2, and that was at a sleepover. My friend's brothers were playing Castlevania 2, and I was just, like, fascinated by the whole adventure aspect of it. And Castlevania 2 was actually a good game for someone like myself, who at the time was extremely bad at platforming. So I went from Castlevania 2 to 3, and that confused me because 3, of course, is very much like 1, and I'm like, what's going on here? Why isn't this Castlevania? I don't know what's going on. And it's funny. I actually did not play the original Honest to God Castlevania.

until it came out on the Wii console, the virtual console. Wow. Yeah. Really? And I actually did okay with that until I got to Frankenstein. That's the stopping point for most people. That's amazing. Yeah.

So, in effect, I actually played Symphony and probably like all of its, or most of it's accompanying games before I played the original Castlevania. Oh. Wow. Shane, how about yourself? So I got my NES in 87. and Castlevania was, you know, a game that I hadn't seen in stores, and I hadn't heard anything about it. And then I was at church, you know, in Sunday school, and I heard kids talking about it on the playground talking about the Grim Reaper and, like, trying to beat the Grim Reaper.

Talking about demons in church, I love it. Like literally, I heard them like, oh, the Grim Reaper, it's so hard. I can't beat the Grim Reaper. And then when kids, like, you have to use Holy Water. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, it's this cool game called Castlevania. I was like, that sounds amazing. So I started looking for it at, you know, all the toy stores, no one had it.

And it was like this holy grail, right? And, like, I dreamed of it. And then finally, like, I think then a video store, like, movie warehouse opened up. It started to had NES games, had it. I rented it there. And I couldn't get past the, I couldn't get past the mummies, I think. Mommies, really? Yeah, which aren't even that hard, right?

If I was a kid, it was hard. Okay, fair enough. But I really liked it. I remember, like, I thought the controls were a little warm. monkey compared to like Super Mario Brothers or, you know, Ghost and Galvens or something, but I dug the music, I dug the graphics. And like, there's just something inscrutable about it, like just the approach to the, you know, the old movie monsters. So, yeah, I was immediately in love with it. And I kept renting it over and over again. And I eventually got to the Grim Reaper, but couldn't

beat him. And then someone, someone rented and kept it. So it was gone from the rental store. Because that would, that's what you would do. Like, same thing happened to Tengen Tetris, you know, like, someone kept it. So I remember at that. point, I really, I still loved it, but didn't have it. And none of my friends had it. And there was a thing where Konami had, like, we could buy posters. And I sent in a thing that I bought a poster of the cover of Castlevania, this giant one sheet of the covers. And I had that on my wall, even though I didn't own the game. And I didn't buy it until they reprinted it after, like, Simon's Quest came out. So yeah, Castle one was like this Holy Grail thing. And I would

play versus Castle in the arcade at Aladdin's Castle as well. Yeah, I never, I never saw versus Castlevania. I only ever saw it on Playchoice once or twice. I've never seen it at all. Yeah. Yeah, we had one of those two set up play choices, and one of them was versus Castlevania at my Atlanta's castle. Wow. That's pretty cool. I like to see that.

That was a good castle. But yeah, I'll never forget, like, hearing about Castle, about hearing about Castlevania at church. Yeah, that's pretty great. How do I defeat the Grim Reaper? Like, it's just in the middle of the church playground. I love it. And I distinctly remember you're teaching other kids how to, you know, get the triple Holy Water early on, and that really is the best thing for the whole game, even though you're going to want to use the cross boomer. rang, like the Holy Water is really your secret to beating both Grimmy Brand Dracula.

Yeah. Well, it is a game about defeating evil. I think that's valid for our church playground. I agree. Also, it took me a long time to be Dracula, like years. I think it actually took me like three or four years before I could beat Dracula. Did the original Castlevania have that nonsense like you had in Castlevania 3 where they made it purposely harder so that kids who rented the game would get screwed over? Like, in Castlevania 3, you were sent back to the beginning of Dracula's level versus just being sent back to the start of him.

No, so the NES game was tuned a little differently than the Famicom Disc System game. Like enemies basically hit for the same value of damage based on the area you're in as opposed to what the enemy is. So it's a little harder, but Castlevania is very forgiving and that not only do you start at the foot of Dracula's layer when you die, but you also start there when you continue. So if you lose all your lives and you have to start over, you don't have to play. played through all of stage six from, you know, the beginning of the bridge, all the way to Dracula's layer again. That stage is incredibly hard. Yeah.

It's, it really is. That is, yeah, like, I don't know how long it would have taken me to beat that game, if not for the fact that it does at least have the mercy of putting you right at Dracula as once you get there. Like, you just keep going and all you have to do is fight him. But even then, that's really tough. And I, I, I live streamed this game, I guess, probably like two years ago now. And it was the first time I had played.

through it all the way for a few years and actually quite a few years and I'd forgotten how hard Dracula was and like my stream is one hour long and the first half hour is me getting to Dracula and the second half hour is just me trying to get through that fight

and beat the jumps like his second form is like the jumps they expect you to make it's like really it's a little ridiculous it's very ridiculous yeah I actually forgot that you could use Holy Water to stun the damn thing and attack it while it's frozen so it took me a while to beat him without you know stun locking him so

it's possible but yeah it's um it sounds like all of us basically saw castlvania of some form in action and we're like that's it that's the game i love it i must have it yep So let's talk about the mystery of its creation, the enigma of its genesis, which fortunately is no longer enigmatic anymore. Back when we recorded the NES trilogy episode in 2013, 2014, we didn't know who designed Castlevania. We didn't know who directed it. And over the past year or so, it's come out that a guy named Hitoshi Akamatsu was the director of Castlevania.

Also, he was the director of Castlevania 3, the Goonies 2, and Snake's Revenge. So he was like the guy who did all these kind of, I would say like some of the more visible sort of action-adventure games that Konami published or ultra-published on NES back in the late 80s, early 90s. It's interesting that the Goonies 2 is in there, because I was going to say that at the time, to me, in that Silver Box era, when Konami had a brand identity in much the same way that, like, Capcom did as a kid, to me, Castlevania felt like a little less kiddie, a little more serious than, you know, Goonies 2 or Stinger TwinVee. or, you know, there was, there just wasn't as much goofiness. It was more like Gradius, you know, and to know that he did Goonies 2, which is pretty goofy

comparatively, but that's interesting. It is, but it's also harrowing, and both games involve bridges that are horrible. In Castlevania, you have a bridge where giant bats who are the, the boss of the first stage attack you, and in Goonies 2, you have skulls that will eat your boomerang and make you have to go back and buy a new boomerings. So he has something for bridges, then. Yeah, he has a bridge version. Do you think he was tasked with just, like, make a...

movie starring Dracula, Wolfman, and Frankenstein. I mean, just make this game. Just universal movie monsters make game. You know, I haven't actually looked to see if he said where the idea came from, but I seem to remember that the like the film strip motif, you know, the idea of the movie kind of came in later. That wasn't like the basic premise of the game. But I remember as a kid though, the fact that it wasn't just Dracula, that it was Dracula with a bunch of other giant, you know, famous monsters. That was kind of the appeal. Yeah, like, Dracula was a boss in them all. That was pretty cool. Yeah, that was part, that was like, oh, what a great idea. Like, it was before Monster Squad. It was like, Dracula has a posse. Yeah. Yeah, I was not familiar with,

you know, universal monster movies and hammer films and stuff. But my mother watched me beat the game once and saw the credits, quote unquote credits, where it's like all these references to horror movies like Christopher Lee and so forth and she was like oh these are all jokes about characters or actors who were in these classic horror movies and I said oh shout out to parents who like fill in those references like it was my mom who told me where Ayla comes from and Chrono Trigger yeah yeah where does Ayla come from

she's from the clan of the cave bear books she is a book about series about a cavewoman literally I didn't know that a lot of sex whole lot of cavemen sex yeah so yeah so Castle You know, the credits have like Christopher B and Boris Karloffice and so forth. So, yeah, lots of kind of a cheekiness. But that did obscure the fact that, hey, there are actually people who worked on this. Who are they? So it's only been recently that Hitoshi Akamatsu came out and said, yeah, I worked on those games. I was the director. And they weren't as successful as stuff like Teenage

Ninja Turtles. So Konami shoved me into an office on the side. Well, and Jeremy, you would know this wasn't the first at Famicom Action Adventure Games. to begin with a map screen, you know, to kind of have... No, that was ghost and goblins. Right. So, like, this clearly was taking a... Like, the structure of it is clearly replicating ghosts and goblins. Of, like, you know, the intro, the map, the level progression.

Yeah, you started to see that a lot around this time. You know, in arcades, you had Dragonbuster. I want to say... Yeah, Trojan had that. It was a little later, but Dragonbuster, what else was there, Rigar? There were a lot of games that they kind of showed you like, hey, here's a map where you're... progressing. But I would say that, yes, this was probably Konami's answer to ghost and

Goblins, which was by Capcom. Capcom and Konami are not the same company, despite what the internet memes say. No, they're rivals of the era. Like they were, you know, for young Shane, they were like the two third parties who you could trust to make great. Yeah. Yeah. You saw those that, that brand packaging, the trade dress of either company, and you were like, that's it, it's going to be great. And it usually was. And I recall that that intro scene of Simon walking up to the gates of Castlevania in the you know just like the clouds the bat flying over by the clock tower like it really strikes a chord in you and also gives you some visual storytelling of what you're about to do as a kid I remember cinematic for the time yeah just being

excited like oh it really gets you pumped yeah you know talking about the map I would say this game did a better job of representing your actual journey through a physical space than any other game at the time I mean I've you know recently made it through 1987 in my any works video series where I'm going through the chronology of NES games released in America in the actual chronological order. And it really is startling how much Castlevania stands out compared to what had come before and what surrounded it. Like in terms of, you know, kind of high concept design, like here's a place that you are in. The levels represent the layout of what you see on the map, the progression map. Like that was, that was unprecedented. You know,

even compared to Ghost and Goblins, and also just the quality of the game design, the polish of the mechanics and just how tightly everything fits together. Like, it's just so extremely well designed. And, you know, really, you look at what Konami had produced into this point, and you wouldn't really expect this level of greatness. Like, yeah, the stuff they had published on NES was good, like track and field and Gratius and Russian attack, but the Castlevania was just a step higher in terms of quality. I always felt like Castlevania, the Castlevania games in particular, especially one and three,

really showed a studio that knew exactly how to use the NES has limited color palette, especially for backgrounds. Colors are amazing in this field. Yeah, some of them, some of them shouldn't work like orange blocks on cyan background. That sounds so garish. And yet, somehow the use of the color palette, it just, it seems. eerie. You're like, well, you know, I'm very eerie. It's, it looks like, you know, the orange

stones are moonlight reflecting off blocks. And then the background is, you know, cyan blue and like kind of a midnight blue. And it seems like, hey, it's the dark of night, but then the moon is shining on the stones. And it just, yeah, it works. I feel like it's a color palette. Like, they chose colors you didn't see in a lot of

other games at the time, too. And the combination of like, you know, the sprite graphics themselves, how they're drawn, what's being drawn, the colors chose. it all did seem more serious, a little more adult, you know, and with the music, you know, this awesome, like, we're, you know, we'll get to the music more in a minute, but like this mix of synth rock and kind of orchestral pro, like, it's the whole package at the time to young 10, 11 year old Shane, it really was like just badass and cool in a way that even like Zelda and Metroid weren't. It wasn't really interested in being cartoony, like a lot of games at the time. It kicked ass. Yeah. It was interesting. And later on there would be other games for Nias that kind of went that same way with more like a harder edge.

But like Casabania was one of the first. And it really, you know, it got its hooks into me early. Yeah. One of the remarkable things about the soundtrack is that the main composer was a freelancer who was like she was a baby at the time. She was just like a college student. It's amazing. Really? Kinyu Yamashita.

She was, she was very, very young. Like how young like 20 or something? Like very, yeah. She was like, I think just out of college maybe. or maybe even still a college student. I can't remember, but I met her at Video Games Live like 10 years ago, and I was amazed that this woman is barely older than me.

Like, she's not that much older than I am. That really, I guess maybe like 10 years. But still, like, I didn't expect to meet the composer of Castlevania and for her to still be like a very kind of young, vibrant person. I figured, well, it's going to be like some musty old dude. But no, no. it's a pretty young woman who like you know could still be very active in the games industry now she probably I think she still does do composing and stuff I that really surprised me I just you know I think of this

as being such an old venerable series because it was something I played as a kid seeing like meeting kind of the people who work on it and being like oh they're half a generation room for me not a full generation that was that's pretty cool that was kind of surprising So, I mean, for me, like, the audiovisual appeal was always more than half of my personal appeal to Cassvania. gameplay, I think, even though, as I mentioned, like, it felt a little slow and clunky. At the same time, the risk-reward element of the power-ups and the traversal, which clearly they learned a lot from Gradius, you know, of like, oh, what it means to, like, invest in a power-up and, like, the two levels of power-up, like, power-imper-whip and, like,

choosing the sub-weapon. And then the multiplier of the sub-weapons as well, like, that at that time was enough of a complexity with the ramp of difficulty and, like, the no continues, that the whole thing just kind of did, it worked really well with as small as the game is too, because that's a thing too. It's not a very big game. No, it's not. Yeah. And you know, I would say you describe the controls

as clunky. I would disagree. I would say deliberate. I would say like every, there's a great economy of action. And yeah, you can't control your jumps in mid-air and stuff. But there is a lot of precision, but there's also a pretty good amount of speed. Like, this is, you know, it's not like Sonic

the Hedgehog fast, but it's still a pretty fast-paced game. And yes, Simon has, you know, this kind of this deliberate animation, but we're still talking about an 8-bit two-dimensional game. So there's not, you know, really downtime. And it's, it moves at a really quick clip. And a lot of people tell me, like, constantly I hear, well, you like Castlevania, so you must like Dark Souls. But like the proposition of playing those two games, like the feel of them and the mobility and the kind of the investment you have to make in your character's motions and like how you really have to economize your your behavior in Dark Souls.

It is a different experience and to me it's like that doesn't appeal to me. I don't think less of anyone who loves it, but that's not what I want. I want a little more immediacy. And I feel like Castlevania really strikes the balance. And something I've mentioned before in writing maybe not on the podcast is that the entire world is really designed around Simon's limits. like every you know the world is basically built of these blocks like eight by eight blocks tiles you know eight bit graphics but the way everything works is that simon can jump a certain height

his attack has a certain distance which can be slightly extended uh with power up and when you jump forward you can jump forward a certain amount too and they did a really good job of designing levels that work around Simon's capabilities and his limitations, and there really aren't jumps in the game that you have to be pixel-perfect. It's not like you have to stand at the absolute edge of a platform, but don't go too far or you'll fall off in order to be able to make a jump.

It has a little more leniency than that. So it does a good job of making you think about how you're moving, how you're traversing, how enemies are behaving around you, but not going so far. that it's really frustrating and it's it's kind of hard for me to look at this game objectively because it has been a part of my life for more than 30 years and I've played it so many times but I'm curious how like how Nadia who's who's how she feels about the controls because because like we grew up with it in all the you know all the things we always wanted like oh man

if only I wouldn't get stuck on the stairs and if only I could swing my whip a little faster like for someone who'd ever played a modern Castlevania to go back to this one like did you feel it was really stifling the controls not yet or like uh No. Well, she said she started on the NES, so she played Castlevania 2 and 3. Yeah, started on the N.S. Like, it started on Castlevania 3, which I finished somehow, God knows how. But even Castlevania 3, even though you still can't jump off the stairs, it's still

like, like, as much as Trevor still feels kind of like Simon, then you could play as Grant, which feels like twice as agile of a game. But I never play as Grant when I, when I... It's because he sucks in the American version. That's exactly. Like, they really nerfed him. But he has a lot of agility. And like, I remember at the time back in the day of Castlevania, you'd be like,

oh, man, if only I could swing my whip a little bit faster. You know, just because that investment in your attack. I don't know. It just feels like there's a certain, I think Parrish said it right when he said, like, there's a certain, like, purpose to it. Like, it's the way it's supposed to be. And I just kind of fall into Simon's patterns and his weight. Well, there's a gravity to him. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, and one thing that I think really works in the favor of the game is that the hitbox on Simon's whip is very generous. Like, if you swing your whip forward, like you don't have to hit something precisely on the pixel dig to get it like if it kind of falls within the box of your whip like moving forward like ahead of Simon

it's going to take damage not only that but when you I think in this game if you hit something when you swing back your whip it'll also take damage maybe that's it does there's a tiny no I think it is this one but it's a very tiny little spot and then like it's like one or two frames but still

the combination of your whip and all the different subweapons if you think about how and where they attack it does kind of mitigate all of his limitations strategically, too. Yeah, and you know, you just need to play the MSX variant of this game, which we'll talk about in a little bit, to understand how good the NES Castlevania is, because all the things that they got right in here,

they kind of did wrong on MSX, and that includes the hitbox on the whip. Like, you have to hit something pixel-perfect to inflict damage on it. There is no leniency in that. Yuck. And it's, it is really hard. Like, you know, all the rhythms and patterns that I'm used to, even though Simon controls the same on MSX, his attacks are different. And it's very, very frustrating if you expect the game to play like the NES game and to kind of to give you the little bit of grace that the NES game does.

It does not do that. It's very challenging. I will say NES, NES, Castlevania in America, even as a kid, like, it is balanced in such a way to where if you learn that, oh, yes, double, triple boomerangs or Holy Water makes the game. game pretty easy actually, right? Like, it isn't hard to get through most of the game if you have a fairly good build of weapons. As long as you don't screw up and get another weapon. Yeah. And also, you know, the kind of thing to balance that out is the fact that if you die, you lose those things and you have to start over. So you have to be careful about not dying. And Simon is pretty fragile. He can only take, you know, by the end of the game, after three hits, your next hit's going to kill

you unless you can find Walmeat. And so, you know, the, the damage that he takes carries over from one level to the next, you only get a refill once you beat a boss. So yes, it's one thing to say, oh, you just need to hold on to the triple holy water through the whole game. But actually doing that is very challenging, especially your first time through, because you are going to come up against enemies that move in ways you don't expect. Like you get to stage five and all of a sudden you've got, you know, the little fleemen, the hunchbacks jumping around. And they're so unpredictable. You've got, you know, the axe armors that

they actually kind of hover back out of range of holy water so you can't count on that to take them out. And they're really fast, they're pretty fast two of the axiomers, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, the axe armors throw axes at two heights,

high and low. They have a shield to block like standard throwing weapons and while they're doing that, you know, later in the game, or later in the stage, they're being accompanied by those damn flying medusas that move in the sine wave

pattern. So you have to keep track of a lot of things. So yeah, it's one thing to say like, oh, you just need to hold on to the holy water. It's another thing to actually hold on to the holy water. Yeah. And it's funny you bring up the first time we brought up the flying Medusa heads. Like, at that time, they're making like iconic, horrible enemy that I thought were really cool and really evil and always bothered me. And like, yeah, it's almost like a trope now, like that type of enemy. Like, what a brilliant concept for a side scroller, you know, an enemy like that. What was the origin of the

Medusa heads like in terms of horror? Was it like from? I mean, I would imagine what was the movie from the 80s? Clash of the Titans was probably huge. That's what I was thinking. The myth of Medusa is that Perseus cut her head off.

Like nothing to do with Dracula. No, no, no, not at all. It definitely is, you know, like a kind of one of those hammer films or I guess in this case a Harryhausen film. But they were cribbing from, you know,

from the mythology of... I think about, I think about But also, like, just a Boston caters. Even the first one, like, you walk in and you see the bat waiting for you, right? Or, like, Medusa, you see the friendly Medusa head waiting on the table for you before you approach it, you know? I think she starts out as a statue and then she unstones herself. Yeah, yeah. Like, just like that, much like the beginning of the game, these little touches, these little, you know, extra elements to add, like, storytelling to the game.

Yeah, and there's lots of areas in the game where you get a unique background, even though they were dealing with a cartridge with extremely limited space, storage space, you still get like a special stained glass room for Medusa or, um... The crypt for the mummies. The crypt for the mummies or the tower in the background when you're approaching the mummies. Yeah. Or like in, you know, in the last stage, you know, before you get to the very end, you see the clock tower in the background, the one part. No, that's stage three.

You see the clock tower when you're like halfway there. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Of course, you have the moon before you encounter Dracula, which is kind of iconic now. It's hard to have a Castlevania game without it. Yeah. And even above the kind of the exit from the clock tower where you're climbing up to Dracula's lair, they took the time to create an actual clock that you can barely even see. It's way up there. But they made a lot of smart choices and said, let's kind of splurge on some embellishments just to enhance this game, even though we're dealing with limited cartridge space. And it really works in the game's favor. It just creates this evocative place. And we were talking about the colors earlier. It's funny because, you know, I'm always trying to like record and stream from classic hardware and it's really hard to get the colors in some of the stages right like stage two on some hardware and with some color palettes it shows up as brown but on others it shows up as like a deep purple and i don't know which one is right

so i just kind of like well i'll just you know go with whatever the the system spits out at me but um you know even even with those kind of quirks and limitations of the nes where there's no fixed color palette. They still manage to create a game that just looks great no matter how you see it. Well, also, the clock tower as another trope, at the time, like, you know, I'd heard about it before I ever saw it, because it's pretty deep in the game. It just sounds like a cool concept. Well, it's on the back of the box. It is. But then when you finally get there, see all the animation, hear the music, and it's hard, and it's, you know, it's very memorable, and it's, I remember thinking this is so cool. And, like, still to this day, I think clock tower exchanges are

cool. Like, 30 years later? All these years later. Yeah, me too. Yeah, what a brilliant concept. Like, it's just like, they really, it's amazing what they came up with in this game and like how many smart ideas they hit on. And how many became staples for later games, like the

Clock Tower and something in the night is iconic. Right. Matt, I've got a great idea for a great idea for a podcast. You and me, we watch movies, right? And some of them are kind of bad, and so we make fun of them. But maybe some of them are good. Chris, that's a great idea. Let's do it.

And eat snacks. Movie fighters, an original idea on the Greenlit Podcast Network. How does Bloodborn stack up against, say, Oregon Trail? And is Bomberman just Lodrunner from a different point of view? Find out on Hardcore Gaming 101's top game. where we objectively, definitively, and scientifically rank the games you nominate for our ever-growing list. H.G. 101's top games. Twice a week, every week, right here on Greenlit. Running Diagnostics in three, two.

Men like that is a podcast. Good so far? That really sucks. Oh, no. Shut her down. Shut her down. They thought they could make something funny. They can't do anything. They can't. A born mission. We can. Listen to men like that.

There are a lot of podcasts with comic book reviews and interviews with some of the greatest creators in the industry, but only one will tell you scientifically what the worst comic book of all time is. And the best. We've been ranking comic book stories for six years. We have a list with over a thousand comics on it and we're adding more every month. Or Rock and Ajax on the Greenlit Podcast Network. So basically So, So, So basically, NES, Kasselvenia or Famicom Disc System Castlevania, or Famicom Disc System, Castlevania, which I guess technically came first.

Same game, a little bit of a different balance, no save files in the AS version. But basically, they just got it right. It's a remarkable piece of work where they, you know, this team that I'm aware of created any games together before from a company that was still kind of defining itself, basically just got it right. And again, to really appreciate how well they did with the NES, Castlevania, how right they got it, you just need to look at the other version that came out at the same time, like a month later in Japan, vampire killer or Accomajo Dracula for the MSX2 home computer,

which is basically this game, except it's just, it doesn't work as well. It's really frustrating and, like, it's intriguing and interesting, and I like to play it, but it's also really frustrating. When I look at it in a YouTube video because I haven't played it myself, it seems like a very interesting concept. You're looking at Castlevania, which with much more of an adventure feel like you would get in later games down the line. It's so strange. And, like, Jeremy, I think, did we work together when I first got it? It would have been about 2010 when I was working at one-up.

I bought an MSX2. And this is one of the games I really wanted for it. I actually don't remember that. Yeah, so, yeah, I have like a Sony MSX2. It was black. I was pretty disappointed in this game because it's like, it's kind of inscrutable at first. And then, like, you know, if you read up on like, what am I supposed to be doing in this game? It's like, wow, it's very complicated.

it's very difficult and and like it just everything feels a little off and like but at the same time it's it's impressive and it just how did this happen and it's it almost felt like it was trapped in time and like kept away from us for reasons like oh like it doesn't quite work it's it's like yeah it's it's very very strange and i found myself it was it was released in europe it's just that america didn't really have the ms so there was just no there was no market for it here but you know the reason this happened, as you say, is because it was designed by someone else. It was not designed by Hitoshi Akamatsu. It was designed by Akihiko Nagata, who would go on to be the producer on Snatcher and Police Knots and Middle Gear Solid. Oh, really? Well, it's much more kind of an

adventure game. Yeah. Almost like a PC adventure game. Yes, that is exactly what this is. So this takes the overall structure of Castlevania, the 18 stages divided into six levels. And you get like the same beats. You get a lot of the same graphical assets. Like, the levels look the same from one stage, you know, from one system to the other. And you, you fight the same bosses. You have the same hero who has many of the same capabilities. But then everything is just off. It's the Shelbyville of Castlevania. But MSX, which means no scrolling. Like, oh, you thought you were going to scroll. You thought you were going to scroll. Screen by screen. Right. But they make the most of that by introducing this kind of infinite scrolling on or infinite looping in some areas.

Some stages, if you keep going to the right, you'll hit the end of the stage and then you'll just wrap around back to the first screen. Some stages, it's vertical. And if you drop down, you'll, like, come in at the top of the stage. So they kind of play with that and force you to sort of explore space. But basically, your goal in each of the 18 stages is to find. the white key that leads you to the next level. It opens the door and takes you to the next level. That's really all you're doing. Like tragically, do you know what it reminded me of? Like after all those

years of like dreaming what this game is going to be, it reminded me of all things, a ghost house my card for Sega Master System, which is not that bad. I mean, but it's not Castlevania. And like, you know, when you're like, oh, this like fantasy alternate thing that you've been dreaming of for 20 years and you're finally playing, you're like, yikes, not what I thought it was going to be. I mean, I think it almost works. Like the fundamental idea of basically turning each individual stage into this kind of self-contained labyrinth that you have to, you know, explore and find items and things. You have to find keys to open chest that'll give you temporary upgrades. Like, that's fundamentally sound.

The problem is just not as well put together as the NES game. I mentioned the hit boxes, but also things like the enemies, the Medusas, you know, the sinewaves that they, they move in, they have a higher wavelength than on NES. So it's harder to hit them. Well, and things look a little different in an interesting way sometimes. Like some of the graphics are used, but other ones do look different to me. Yeah, I mean, I think there were some limitations. But, you know, things like bats will constantly respond, but they move faster on MSX

and they respond more quickly. So it makes, you know, any screen where you have spawning bats or spawning medusa heads, they're way harder. That sucks. Enemies take a lot more hits to destroy. Like you can't kill a skeleton with just one or two hits. You have to hit it like six times. That's stupid.

Yeah, it's just like lots of little minor... That sounds like a lot of little annoyances piled into one spot. Yes, that's exactly the problem with the MSX game, is it just does lots of little things that you're like, no, don't do that. But then you add up all those little things and it's a whole lot of like, don't do that. One big double. Did you see it through to the end? Because I think I bailed like half through. I haven't done that yet. The game is really hard because it gives you three lives and no continues. So realistically, the only way to finish this game is to buy a special cheat device that Konami sold called the Game Master. And I tracked one of these down. They're really hard to find. It took me a while to find one. And I finally had to import it from the UK, which fortunately I did before like international mail. got shut down because of the pandemic. So you can now cheat.

The cheat master, what I will let you do with Castlevania, because the MSX computer has two cartridge ports. So you plug in Castlevania's cartridge in one port, and then the Cheatmaster in the other. And at the title screen, it will say, like, what stage do you want to start on and how many lives do you want?

And that's it. So basically you can give yourself 99 lives. You can start on any stage you want, which is good because there is a part in like stage five, this part with Medusa. and moving platforms that is the definition of bullshit. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done in a video game. And miraculously, I streamed this game and I got past it on my first try through sheer

stupid luck. But when I was playing for myself and trying to record my progress, I spent like 10 or 15 minutes trying to get past it and finally just said, I've got to jump to the next level. This is ridiculous. And it's just full of things like that. Does the sheet device work on all MSX games, all Konami MSFs games, or literally just this game? It works on any Konami game released before this, I believe. And then they released a couple years later, they released the Game Master 2,

which will let you cheat on some other games. That's amazing. But yes, basically, I think they knew. The Game Master actually came out before Castlevania in Japan, but they left hooks for the Game Master in Castlevania, and there is actually a page, the back page of the manual, like, tells you, hey, go buy a Cheatmaster. Here's what it is. Like, they designed this game to sell a peripheral.

Like, that is literally what they did. They are like, go spend $4,000 and buy a peripheral so that you can get past stage three of this game. Hey, yeah, this game sucks. Go buy something else. Correct me if I'm wrong. This never made it anywhere except for maybe we wear MSS or like virtual console on MSSX. Yeah, it made it to the MSX.

virtual console in Japan only, not even in Europe. And that's it. That's the only time it's been republished. Because like Solid Snake, you know, got ported to PS3, but like, yeah, this is kind of stuck. Yep. Maybe for the, maybe for the best. Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's something here

here. And if you went in and did a ROM hack where you just changed some of the values of like Simon's Hitbox, gave people continues, made enemies a little less durable, made enemy patterns a little less, frustrating. I think it would be really fun. It's just it's it's really a game that shows the

difference between a good idea with poor execution and a game with a good idea and great execution. And that's that's the difference between MSX and yes. Have you ever encountered a super fan of this game? Do they exist? I know I know that some fans do exist. I actually had them comment on my stream like telling me how much I sucked because they they were just kids and they beat it easily. I'm like, yeah, whatever. Of course. I mean, come on Parrish. Get what the time's here. Right? I just think that the guy who made this at the time was and felt like

shit. He's like, oh man, look what I made compared to this really good game over on Fabricon. But I mean, it does try to be something different. It is not attempting to reproduce that experience. And that really comes into focus when you get to the hallway that leads up to Frankenstein's monster. Because on NES, that is literally just

a hallway. You walk, you fight two of those dragon skeleton things and then you fight Dracula's monster. but on MSX you know there's like these arches in the background that in the MSX version those arches are actually active doors and I kind of stumbled onto that by a mistake because it's just a loop you like just keep looping back to the beginning unless you squat in front of one of those archways and then that takes you into like the back layer of the stage kind of like the Goonies too actually oh that's cool and so it becomes this really big complex labyrinth and there's a lot of

interesting stuff that you can acquire like in addition to you know the keys that you pick up you can get these semi-permanent upgrades that will last until you reach the next stage and they'll increase your jump your movement speed um you can actually i do i do remember that there's like a light RPG increase your durability you can increase your um your whip strength and you can also like the whip is not the only weapon you can use there are only two subweapons the clock and the holy water, but Simon can get an axe and he can get a dagger. And those replace his sword, or his whip, sorry. And so you basically have infinite daggers that you can throw or an axe that flies like a boomerang, like the axe knights. But the thing about the axe is

that if you don't catch it when it comes back to you, it flies off screen and you have to go back to your whip. And also sometimes if you, like this game is really big on hidden objects. in the walls. Like you have the wall meet in Castlevania on N.S. But that's pretty much it. Whereas here, like you're smashing up, you're constantly smashing up walls, but when you break a wall with the axe, the axe falls

on the ground and you have to go over and pick it up. It's just so many weird ideas. You bring up all that stuff does remind me, oh yeah, all those like little power-ups and the throwing, and like, and you know, it's that RPG stuff is interesting that it's so early in this Castlevania and that would get picked up in other

ones down the line. But, like, you're wrong that, say, the NES, California doesn't have as many hidden secrets. Right, in the walls, there aren't as many hidden secrets. But there's lots of, like, if you stand in this place, if you kneel in this place, this treasure will rise up. But there are not, there are not as many of those in NES Castlevania as there are walls that you have to break here. Like, you get to the bridge leading to the mummies, and you literally have to break your way through just walls that are blocking the bridge. You are right, but there is a lot more of that in the NES Castlevania than, like, back in, like, there's more of those than you think you might have found back in the day of those

hidden chests and bags and stuff. Oh, no, I, I know where they all are, but, but those are just bonus points. Whereas in, in MSX, Castlevania, those hidden walls are all over the place and you have to sometimes break them in the right order in order to get keys that will take you to the next stage. Like, there, there's just so many places where you have to hit walls in kind of unintuitive places, too. Somebody really hated walls. Yes. There's a real, like, microaggression going against walls here. Anyway, it's an interesting game, and I would like to see it brought back, you know, revisited,

but with a little bit of refinement. Like, if M2 were to port this to something and then be like, okay, here's the original, like, the perfect emulation of Castlevania for MSX, and also here's the M2 version where we take out the bullshit, and it's actually kind of fun. I wish they could have taken, like,

all the best parts of this game, Vembrick, and, like, all the best parts of, like, Haunted Castle and get rid of all the bad parts of both those two games and make one good game out of those two games or something. Shane, there are no good parts in Haunted Castle. Ah, at the beginning, the tuxedo. All right, let's talk about haunted castle now. So that was the arcade game, came out in 1988, February, so a year and a half after the Famicom Disc System and MSX games that we've just talked about. And it's not called Castlevania, it's called Haunted Castle in the U.S. for some stupid reason, but it's Castlevania. And it's not fun.

Did you encounter it in the arcade? I did. I never saw this game. I never touched this game until it came out for PS2 in Japan on the Oratachi Game Center series. And, yeah, I was at OneUp.com. I also bought that hamster disc for, exactly, with a little three-inch CD. I remember playing this with a bunch of people, and we were all like, wow, this game is actually really bad and annoying. I just watched videos of it.

of it and just looked like much of arcade bullshit. I mean, I knew it was bad from being a kid, and, like, remember, I liked Castlevania. Then I saw this and it wasn't called Castlevania and had ostensibly good, like, big, big graphics, you know, like... Yeah, they did look good. Like, well, you're like, good is weird, because I read the time. Yeah. Oh, they're big, but kind of silly, and also this game's impossible, and it's like Cassavania, but, like, heavy metal Castlevania, but real bad. Yeah, it's got a real amateurishness to the graphics.

It's like Simon moves really poorly. Yeah, he moves really... He's got a really weird Belmont struck going on in this one. It's a weird one. It's like, he's holding his arm that he's like injured permanently. It's very strange. Like, oh, no, my chest, what's going on? Well, so this wasn't made simultaneous.

So you think they could have looked at what the other people had done more, right? No? Like... Yeah, this came out actually after Castlevania 2 on NES or Famicom Disc System. Or at least, you know, after it came out in Japan. So it does have some of the music from California. Castlevania 2, which is good. That's the best part of Haunted Castle is that, oh, you've got Bloody Tears.

Nice. Yeah, blood tears is always welcome. It must have been for a new arcade board, right, compared to what they were on previously. They're like, oh, look, this thing can make larger sprites. We should make, like, that must have been the order of business. Like, make the sprites larger than what we were doing before. And that didn't make it better to me. Yeah, we talked about this in our Castlevania Oddballs episode last year.

So I don't want to linger on it too long. But I will defend this, like, a little bit because there's things that like about this game, like the music. I like the intro. I like some of the graphics in it, but it's pretty much unplayable. Like, oh, I like, I like the parts where it does things you don't expect. Like, when, kill you? Well, yeah. I mean, you expect that from Castlevania. No, but there's like weird things that just pop up and like things that fall in your head and shit in this game. Creature of chaos. Creature of chaos. Yeah, but then there's the part that we, like, I always come back to where all of a sudden you're like thrust into another universe and Harpies attack you. And then without

warning, you're back in your normal universe. It's like, what just happened? What the hell? I mean, to me, it just feels like at some point, someone should have given them notes, like, yeah, this isn't quite as playable. It just felt like they went for graphics and like spectacle. There's like set pieces that aren't fun. Oh, it's an arcade game, so they didn't want it to be playable or fair. They wanted it to set the quarters out. They wanted your quarters. Yeah. But it's not one of those games where you're like, oh, this game is really tough, but I know I can beat it because it's so cool. It's just one of those where you're like, Whoa, this game is really hard, and it's a worst version of Castlevania.

It almost reminds me of Raston 2, and that's not a compliment. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely kind of going for that Rastin saga sort of thing, which is not good. So the giant, the giant Simon thing, we haven't, we haven't mentioned it by name. Simon Belmont, the vampire hunter, he's the hero. The giant Simon Belmont thing wouldn't really work out until Super Castlevania which is very much a game built around like, hey, let's make Simon's Sprite really big

and make it move awkwardly and let's make that cool. Yeah. Although when I played the game myself, Castlevania 4, my brother was like, why does Simon have an orgasm every time he falls down a clip? So I can't hear that. That's not the sound that I hear, but

okay, that's not how I interpret it. But I guess we all have different responses to those situations. Absolutely, especially when we're stupid little punk kids playing a game. But Super Castlevania 4 was directed by someone named Masahiro Ueno, who produced a lot of sports games, was the programmer on Metal Gear and Base Wars for NES, and later went on to work as quote-unquote franchise director on Contra and Time Pilot, but in a period where they weren't making those games, so I don't know on that one. All those new time pilots for Mobile, you know.

Yeah, right? But this was before that. so it's like a weird kind of in-between space, a liminal space. The producer on that was Kazami Kitawe, who was the producer on a ton of stuff like everything Kuanami did in the 90s and eventually ascended to business development heaven. So he just shows up as like business. Oh, yeah. I interviewed him back in the day when I was at EGM.

Oh, yeah? Let's hear about him. I just remember he was old and friendly. Oh. Yeah, that's nice. I like friendly old men. That's what I can really hope far with it. Had I known when he worked on this, I would have geeked out on him like I did

the guy who made Rondo of Blood like when I was in Japan years ago doing like you know Lament of Innocence cover story

I had brought my Rondo of Blood and like begged Ega to take me to the dude who directed Rondo Blood who was like a director and like took me

and like I had him autographed my Rondo Blood yeah he was like 70 years old Yeah I fan growled over Igarashi when I got to interview

him at Pax everyone gets one This game this game rocked my world because I was such a Sega fanboy that I was not going

and buy a Super Nintendo on day one, I was like, so Sega Genesis, I was like, I'm going to wait, I don't need this. And then as soon as I played Super Caspermania 4 and Act Razor and Super Power World and Nof Zero, I was like, fuck, I have to buy this. You were like SpongeBob in that meme. I need it. But it really was Super Cascafany 4 of all of them, of the entire launch lineup that was like, oh my fucking God, it's everything I've ever wanted. And this was my favorite Castlevania until I later played Symphony Night. And then like, In post, I think Rondo Blood is actually just as good, if not better than this. But at the time, I loved this game so much.

And I used to play through it. I used to play through it every year for like 20 years. I still play. Like, whenever I boot up my S&S classic, I always go straight to Castlevania Four. There's a warm-up and just play that opening stage with hear the theme of Simon and see the fence rise out of the ground. That's still so freaking metal. I used to just like let the music play as a kid.

I was just like bruised up and let the music play on stages. Oh, I used to do that. my mom would get pissed off. Yeah, I loved everything about it. And I loved that it was Castlevania, but blown out to like 20 times the scale. Right. That's the important thing to discuss

because we're including it here in this episode, even though the name is Super Castlevania 4, that's not really what this game is. Yes, it was the fourth released chronologically on a Nintendo console, but this is the original Castle. It is Simon Belmont's quest into the castle

to fight Dracula. And, yes, In Japan, it is just called Akamajo Dracula, which is the same thing that the NES and the MSX games were called. Yes, I was very confused by that for the longest time when I first came on the Internet, and people, of course, were like, you know, what abouting you and, like, you know, giving you a little bit of trivia when you didn't ask for it.

That was one thing, like, oh, it's actually the original Castlevania's remake. And I'm like, get it out of town. There's no way. But no, it's an original... I also remember when the first screenshots came out of this, I remember thinking it didn't look good. And then, like, it's kind of because the graphics, the way the graphics are drawn

don't translate well to like bad screenshots like the first screenshots looked weird and pixely but in motion this game looks so much better than just a screenshot and so much mode 7 trickery

holy crap yeah everywhere yeah I have to admit this game I went back to it to really spend some time with it last year for super NES works videos and I really expected

to just be like this is going to be so awesome and amazing and I really didn't I didn't really like it that much. I mean, it's... You were a little bit down on it in there, it's good. It's good.

But I feel like if you compare it to the original Castlevania, yes, there's more game here. It's bigger. But I don't feel it's as thoughtful in terms of like how the world works in relationship to Simon. It's not that there's too much, but they gave Simon the ability

to do a lot more with those whip. In Castlevania, you can whip forward. That's it. You can jump and whip or you can stand and whip. here you can whip in what five directions forward backward you can flagellate your whip and you can yeah you can even jump and then whip down while you're coming down or make it go limp and just slowly flagelight features of one of you

you can do all these things with your whip but because Simon is so big and he can do like his sprite on screen proportionally is really big and then you have a whip that you can aim in many directions you can basically cover the entire screen with your whip so at that point you're like, it's great, but then you pick up subweapons and you don't ever need to use

them. Why would you use subweapons when you can just use your whip? Because, you know, I did use Holy Water quite. Okay, yeah, sure. Holy Water does have the persistence, which is valuable, but, you know, like the axe. Useless. Dagger useless. Dagger useless. In Castlevania, the axe is incredibly valuable because, you know, the axe gives you an upward arc for your attack, which you don't normally have. but here you just aim up at an angle and you've hit something faster and more efficiently than with an axe. All of your criticisms are completely valid

and in fact like I was playing this again on PS4 when it came out last year in whatever the collection was and there is something unique about this game and that yes you're huge you're always kind of in the center of the screen and yes you can always hit every part of the level with your whip

and it's kind of easy but all that the presentation of the world and the ideas, and the ideas, and the music, it's more than the sum of its parts, but you're right, on a gameplay-specific level, it has very much gotten away from the economy of design that made the first game what it was. I just love the visual storytelling you have where you are actually on Dracula's estate. Right.

And you have, like, you start with the stables and you go on to, like, the aqueducts. I love that map, which is like little, you know, it's like this little diorama almost. It's beautiful. It's so cute. I love it. Oh, my gosh. I want one for my room. Yeah, this really is a game about spectacle.

It is a game about, like, every level is unique and has some kind of gimmick to it. I mean, the fourth stage is the one that everyone remembers because it's got the Mode 7 trickery. But it's just like, you know, even before you get there, you have falling rocks, you have waterfalls. There's levels you forget about, like, the treasury. brilliant. There's a lot of silliness to this game, too. Like, the treasury, you've got, like, these very goofy-looking ghosts flying out of the ground, just like a constant.

It's Casper. He's saying hi. Yeah, it's very silly. Like, this game doesn't take itself as seriously. Like, it's got a real kind of comical goofiness to it that, you know, it's an interesting take on Castlevania. Because it's, on one hand, you've got the music, which is sublime. Yeah.

It's amazing. and then you've got, you know, like, the treasury ghosts who are like, ooh, we're so scary. Halloween. I mean, like, thinking back on it, it is, it's so far expanded from the structure of just being Calcivania that the remake aspect of California gets lost a bit. And like, you know, here and there, you remember,

oh yeah, like this is kind of like that level, that level. But in post, when I think back to Super Calcassania 4, I don't think about those elements really. I mean, the clock tower is great, but really, it's more like all those weird, cool elements that were added just for this game. game. Yeah, like I really don't think of it as a remake, to be honest with you.

Right. Yeah. So almost as a remake, it doesn't quite work all these years later. Yeah, fair enough. It's more like a do-over, more of a reboot than a remake. Right. But I think about this fight against death, which is one of my favorites, like, you know, in front of the cartons. Oh, I love the room of close associates.

That's so awesome. Right. But then at the same time, but I remember the death in, you know, in Rondo Blood on the ship, that someone's actually better, you know? And so, like, oh, well, like, you know, this isn't the end-all. be-all Castlevania version. It just at the time was what I needed, what I wanted, and like the depth

of it, it actually is a little bit more of a Metroidvania than you kind of remember it being in that there are like some hidden paths and little different ways to go. Yeah, that's not Metroidvania. No, but like the, and the easiness of it too. And like the way you progress through the level has kind of opened it up more to like be less

of an old school Castlevania more of a leisurely jawn through a long game. There's that hidden area with the man and the dog and it makes me sad to think about. The man of the dog is the best part of that fucking game. He cries. Oh, it's so good. Oh, it's so sad.

What is the deal with that dog? Oh, I love it. Yeah, I get comments on that YouTube video still where people are like, this game's not too easy. This is like super hard. You know, Rondo blood is way easier than this. I'm like, uh... Hell no.

Are you so? Rondo blood kicks my ass. Super Caspera 4 is super easy. Yeah. It really is. And like, I've never, even though I love Castlevania games, I'm really not great at the, at the classic ones. But Castlevania, Super Castlevania 4 is,

pretty easy to jog through. Yep. It's still fun, though. I really enjoy it. Oh, yeah, it's great fun. You know, it's funny? I kind of want to remake of Super Castlevania for. A remake of a remake. Is that legal? I think so. Remake squared. Yeah, I said this was like a reboot, but it really wasn't because

it's it. That's it. There's no more. There are no other Castlevania games like Super Castlevania 4. It was like an experiment that is, yeah, it stands as a singular achievement in the series. And at no point did they ever say, like, Let's do another one of those.

I mean, both that, I'll say that game and Castlevania 64 are, like, so bespoke to their hardware. It's like, yeah, those are of a time. Well, I mean, at least Castlevania 64 had a Legacy of Darkness. Wasn't that what it was called? Yeah, the fixed, slightly fixed. Yeah, it's like a sequel, but also a remake or, like, repackaging. It was weird. I never played the 64 games.

You're not missing out. Sorry, I hear. Yeah, as much as, you know, Castlevania 64 was actually just called Castlevania. and probably, you know, with that title, should have been a remake, but it wasn't. It was a different character. And I think in Japan it was called like Dracula Apocalypse or something. So, yeah, so clearly not like the branding really gets muddled there. But it was not a 3D take on the original Castlevania.

It was Reinhardt Schneider killing skeletons. Schneider. Skeletons on motorcycles. Yeah, skeletons on motorcycles. And I think Frankenstein's monster chased him around. with a chainsaw through a hedge maze. There was some wild stuff in that game. That's pretty cool.

It was not a good game, but it was like, it was cramful of ideas. I would describe its graphics as look at a hole. You will turn to stone. Do not look. Don't do not look. All right. So we've talked about everything except the final, the true remake of Castlevania. Like, come at me. I love it. I love the remake of his hair. I love the soundtrack. Are you talking about the Castlevania version or the PlayStation version?

Yes. Okay. Well, we were originally going to just talk about Akamajo Dracula for X-68,000. But I guess we can get in-cadish. You can play that version with its original soundtrack. That's where I first played, it was on that PlayStation version. Right. Yes. The PlayStation remake of the X-86,000 remake of Castlevania, Castlevania Chronicles. That sharp computer never came out here. Did that come out in Europe?

That computer? I don't believe it did. I think it was Japan only. And it's a shame because it's a hell of a beast. It is basically the equivalent of a Capcom CPS1 board to the point that you can get basically arcade conversions of Capcom arcade games like Strider and Final Fight on X68,000 because it's the same hardware. So it's like people complain about, well,

or argue, like, is, is Final Fight for Super NES or Final Fight CD better? No, the answer is Final Fight for X68,000, friend, but is it because the resolution was perfect for? Is it something about the way it looks? Like, just looks. No, it's the same, it's the same processor. It's an, it's a 68,000 Motorola processor, like, which was also in the Genesis, right? It was and the Amiga, but this was like a much closer to match to, you know, in terms of RAM and everything, to what Capcom created their games on also this computer had like three different sound cards right so you have it there were different versions of the audio often yeah there were there was like a midi card and there was uh like the sound blaster equivalent and the basic built-in hardware i think an fm synthesis module right it was nuts yeah

like there's a version of bosconian that i know we've talked about on the show before that it's bosconian but it has this oh god absolutely scorching usokoshiro soundtrack to it it's crazy Like, why is this amazing music in here? What is happening? You own the unique nemesis for this thing, don't you? Is it you? Do you own that? No, I don't.

If you buy that, I'm coming to your house after the coronavirus. After the quarantine. Just move out here. It's great. It'll be good for you. I'll say, that is my holy grail right now is that nemesis for the $68,000. Really? I'm still trying to get my X-68,000 up and working.

I haven't had a chance to really mess with it, but I think maybe over the 4th of July holiday since it's not like we're going anywhere. I might devote some time to that. So had you emulated this before it came out for PlayStation? No, I hadn't. 68,000 emulators were not all that common at the time. So when this came out for PlayStation

in 2000. Yeah. So it came out in its original version and a remake. And I remember when I imported it for like $60, you know, because it came out in Japan first. I played the original version first because I wanted to have that experience. And I loved it, but it was hard as hell. It's hard. It's really hard. This is Castlevania. Like, it is very faithful to the original

Castlevania. It adds more levels. But, you know, in terms of your skills and just, you know, the way the world reacts around you, it feels very much like Castlevania. But this is Castlevania that knows that you've played Castlevania. It's kind of like that Final Fantasy 4 remake for DS. I was going to say Final Fantasy 4 for the DS with the one that screws with you. Yeah, these people, these people know all the tricks, so we are going to blow their minds by just totally changing everything. And that really comes into focus when you get into the second section and you go down, you get ready to go down into the water passageway with a fishman and you stop there and you're like, oh, I'm going to hit the wall and get some meat. And when you hit the wall, meat does not come out. Instead, an infinite stream of fleemen come out of this wall.

and they're just hopping all over and they will kill you because there's way more Flemen than you can possibly hope to manage and also you were like I'm just going to take a break here and get some meat no you're getting a face full of death you're getting Fleming

yeah it's like oh you love Casmania you just spent all this time and you're going to die all the time it's so hard and it's so good but the music is the best too like any of the versions of the soundtrack are so good yeah last year they had this setup at Long Island Retro Expo, which sadly won't be

taking place this year. But there's a guy who every year brings his X-68,000 computer with like the Roland speakers and the advanced sound card. And it's just like, it is magnificent. And he had this setup and I got to play it on his X-68,000.

And it was just a reminder that, man, this game is so good. Of course, Kurt Kolata of Hardcore Gaming 101, also the guy who created the Castlevania dungeon, the definitive Castlevania site in the days before, like Wikia, like he was there and he sat down and he just like blasted through the game. And I was like, well, yes, of course, the Castlevania dungeon guy is going to be really good at Castlevania. But watching him play was like, I'm envious because I do not play that game this

well. But yeah, it's so full of fun ideas. And even though it is basically a kind of a retelling of Castlevania, they add so much stuff in. There's like a stage where you're riding a raft down a river and you have to you know it's an auto scrolling stage sort of which normally sucks but it's challenging and interesting there's a stage where for no reason whatsoever a stained glass window explodes yeah and the pieces turn into a night that fights you and you have to fight this like stained glass night that's floating around in air and has all these sharp edges it's so cool they uh you know before symphony of the night they had the fountain in here like the fountain of blood.

Yeah, it's just, it's so full of great ideas. And it looks good like it's big chunky Simon, kind of like from haunted castle. But instead of being completely ugly and like make you vomit, it looks really good. And everything moves with grace. There's a lot of detail. But it does have that kind of considered design of the original Castlevania where, you know, everything kind of makes sense in relation to Simon. And you don't feel like, oh, you know,

they're really screwing me over here. They're giving me more than I can handle. They're making me do perfect pixel jumps, pixel perfect jumps. There's none of that. It's very thoughtfully composed. It's very, very hard. But at no point do you ever come away from this game thinking, man, this is BS. This is garbage.

Yeah, it kind of just feels like the best version of like the classic Alistamania formula. It really is good. I love it. It's been a long time since I played it. I remember enjoying it. Yeah, all this talk about it makes me want to dig it out. I think you can also download it as a PS1 game and play it on your PS3 or Vita. That's what I use my Vita for these days.

My Vita is my PS1 RPG machine. And if you think the 68,000 sprite of Simon Belmont looks beautiful, just wait until you see what they've done to him on the PlayStation 1, because he is fierce. Yeah, he is the raver Simon. He is Simon who went out clubbing in Tokyo in 2000. Well, he went clubbing with Ayami Kujima and came back looking fierce. It's awesome. Yeah, he's got...

Is that the one where he has the red hair? He's got red hair. He's wearing, like, leather, black leather. A leather, like, short skirt. And he's got eyeliner. He is, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's great. He's like, he's like the David Bowie of Simon Belmont's.

Yeah, he's like the Goblin King. And, like, and also the music is remixed by, The Goblin King of Belmont. The music in that is remixed by Yamane. It's fantastic. Yeah, it's all like techno club music. There's a track called, You God Damn Badhead. It's so good.

The original director of Dracula for X-68,000 was Hideo Ueda, who was also the director of Sparkster, Perodius, Axelay, and Sexy Perotius. So he was a dude who knew his action games. I don't know that he did a lot on X-68,000, but he was kind of all over the place. And in any case, he was just like, let's bring that sort of arcade mentality, like the really challenging design. Let's bring that to Castlevania and do something new and fun.

And then, uh, Kojiigarashi was the producer, overseer on the remake. And the remake doesn't change too much. It gives you the new music. It gives you a new Simon Sprite. But I don't think it's just like a remix, right? It's not like a total top-to-bottom recreation. When you play the arranged version, it's easier, I think, if I recall correctly. It could be, yeah.

I mean, it would be hard to be more difficult than. Because I ended up playing them both at the same time, and I got further in the arranged version for sure. Yeah, that makes sense. But it's, I would say, the ultimate version of the original Castlevania. like there's something really wonderful about the purity of the NES game and the precision

but you know just the the elaboration and the really complex visuals and just all the stuff they add to the X68,000 game and to Chronicles really is it's like the proper realization

of that game and the crazy thing is there's only a seven year difference between them not even seven years October 1986 to July 1993 but it's just shows you how far game tech and game design had come at that time. I mean, and also in the span, if you think about all these games, like, the variations on a theme of like a very, like five iterations here of one concept, they're all fairly different.

And you didn't see a lot of that happening in that space from other other publishers. Like, you know, there was a lot of sequels, a lot of like spin-offs, but not a lot of like, let's try this same thing again from a slightly different point of view. Yeah. Yep. So let's wrap this podcast up. So let's wrap this podcast up, because I don't feel like we need to belabor the point. But I would like to ask, if you were to remake Castlevania one more time, what would you do?

What would it be? I would actually like to see the MSX version realized in a way that is not crappy, because I am at heart more than anything, a Metroidvania fan, as much as I love the old action Castlevania's. And I'm really intrigued by the idea they have going, just the idea of exploring the first iteration of Castlevania as an adventure game. And if they can make that not crappy and expand upon it, as you said, even if just M2 takes it and, you know, gives it a good spit shine, that'll be good enough for me. I'd like to see that done. I really would like to see a remake of Super Castlevania 4. And I do kind of mean that. So that's one thing.

But I also, at the same time, I think, like, if you wanted to go back to the original Castlevania, I think, you know, if we get like a next generation of VR that's a little more freed from clunkiness and, like, I think the idea of like going through Castlevania in like a VR first person world with a whip would be kind of fun. That would be pretty awesome. I'd get really motion sick and barf everywhere, but I'd still do it. Right. If you kind of made it like fitnessy too, I don't know, something crazy. Just, uh, Castlevania VR. Hmm. I would not have thought of that, but okay.

Yeah, I'm on the same page as Nadia. I would like to see, you know, basically like take the X-68,000 remake of Castlevania and apply that ethos to the MSX game. So it would be better looking, it would be better constructed. And while it would still be challenging, it would, the challenge would come from fair design and not from BS like, hey, my whip doesn't have much of a hitbox. And also every enemy takes like 20 hits to take down. And that's not very fun. and the jump controls kind of suck. Like, clean up all those things and just bring out the gym that is hidden in this disgusting

ore. And that's what I want. This pile of slag. In any case, I don't know if there is a future for Castlevania. You know, you hear rumors. They did just release a mobile game. Is that out yet, actually? I played it at TGS.

Is that the Symphony of the Night one? It's very much in the Harmony of Despair style or Harmony. Yeah, Harmony of Despair, like the multiplayer. Yeah, I think my husband was playing that. and you said it was all right. Yeah, it's okay. Like, it's got the gotcha loop of mobile games as to be expected, but it seemed okay from what I played of it,

better than, you know, better than it could have been. But I guess, you know, between that and the Castlevania collection for Switch and Xbox and PlayStation, it does mean that Konami hasn't totally forgotten about the franchise. I think the Netflix show is bringing in a lot of young, new fans too. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. So, yes, I would like to get a proper revival of Castlevania, not a Lords of Shadow sequel or reboot.

Just like give us old school Castlevania. Don't belabor the point. Don't go too far with it. Just give us a good Castlevania game and that would be fine. That's all I want. All right. I can live with that. So I think that about wraps it up for this episode.

Thanks, Shane. Thanks Nadia for joining me. Can you let us know, as always, where we can find you online, Shane? You can find me on Twitter at Shane Watch, all one word. It's mostly politics or food pictures or jar, jar, fandom, video games, that kind of stuff. Nadia? I am on Twitter at Nadia Oxford. That's all one word.

And you can also find my writing at usgamer.net. And as I mentioned earlier, I am the co-host of the Axel of the Blood God RPG podcast. So please join us for that. It's pretty cool, I think. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, on Twitter as Game. Spite, and you can find me writing and podcasting and so on and so forth for limited run games. Oh, also I do that YouTube series. Video works.

So you can look my name up and you'll find me there and you can see videos about Castlevania games. I've done several. And Retronauts, of course, you can find on your favorite podcatcher for free. You can also subscribe to us through Patreon and get early access to all our episodes that are released on the public feed. And there's also exclusive episodes if you subscribe. at the $5 per month level. There are other special treats that you can get at higher tiers,

but, you know, that's the basics. It's a good value proposition. I highly recommend it. It'll make your life better and your feet smell better. So you should definitely do it. That is not a guarantee. But yes, go to patreon.com

slash retronauts and you can find us. And I think that's about it. So, yeah, just keep an eye on my, the podcast feed and on the videos and on everything we do because we'll keep talking about Castlevania. We don't shut up about it. And I'm sure we'll reconvene at some point to talk about more Castlevania.

So please look forward to it. And... ...and... ...and... ...the... ...the...