It’s really amazing that the Castlevania series ever lived long enough to be one of the great franchises of our childhood. While the series has had its hits and misses over the years, for the most part we all have a fondness for one entry or another. We usually look at the series with rose-colored glasses.
Well, Konami has returned to yank those rosy pink spectacles off your face and stomp them into the ground with their Castlevania Anniversary Collection. The CAC is a tribute to the origins of the series, combining the original three NES Castlevanias, along with the 16-bit era SNES and Genesis sequels and the old-school Gameboy adventures, and Kid Dracula, a game that never saw western shores. It’s a wonderful reminder that some games just don’t age well.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to love about this collection. Super Castlevania IV on the SNES was one of my favorite games of that era, and playing it on my Xbox had me grinning ear-to-ear. But there’s also the blunt kick in the nuts that is the original trilogy.
The first Castlevania was a pain in the ass as a kid, and playing it as an (older) adult, it’s even worse. As a kid, if I couldn’t pass a level or defeat a boss, I wrote it off as “man, this game’s hard.” As an adult, I still say basically the same thing, but it’s generously padded with a plethora of expletives and it’s paired with the knowledge of good game design, or lack thereof.
Classic music and iconic imagery aside, the very first NES Castlevania is actually pretty fucking terrible. Seriously. Go play it. While the level design isn’t incredibly difficult, you’ll have your share of frustrations as you would with many old-school video games. It isn’t until around stage 12 or 13, when you’re making your way up to the Grim Reaper boss, that you’ll want to punch something. The Grim Reaper fight has to be one of the cheapest, most incredibly annoying fights I’ve experienced. There’s no pattern. There’s no window of opportunity. The Reaper throws his scythes at you non-stop, and destroying them only spawns more. Thankfully there’s an ability to create a save state, because I died and re-loaded at least fifty times before I defeated him. Even when I won, I didn’t really feel any sense of accomplishment, it just felt like I got lucky.
I’ve seen videos online of people beating the Grim Reaper rather easily, and my hats off to them, because that piece of shit had me ready to throw my Elite controller. Now I’m currently getting my ass handed to me repeatedly by Dracula.
As a whole, classic Castlevania is a cheap, cheap game. While that’s not exactly breaking news, it’s amazing how this series ever gained enough traction, especially with its cheap mechanics, stiff controls, and notoriously cheap monsters.
After all, this game gave us the Medusa Heads, which are not only a staple of the Castlevania series but also the poster child for rage-inducing enemies.
