Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

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JaySevenZero
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Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula) for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Pconpi
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Pconpi »

Castlevania has been a blind spot in my gaming having only played Aria of Sorrow on the GBA so I thought I would play along with the show. I purchased the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for the PS4 which set me up for the next few episodes (it was just on sale on PS Store for $5.95) and jumped into the first adventure. I found it a compelling NES era game that is still fun to play today. Not being familiar with Castlevania it took me a little bit of time to understand some game mechanics like hearts not being health, you can’t jump onto stairs, and pressing up and attack to use your sub weapon. But once I got my bearings I enjoyed this classic, whipping my way through in just a couple of hours using save states.

Having now also started Castlevania 2, I appreciate the focus and simplicity of the 1st adventure. There are only six bosses but each one has a unique mechanic, progress in difficulty, and can be tackled in different ways by the different sub weapons. Also, the fact that you are facing off against a hall of fame roster of monsters (mummies, Frankenstein’s monster, Medusa) all in Dracula’s castle makes it seem like a goofy, spooky party you are crashing. This combined with the soundtrack and sprite art make it a celebration of Halloween style gothic fun. The stage 2 soundtrack in particular captures that feeling and vibe perfectly.

I am looking forward to seeing the series progression, all while slaying Dracula and whipping monsters into bits.
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Quiet Paul
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Quiet Paul »

[Apologies for length]

My first trip to Dracula’s kingdom actually didn’t happen until Castlevania for the N64. For better or worse*. With many future attempts at other Castlevania games, alas, I ran headlong into the portcullis. I just figured these games were not for me.

Many years passed and just a few days shy of my birthday in 2019, the ‘Castlevania Anniversary Collection’ was released and I thought “Well, why not!”.

I played through the first game and thought it was great! The gameplay mechanics though took a little getting used to but made for a fun time. Each part of each level has a few ways to beat it and some of the more challenging parts became my favourites. For example the room where you cross the bridge and eagles drop off fleaman after fleaman and if you don’t quite nail the timing of your attacks, you can become very easily overrun. My first time through I found this a bit frustrating. Since playing it again for the podcast I’ve been able to take my time and figure out exactly how and when to attack making it a breeze!

The infamous Axe Knight and Medusa Head combo room preceding the Grim Reaper fight is another example. First time through here I used the cross boomerang and button mashed my way through and fought the Reaper with maybe half health or less. This time I took the stop-watch making it easy to get through that room without losing much/any health but sacrificing my sub weapon against the reaper since the watch is useless in this fight.

So that balance of being able to do things your own way but recognising that there’s pros and cons for different approaches makes for some fantastic gameplay!

The music is instantly enjoyable and found myself foot-tapping and humming my way through the hordes of evil. My personal favourite being ‘Wicked Child’. I could hear it in my head being played by a rock band and sure enough YouTube had plenty of rock/metal covers to fulfil that want!

I also completed the Japanese version recently and didn’t notice any major differences beyond the easy mode which I managed to complete in about an hour which is cool! Definitely a great way for someone with less time to devote to the game to experience it!

All in all it’s a great experience and has placed the original Castlevania in amongst some of my favourite games.

*I actually like the N64 version! But couldn’t help have a dig since its 3D platforming is, well, not great.

3WR: Finger Lickin’ Good!
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Magical_Isopod »

For sake of clarification, will this include the PS1 remake of Castlevania as well? Or are we strictly examining 8-bit variants?
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by ratsoalbion »

This podcast is solely about the Famicom/NES original (1986). Super Castlevania IV is a remake/reimagining of that but we'll cover that separately.

I assume what you're referring to is 'Castlevania Chronicles' which is a remake of the 1993 game for the X68000, itself a remake of the original. We may reference it but the real original is the focus of this show.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Magical_Isopod »

I was thinking of checking out the PlayChoice-10 and Amiga versions, just for the sake of variety. :P I'd champion the DOS one as well but uh... Even I have standards.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by stvnorman »

I only got to playing the first Castlevania on Konami’s Anniversary Collection on Switch in 2019, but by that point I’d played most other games in the series on most platforms. Symphony of the Night and Super Castlevania IV were also established as two of my favourite games ever. For this show I decided to play along again, treating myself to the Japanese version, and I did so right on the back of Rondo of Blood on PC-Engine Mini – the last of the classic games I’d never finished! This Famicom cartridge version offers an easy mode, with more lives, hearts and damage boons, but significantly, you get frozen for a split second rather than knocked back when you’re hit. Otherwise the candle and power-up placement in either mode also makes it a bit easier, but the few other differences are minor.

If you only had access to a NES, I couldn’t recommend this enough. It’s hard, but you always know you’ll eventually beat it when it gets really rough. And in return you’ll be treated to some of the most atmospheric sights and sounds the system was capable of offering, with wonderful attention to detail in both. And some of the places it goes with colour are just genius! After Rondo of Blood it does feel like the gameplay still has a lot of evolving to do, and if you wanted the best version of this game, play the Super Castlevania IV retelling instead. But it’s still a hell of a start to the series!
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by RCheeze »

I have so much nostalgia for the original Castlevania on NES and I admit it's comes down to the aesthetics. I can remember playing the original game when I was 6 or 7 back in the early 90s and something about it just really captivated me. The opening title, the color scheme, the macabre look, the whipping mechanic (which was pretty novel to me at the time, having largely played things like the Mario Bros. games and Bionic Commando) were all just very satisfying to my younger brain. And the opening song — Vampire Killer — is by far one of my favorite video game tunes of all time. I always love finding new renditions of it in future Castlevania games or created by fans online. And yet, all this said, the game is hard, clunky at times and I have only gotten to the final boss using save states on the Wii U version. In 2021, I still think Castlevania is playable, however with limitations that you just have to accept for the time of its release.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Alex79 »

The anniversary collection is only £3.99 again on Switch if anyone is looking to pick this up cheap. I'll be grabbing it.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Alex79 »

I have no nostalgia for the Castlevania series, having only ever played a small handful of the games, and never as they were released, so I came to this game fully expecting to be hit by a barrage of outdated annoyances and frustrations. I'm happy to report that this couldn't have been further from the truth. What I played was a fun, challenging action platform adventure which could happily stand amongst contemporary releases from the genre which it spawned. Castlevania looks great, sounds great, and most importantly, plays great. It rarely feels cheap - although it's not entirely faultless in that department, the character handles well and the combat is almost perfect. I really enjoyed this game, and am looking forward to making my way through the rest of the early games in the series soon.

THREE WORD REVIEW: Still worth playing.
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DaMonth
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by DaMonth »

Ok, so maybe I'm just stupid, and I emulated the game so maybe I'm invalid, but I played this when Simon got in Smash, just to get invested. Got to Dracula's final form. I understand it's an old game, but is it just awful that you basically need Holy Water to stand a chance at killing him without getting hurt? I savescummed the heck out that fight and as far as I can tell, there was no way to tell between his low jump and high jump, no pattern to when he'd high jump so you can run under him, and running under the low jump even frame perfect was actually impossible. So that last bit was a frustrating blemish of a fine enough Nintendo-hard Konami experience.

Just wanted to rant a little.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Alex79 »

Just going to say, you don't need Holy water at all to beat the final boss. I used my standard whip in his first form and a combination of whip and boomerang crucifix on the bat form. Didn't take damage till the bat stage, but even then finished with half health. It's just finding the right technique. That, and a little bit of luck I guess. I agree, it's very frustrating you can't go under him on the lower jump, despite the sprite clearly being through cleanly, you still take damage for it.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Pixel Hunted »

Classic Castlevania had been a big blind spot of mine up until the Anniversary Collection and I was very pleased this lived up to the hype. It's an incredibly cliche comparison but the first game finally clicked with me when I started thinking of it as a 2D Dark Souls more than an action platformer. Like Fromsoft's games action has to be well-timed, hammering the attack button rarely pays off, and it rewards paying close attention to enemy behaviour.

Got pretty far without save states too, though the Grim Reaper boss had me running for their safety blanket.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by OneCreditBen »



If you good folks are struggling with boss battles or anything of that nature.
It's all covered in here.
This was a live clear on one of the streams, before I had a camera set up, and I'll warn you in advance, it gets a bit shouty when Dracula dies.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Toon Scottoon »

In the late 80's, as a seven or eight year old kid playing Castlevania for the first time, I would have told you whipping monster butt with a cool chain whip felt good, looked good, and sounded good, but I sucked at it.

Under closer scrutiny, and with thirty years of on and off gaming under my belt, I can see that this title is iterative in both its gameplay and its story beats. Castlevania as a franchise has been and continues to be what my California high school students would call "a biter", a term playfully and in this case appropriately deployed when describing someone or something that mimics something else.

But whether Konami was cribbing from early action platformers as they were in this game, or Link's Adventure in the franchise's next main console entry, or God of War in the more recent Lord of Shadows games, I can confirm after returning to Dracula's Castle through the excellent Anniversary Collection on Switch, that whipping monster butt with a cool chain whip still feels good, looks good, and sounds good, and perhaps I've even gotten a fair bit better at it.

Three word review - Bite was contagious
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by psychohype »

[LONG VERSION]
The original Castlevania. I adore this game and the long-running series it inspired. For many years, the original Castlevania was high up on my bucket list for games to beat — one sitting, no save states allowed. One year, when I was 26 and visiting some family in another state, I played the game on their Wii virtual console. I even managed to make it all the way through the infamous Level 5 hallway with the dreaded axe knights and flying Medusa heads. Of course I fell almost immediately afterwards to the boss fight with Death, but the experience gave me hope that I might one day triumph.

It finally happened at age 36 after I got my hands on an NES Classic mini console. I will admit, my first successful run took a few hours. I first had to get back to that Level 5 boss fight with Death and figure out how to cheese him with the upgraded holy water attack. Then it was the final level and face off with Dracula himself. Getting to that final boss fight was bad enough, but then managing to beat him was even tougher. I had heard so much about how difficult Dracula’s final demon form could be without a fully or even partially upgraded holy water sub weapon. But it was the first part of the fight that was giving me so much grief. For some reason, I just couldn’t seem to avoid having Dracula spawn right on top of me as he teleported around the room. I got lucky a few times and managed to reach the final form, but my meager health was not enough to sustain even a single hit. I tried and tried and thought I might never actually see the credits after all. But then, I simply paused and reflected on the fact that after so many failed attempts, my brain had unconsciously been starting to recognize a strange pattern to Dracula’s random spawning. So I tried something new. In the brief seconds between Dracula’s teleportations, I moved my Simon Belmont character in an alternating left and right evasion pattern, and it worked! I had unlocked the simple but elusive pattern to avoiding his random spawns. From there, it was simply a matter of executing the strategy. I got to the final form with a few hits to spare, and it was enough to vanquish the demon and hear that amazing final-boss-defeated melody.

That first win was not pretty, but I did it. The next day, I attempted it all over again and managed to beat the game in less than an hour. I’ve since beaten the game several times on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, as well as the Game Boy Advance version, where I even pulled off a one-credit clear — no continues required. I say all of this to encourage anyone out there that this game is entirely beatable, and it’s an excellent gateway for getting into retro games in general.

[SHORT VERSION]
For my money, Castlevania is a near perfect game. The team at Konami got so many things right with this first attempt. The engrossing rhythm of walking jumping and swinging your whip at all those floating candles. The crunchy, forceful feeling of that whip (yes, a whip!) as it crushes against your foes. The music! My biggest gripe is that they simply made the boss fight with Death too hard. I respect anyone who can take him down with the flying cross sub weapons (or none at all). To me, there’s no shame in exploiting the easy kill using the upgraded holy water, and the fact that they left that exploit in the game actually saves Castlevania from being relegated to the level of games that are accessible to elite players only. I repeat, with a little bit of patience and memorization, you too can beat this game ... and have a lot of fun doing it.

I don’t know if the original Castlevania is my favorite in the series, but it certainly established the formula for so much of what followed. Not just that. It still holds up as one of the absolute finest examples of the medium—from any era of gaming. I highly recommend it.

Three word review: perfect series origins
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Superuser »

This is one of those games I played on emulator, out of historical interest. I'm glad I did because the game is absurdly hard. It's one of those retro games that's short on paper, but long in practice, only because it's so difficult.

A lot of that difficulty comes from trial and error. Many platforming challenges require memorisation instead of creativity, and your scope to escape from a dangerous situation is limited. It's less about thinking on your feet and more about learning an exact timing pattern to avoid the Medusa heads and other enemies. The bosses have huge health bars and are real struggles that I couldn't overcome, and had to cheat to satisfy my curiosity.


In terms of legacy, the 'action platformer' that Castlevania typifies is doing better than ever. Picking up weapons and using them for effect is now common across the genre, as is managing multiple resources. What hasn't stayed is the idea of committing to your jumps. The series would hold onto this for a very long time, but almost every platformer starting from the 16-bit era would allow you to adjust your course mid-air. Though I'm sure Michiel and Leon have many examples to the contrary!

The visuals are impressive, and I'd say the music is still impressive. The theme is distinctly mature, which is a break from any other popular Nintendo title. I understand the game was censored outside of Japan for nudity and religious references, but even still it was unique. The horror vibe may be part of the reason for its enduring fame.

Three Word Review: For The 80s.
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Re: 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Mr Ixolite »

To me the defining appeal of the classic Castlevania games, even in comparison to other linear platformers, is the feeling of progressing on a journey. The wholly unique stages, the map that tracks your progress, even the plodding but committed walking and jumps sell the feeling that every step forward matters, that every screen and enemy cleared has pushed you that much closer to the villains lair.

And the games ultimate genius is making Dracula said villain. It immediately provides flavor and context to the quest; you’re not trekking through a generic fantasyland fighting generic monsters to take down a generic warlock, you’re going through Transylvania, fighting the Universal Monsters in the service of Dracula himself. And it doesn’t feel like the game is cheaply coasting on this iconography, because it molds it into something distinctly its own. Castlevania Dracula is not some aristocrat on the hunt for young maidens and London real estate; he’s the biggest of the bad, the demonic prince of darkness who can teleport and shoot fireballs, and for some reason the Grim Reaper is his henchman. And the series hits this unique funhouse horror identity right out the gate.

Revisiting the game for the podcast it remains quite playable, both in audiovisual and gameplay terms, though with the asterisk that I ultimately resorted to save states and countless lives when facing Frankensteins monster, Death and his hallway, and Dracula himself. But apart from that, Castlevania is easily one of the better NES games I’ve played. Theres nothing quite like reaching that final moonlit staircase, and knowing that you’re about to whip some vampiric butt. Give or take a few dozen deaths.
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Re: Our next podcast recording (25.9.21): 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by duskvstweak »

I have such a vivid memory of my mom playing a rented copy of Castlevania for about an hour. I had no idea what the game was, but it looked spooky and colorful. It looked exciting! Unfortunately, it also looked hard and my mom stopped playing (she has a famously awful memory but she still remembers that game being too difficult). It would be 15 years late when I finally took a crack at the game but it still held all the same allure it had originally had all those years before.

It's like the classic rock of gaming. For it's time, it was blazing new trails, courting with the devil and giving us one of gaming's longest running acts (not unlike the Rolling Stones!) It's a bit dated, but it still rocks.
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Re: Our next podcast recording (25.9.21): 488 - Castlevania (Akumajō Dracula)

Post by Magical_Isopod »

I probably missed the podcast recording, but alas.

I just played a couple levels of the first Castlevania (per the Switch collection from M2) and... It's alright. I'm really not keen on NES games in general, due to the relatively primitive design and simple gameplay mechanics... But I quite liked what I played here. It controlled very well, and it seemed well-designed. The sound was hit and miss - I thought the composition of the music was amazing, but many of the sound effects were ear-piercing and uncomfortable. What killed my ability to enjoy this game, however, was the graphics. I understand it's an NES game, but I found the limited colours to be often garish and clashing, and the art on display here isn't especially great compared to the 90s NES titles I'm more familiar with. It's an earlier game, so it has to be viewed through that lens, but the visuals are pretty bad from my modern lens.

If memory serves, this game has a remake, so I'll have to check that one out.
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