Castlevania: The Adventure / Rebirth

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JaySevenZero
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Castlevania: The Adventure / Rebirth

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Castlevania: The Adventure (Game Boy) / Rebirth (WiiWare) 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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Mr Ixolite
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Re: 537: Castlevania: The Adventure / Rebirth

Post by Mr Ixolite »

Out of the quite considerable number of Castlevania games I've played, I'd rank The Adventure at the bottom alongside Simons Quest*. The more classic games in the series have always had stiff movement as well a stiff challenge, but The Adventure is just too sluggish and too unforgiving, and by the time of the prolonged death-trap stage I called it quits. The game just isn't much fun to play, and unlike almost all other games in the series, the audiovisual side of things does little to compensate.

So it is then to the credit of The Adventure: Rebirth that it is not only a great game, I find it one of the best iterations of the Classic-Vania style. The game handles well and looks great, with a somewhat unique identity due to elements lifted from the gameboy game, such as the giant rolling eyeballs. I also love how a lot of the music is also taken from some of the more forgotten entries in the series, such as making a killer stage theme out of the high score music from Haunted Castle. And I will always appreciate a Castlevania game that gives Dracula not two, but three increasingly monstrous forms. One can only hope this game is slated for some future Castlevania collection, as it does not deserve its current state of limbo.

*Having not played Haunted Castle
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Alex79
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Re: 537: Castlevania: The Adventure / Rebirth

Post by Alex79 »

I know this game doesn't have a very good reputation, but my first impressions were that the game was a competent, if stripped back, approximation of Castlevania. By stage 3, however, it turned in to an absolute horror show (no pun intended). The race against the wall of spikes, hampered by the pixel perfect jumping required and the awful s-l-o-w--d---o----w-----n meant that I felt absolutely no guilt in abusing save states for the first time in the series.

The game has about 4 or 5 enemies throughout, and at only four stages long it can be rattled through in an hour (using the aforementioned save states). It's fairly poor, but I hear the second Gameboy game improves things a bit. Hard to recommend this to anyone other than those who bought the Anniversary Collection and want to get their moneys worth! Oh yeah, the bosses are laughably easy, too!

The high point of the game for me was the music which isn't bad for a Gameboy game.
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psychohype
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Re: 537: Castlevania: The Adventure / Rebirth

Post by psychohype »

It’s easy to hate on Castlevania: The Adventure, and I’m not saying it’s the greatest game ever—or even above average. But I was 10 years old the first time I played this game, and I can’t say I hated it. I had just recently gotten a Game Boy, my very first actual game console. Before that, the closest thing I had was a Tiger Electronics handheld game. OK, I had 4 or 5 Tiger Electronics games, but they were all miserable to play. I was beyond thrilled when I discovered that our local video rental store had a small collection of Game Boy games. Castlevania: The Adventure was the first title I picked out. I knew nothing about it, other than it was a Castlevania game, and the kids at my school seemed to love Castlevania.

From the very first level, the game truly did feel like an adventure. There I was, trekking through some kind of mountain graveyard, whipping monsters to death. Then I got to level 2 and I was contending with … boulder-sized rolling eyeballs? Sign me up! Then came level 3, and talk about unexpected. The entire level was one gigantic, mechanized spike trap! Deadly spikes closing in from every direction. Try as I might, I didn’t manage to get through that level before the rental had to be returned, but it all made a lasting impression. I was surprised how familiar everything still felt decades later when I finally returned to the game on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection.

If we’re grading the game on a curve, I don’t think you can call The Adventure a total failure. It’s not like the Game Boy had a lot of breakout masterpieces right off the bat. If the goal was to translate the Castlevania experience onto much less powerful hardware, I think it more or less hit the mark. At the very least, it put those God-awful Tiger Electronics games to shame.
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Re: Our next podcast recording (18.9.22) - 537: Castlevania: The Adventure / Rebirth

Post by Suits »

I might be late but it's cool, I love this game.

I've only played the Game Boy version.

This is a big personal game for me and the spark in my love for the whole franchise.

My mates Dad had this and I'd borrow it, thinking it was a big boys game. It was.

It's slow but is still very playable and you can feel the video game in there, it's just very clunky.

For a game released in 1989 on the game boy to come out with such strong sprite work, gorgeous parallax scrolling and banging music - set such a high bar back in 1989. Although it's clear this came at a cost to the how the game runs. It's not even smooth, it's just too slow sadly.

There is an official Konami version of this on the Konami GB Collection Vol. 1, it's a Game Boy Color (Colour) game, so has some wicked colours, is ever so slightly optimised to utilise the Color's extra power but oddly looses some parallax scrolling in the process.

I never beat the original Game Boy game but have later redeemed myself through the power of the Castlevania collection and save states.

Worth adding that I have a boxed version of this. The box art, and in particular the artwork in the manual is unique to this game and wonderful.

Overall this was on essential step for what was to come next in Belmonts Revenge and then much further down the line with the franchise and the hardware that bares the Game Boy name.

Very important game for the Game Boy.
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