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Retro Gaming With Castlevania and Friends
Jeremy Parish, over at 1up, has single-handedly taken up the banner of the classic game. Today, he talks about Castlevania and other classic vampire killers. From the article: "There was recently a rather lively debate on my personal blog about how silly the whole franchise has become, considering it started off as little more than a loving tribute to classic monster movies and has somehow mutated into a rather straight-faced effort by silver-haired pretty boys to battle vampires. It's like a horrible Ann Rice/DeviantArt mash-up, based around a not-quite-menacing villain whose job is basically to serve as a MacGuffin for exploring twisty castle corridors and has occasionally been depicted as a dude in a badly-designed tuxedo."
If we're talking about Castlevania specifically, and not the knock-offs, then the series has still produced generally great games. there are a few notable exceptions (aka, any Castlevania game that occurs in a full 3-D environment), but the 2-D games on Game Boy/GBA/DS are downright awesome, and while a little short on length, excellent successors to what i still consider to be the best 2-D side-scrolling game ever made, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (for PS1). just like i didn't play the original Castlevania purely for the story, i still don't play any of the games since then for it either. getting upset over the color of the main characters hair, or the fact that many of them haven't been Belmont family members is just ridiculous, because the underlying games are still engaging and fun. and, isn't that the point?