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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."
I got as far as "There was recently a rather lively debate on my personal blog ..." and then gave myself a swirly.
I've played a good bit of these games, or at least the ones that came out in the US....
My favorite, even more than the modern Metroidvanias, is still the first game. It's just such an elegant combination of control and reflexes. The thing about the game to realize is that your character is purposely limited (you can't control how high you jump, you can't change direction in mid-air, can't jump very high, can't walk fast and climb stairs even slower) but has a powerful main weapon. None of this two-pixel-long sword crap, your whip extends like four blocks ahead of you! And once powered up, which wasn't hard at all usually, it could take out most non-boss foes in one hit.
On the other hand, your enemies were a lot more manueverable than you, and of course it turns out that it was not Dracula who was the bane of Simon's existence but gaping pits. When a friend told me that "Dracula X" for the SNES's version of Dracula was fought over a giant hole and was made much harder as a result, I realized it: gravity is classic Castlevania's secret ultimate boss! "So, we meet again, player! I see you've met my lackey Dracula... a charming fellow, and his fangs are quite deadly, but he is as nothing next to my awesome power! Now you must fight us both at once!" (Bottomless Pit runs out and just looms underneath the fight.) "Take that!"
Hm. Bottomless Pit. Something makes me think a lot of people are going to use that as a character nickname for the new Smash Bros....
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?
You got perharps the most pathetic First Post of the Month, not only you got one typo in the title and two in the two-word post, but the actual first post was posted 6 minutes earlier.
You just got troll'd!
### Clearly, they haven't gone back and tried playing those games now that their standards are higher.
I have gone back to many games and even visited plenty of new games of the old times which I have missed back then and most of them are still extremly amazing, sure, graphics might no longer be top notch, but gameplay is still pretty much wonderfull. The only real issue I have with games of the past is that their interface can suffer from some larger usability issues, this are mostly no big deal when you get used to them, but they can hinder getting into a game (having to press 'Select' instead of up/down to move between savegames in Zelda, having to do a lot of more clicking to get something done in Warcraft or Dune then in todays RTS, etc).
### Hit things and die, jump around, solve a puzzle, hit things and die.
That sounds just like todays games, only that todays games often interrupt the action with more or less useless cutscenes and other annoyancies, while old games focus on the important part. And speaking about story, most old adventure games still beat the shit out of todays games in terms of story.
### Today, ordinary kids have made superior games using nothing more than Flash.
Please show me a few flash games that come even close to the greatness of a SuperMarioBros or Metroid, sure there are plenty of flash games around, but most of them suck in terms of gameplay quite a lot and aren't really good for anything more then a few minutes of distraction.