Review: Castlevania II - Simon's Quest (NES)

Another famous game franchise entry is up for review here in the form of the sequel to Konami's side-scrolling action/adventure game, Castlevania. Unlike so many follow-ups, Simon's Quest actually innovates and dramatically changes the gameplay structure of its forebearer. These deviations don't work in all cases though, making Castlevania II a game that strives for more ambitious inventiveness than it's ultimately capable of fulfilling.

The alternative tone is apparent from the outset as whip-cracking protagonist Simon Belmont begins his quest in a small town absent of enemies, but instead inhabited by townsfolk who offer cryptic "clues" for Simon's journey as well as selling items as merchants. The only direction given the player is the paragraph of prologue during the title screen dictating that Simon must recover five pieces of Count Dracula, whom he defeated in the previous title, in order to rid himself of a deadly curse which has been cast upon him. The player can choose to exit the town screen to the left or the right, which seems to offer a degree of open-worldness, but the left option is a far too difficult path at the beginning of the game. This is one example of many in Simon's Quest where the game appears to offer the player distinctive choices when in actuality there is only one correct solution.

Upon exiting the town the player will have to fight though enemies to get to the next destination, which, for the most part, is a breeze. If the player simply upgrades Simon's equipment at every opportunity in the towns and finds hidden items along the way these monsters will continue to be pushovers. Even the boss characters can be beaten with ease given constant attacks with the right weapon. Defeated bad guys might drop hearts which act as the game's currency. Simon's Quest also cycles through day and nighttime settings every few minutes, with enemies at night being more powerful and espousing more hearts as a reward. There will probably be a couple occasions where the player must grind through some enemies outside of a town to build up enough hearts to purchase a desired item for sale, but usually normal world traversal will yield enough moneys to serve one's needs. Simon begins with three lives, and will lose all stored hearts if he is killed in action so it's best to think strategically about when to venture away from towns and when to grind through nearby enemies to play it safe.

Simon's Quest is a very difficult game, not because of its enemy forces, but because the game is incredibly vague about what the player is supposed to be doing in so many situations. The "clues" from townspeople are most often not helpful or incorrect information. There are three acquirable crystals that are essential to progressing in the game but even in the instruction manual it's not explained how they can be used. Apparently having one equipped and holding the "down" button in the correct locations will open up new pathways. This obtuse trial and error process also rears its head with the countless fake floors and walls that reveal themselves after being doused with holy water, requiring throwing vials of water every step just in case there might be something secret that would otherwise be overlooked.

Unfortunately, the way to make Simon's Quest a much more fun and manageable game today is to sparingly use an online walkthrough to inform players on these otherwise indecipherable situations. It seems reasonable that if someone was to play this game when it was just released that a number of the abstract solutions to the game's challenges would have been spread through word-of-mouth. Given that Simon's Quest is a much older game now, using a free guide is the way to go unless an extensive timeframe has been set aside to play it.

Castlevania II does have plenty of positives going for it that both show innovation for the series and help compensate for some shortcomings. First and foremost the game has an excellent soundtrack that players may find stuck in their head hours after putting down the controller. The score includes the debut of Castlevania series staple "Bloody Tears," which sounds especially great considering it's coming off a NES cartridge. Simon's Quest's day and night cycle may not have truly capitalized on the feature, but it was still a pretty novel addition at the time. The main purpose of the device, other than some combat variety, is to keep track of time. Remembering back to the prelude text, Simon is growing weaker because he's been cursed, and so the sooner he can defeat Dracula for good, the better. This brings about another emerging gameplay system: multiple endings. Depending on the speed one completes the game, they could be rewarded to one of three endings depicting whether or not Simon was fast enough to reverse his condition and truly kill Dracula.

Castlevania II certainly has its problems (botched localization, lack of instruction, and an incoherent hint system), but knowing about these issues ahead of playing will prevent them from being much of interruptions. This is a case where some limited exposure to help texts or even just taking into account the troublesome scenarios listed in this review, will make for a far less frustrating game experience and allow for the positives of the game to shine. Not to make too many excuses for a game that clearly misses the mark on some important design decisions, but there is still a considerable amount of fun to be had here.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Disco Construction

Merry belated MixXmas everyone! I wanted to use a bunch of tracks that more explicitly fall into a disco category for a mix, so expect all sorts of mirror-ball tropes to pop up as you listen. Of course it's mostly much more contemporary than the true disco heyday, but I see it as a modern tribute of sorts. The mix clocks in at 68 minutes and in general I let the tracks play out a little longer than usual. Hopefully this will lead to a listening experience with long, smooth build-ups and extensive breakdown jams. Thanks for listening!

Gold Skulltulla - Building Sensation

Tracklist:

Le Knight Club - Rhumba
Cheek - Venus (Pepe Bradock’s Cheeky Precog Version)
Ali Love - Diminishing Returns (Extended Version)
Jaques Renault - Sweet Rollin’ On
Hot Toddy - Delta Blues
Free Disco - Left Field Boogie
Lady Gaga - Bad Romance (Hercules & Love Affair Dub)
Tensnake - In The End (I Want You To Cry)
In Flagranti - Business Acumen
Canyons - Blue Snakes
40 Theives - Don’t Turn It Off (feat. Qzen)
Munk - Back Down (Cut Copy Jackmaster Remix)
His Majesty Andre - Hold Tight
Cecile - Una Domenica Italiana (feat. Dennis Coffey)
John Talabot - Africa
Sister Sledge - Lost In Music (The Revenge Rework)
Michael Jackson - I Can’t Help It (Todd Terje Remix)
Shazam - Hello Cat

Review: Metroid (NES)

Some of these older videogame reviews will be for games I'm somewhat embarrassed to have never played. Metroid is one of those games. I feel I can't justify this omission without noting that my first full playthrough of a game in this series was Metroid Prime for Gamecube. Some would call that heresy, but I came away from Prime and its sequel having had some incredibly profound and affecting (in a good way) gaming experiences. As a result, I've been pining to go back and check out where this all started.

Two of the more amazing things about playing Metroid now are how many well-executed similarities it has to the Prime series and how much of a sense of adventure this old game could convey despite my mind being spoiled by the visually immersive gaming experiences on modern systems. The player controls Samus Aran, then-secretly female bounty hunter, equipped with an arm cannon, as she explores the planet Zebes. At the beginning of the game, Samus' abilities are limited, making the locations she can access restrained. By locating ancient relics she will learn new techniques which allow her to research new areas and progress through the game. This formula is still the core of contemporary Metroid gameplay.

Even knowing this, I remain surprised by just how non-linearly Metroid allows you to play. There are three boss characters in the game, the final of which cannot be fought until the other two have been defeated, but you can approach either of those two first. The non-final boss characters can also be faced at any point once the required abilities have been found to conduct the platforming needed to reach them. In other words, they can be faced with a bare bones set of skills for the player looking to speed through things, or by the well-prepared player who has found all of the helpful abilities that will make the battles easier.

Another key aspect of "adventure" as a genre is exploration, which Metroid offers, but not without one caveat that my Prime sympathies can't help but mention: the lack of a map. To be clear, I would have liked a map that only kept track of where I had been, not where there was still to go. Having that sense of discovery and not knowing what's through the next door is what adventure games are all about and I wouldn't want to disrupt the up-and-running system already in place. However, when I finally reached the point where I was ready to descend to the final boss confrontation, I discovered that I had to go back and reacquire the ice beam to continue further. Without a map to assist in retraversing the entire maze, this fetch quest became unnecessarily frustrating. Alternatively, Samus could have been given the ability to switch between different beams on the fly. Sadly, I remember Metroid Prime pulling a similarly unfun backtracking stunt on me at the end of that game. Some traits shouldn't be passed on through generations.

The lack of a map is truly a shame though, as it's the only aspect that mars the otherwise stupendous game. Metroid is a game that knows how to set an eerie, enveloping mood. Zebes is a harsh and alienating place, without any lines of dialogue or townsfolk to offer hints or friendly confidence. The music is bizarre and not always conventionally melodic or rhythmic, but still impressively memorable. The titular Metroid creatures are legitimately terrifying monsters. The story begins when Samus is simply dropped onto the planet and given little in the way of further direction. Granted Metroid was produced during a time when instruction manuals were actually used as a reference, so it was assumed that the player would be able to look up things like power-ups and know what they do. In an ironic twist, since the game itself doesn't tell the player anything, the world becomes even more authentic than the developers may have intended. I was consistently having to figure out what I just picked up and truly get acclimated with the item rather than the screen telling me what I could now do differently. This makes for an even more pure adventure experience without adding frustration.

Metroid is the total package when it comes to game design, so much so that the franchise isn't much different in modern iterations (though improvements have been made). It offers a legitimate challenge, one that actually forces the player to think strategically during combat while presenting puzzles and hidden secrets that test one's wits and encourage (and reward) discovery. I have come away from the game extremely eager to jump into Super Metroid in the near future.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Gold Skulltulla Talks Games, Review: Super C

Welcome to a new category of posts on Gold Skulltulla wherein videogames are the core topic. Even though I find myself playing fewer games nowadays, I still enjoy finding new game experiences and try to stay up to date on the contemporary ongoings of the larger videogame world as best I can. Expect to see more editorial-style columns showing up around here in addition to reviews like the one that follows. The way I approach games and the games I choose to play has changed quite a bit over time. The games chosen for review and editorial extrapolation will reflect this viewpoint moreso than trying to stay up-to-the-minute on recent releases, although current events and news will likely factor in at times. I hope that some of the readership and listening audience for Gold Skulltulla's DJ mixes and music lists will find something worthwhile about these videogames discussions; the focus being to cross-pollinate my own interests and see if there is an audience out there with which to share them. So I'd like to kick things off with a review of Konami's NES sequel, Super C.

The original Contra on the NES is a classic run n' gun game that sits in the greater game canon and is looked upon with a nostalgic fondness by those who grew up with it. People tell me that game is supposed to be difficult, but it's one of those few games that I've beaten so many times that there's no real challenge and I instead enjoy it as a form of catharsis. Strange then that I'm only recently playing its sequel Super C (short for Super Contra, one would assume). Full disclosure: this review is referring to the original NES cartridge version of the game.

As with many sequels, it's difficult to talk about subsequent entries in a franchise without addressing their predecessors, especially one as iconic as Contra. Super C recycles some of the original graphics, including the protagonists, a few enemies, and sound effects. However, there are plenty of newly minted sprites here as well, and for the most part the new graphics appear slightly more sophisticated. Gameplay is nearly identical, maintaining the basic format of platforming, shooting, dodging, grabbing power-ups and fighting bosses at the end of each level (8 here). There are a couple notable exceptions including the addition of inclined surfaces, a retooling of the F gun into a charge shot, and two stages where you control the character from a top-down perspective. All three are well-executed and either enhance or take gameplay into a new direction for the series. The music is still solid this time around, but not quite as catchy as some of the tunes in the original.

As for that trademark difficulty level, Super C proves to take a bit more skill, but maybe this is just because I haven't locked in near as many hours as Contra. That said, level 8 in particular throws a lot of obstacles in your way that if you die and lose what is likely your spread shot gun, it can be rough. We're still talking one-hit deaths here. Even so, bosses are, for the most part, a cinch. The final boss is especially a letdown seeing as you fight through a grimy, disgusting alien fortress only to discover a weird, gray, human-faced statue-like mass coming out of the ground to spew a few spike-balls your way as you easily run up to it and shoot it in the face, totally unabated. Furthermore, the lame ending then kicks in which is just a shot of a helicopter flying during a sunset, offering no text explanation or really any kind of resolution. Not that anyone really cares about the "Contra fiction," but something to add more of a sense of accomplishment would be welcome.

Some design choices in Super C certainly raise a few eyebrows. It's no secret that the protagonists Bill and Lance are clearly modeled after Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and Sly Stallone from Rambo, but the design knock-offs go further in the sequel. The running alien enemies in the last two levels are total rip-offs of Ridley Scott's Alien aliens and you could make a case that the level 6 boss' face looks an awful lot like the Predator monster. Sure these developer decisions seem a bit dubious in a way, but they also provide a gameplay experience that compliments those films pretty well. Where I'd rather criticize design is when it comes to the sharpness and clean appearance of the last two boss characters which really don't fit into the fleshy, sticky alien lair where they are found. Those fights feel more like they're against some crappy background image than an actual monster to be feared.

It's not really fair that Super C is as overlooked as it is, seeing as it's a successful sequel to a hit game. Perhaps it's the fact that Super C is short on significant innovations in the greater series that keep it from standing out. If you're only going to play one Contra game per console, you should select the original game since it's more relevant in terms of modern references, but Super C does follow-up on that formula in an incrementally satisfying way that will serve players who are already series fans just fine.


:screenshots from VGMuseum: