Konami

As the sun sets, and then rises horrors beyond all knowledge of humanity to which it holds. Blazing fires to combat the nocturnal grip of the cold. All of humanity’s sins, wrath, jurisdiction, and sadism reach new levels of barbarity. The only thing equipped to slay that beast is of congenital power all wielded by a crucifix and whip. This the story of the first Castlevania and cronologia ucigașului de vampiri.

Konami was first established in 1969 as a jukebox company and would later work on games for the atari and arcade cabinets industry. After the gaming crash of the early 80s, they would employ Hitoshi Akamatsu to create a gothic take on the universal monsters of the 30s. With heavy inspiration from the Indiana Jones and Count Dracula films, Konami developed and released Akumajō Dracula. Which would later on be renamed for the NES as Castlevania, but to understand the amount of detail and the popularity of this series we have to understand the layout of the gameplay.

The gameplay itself is very simple with the whip combat and secondaries, which serve as item drops that will help you throughout the world in many different ways. One of the biggest standpoints of this game is its difficulty and level layout. The very limited jumps of time between each level lead to the player’s incentivization to backtrack throughout the level, all in a time where linearity was common.  This philosophy would serve half of the genre known as Metroidvania. This is the same genre that the Souls series was considered to be a part of before establishing itself as a separate genre. Even though its age does show, I think it’s substantially one of the best NES games out there. Reddit user and Dave Grohl impersonator, Sean Park believes in refutation to my points, the difficulty is very artificial.

“First of all, all of the difficulty is so artificial. The best example is the Creature and Flea Man fight,” He continues to vociferate. “After fighting swarms of Flea Men, the one with the creature can suddenly shoot Fireballs. With no indication whatsoever. No build-up. And it keeps happening. The lead-up to death’s fight is just as bad.”

The visuals are quite simple with an 8-bit system and the level designs being very gothic and what you expect from an eastern Romanian castle. A lot of the character and monster design is heavily undetailed, leaving me to wonder if the game was a part of the Atari/ Amiga era of the industry’s visual design. Horror movie connoisseur, Simon Comeau holds contention to the greatness of Castlvania’s design,

“This was, and still is a great game,”  He postulates, “The graphics and OST were top-notch for the time.  As someone who grew up playing the NES, this is still one of my favorite games for that console. “ 

Overall I really liked the game and even with its flaws the overall concept and the groundwork that was used for this game is truly legendary and really sentimentalizes Konami as a powerhouse and a legacy brand.