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| Box art looks cool. That's about it. |
Out of the several that the Castlevania series has, this is one of them.
This is Castlevania The Adventure!
Yes, I know what the box says and I know what the "official title" says. I don't care, this is how the game presents it, so this is what I'm going with. Deal with it.
A century before the time that Simon Belmont cracked that whip, but also one hundred years after Trevor did this, Christopher Belmont went out into the misty Transylvanian night to kill himself a vampire! Given the fact that this is a both a sequel and a prequel to a game in the series, you can already tell that he was no doubt very successful!
...probably because he didn't have to deal with some of the shittiest controls ever made for a game.
...also, some people have attempted to say that Christopher Belmont is supposed to be Trevor Belmont of Castlevania III given that the "C." in "Trevor C. Belmont" is supposedly "Christopher", but never mind that given the timeline discrepancy. Also, Trevor doesn't suck.
Released in 1989, this was originally on the Game Boy. I played it back then, it being one of the titles that my parents had gotten for me when I was growing up. In some cases, that was really cool like Generation Two Pokémon Games. In other cases, it was something like Pit Fighter.
No, for the record, I haven't reviewed that and I don't plan to.
Of course, those of you who are long-time readers of my blog will know that my own choices in gaming have been little better over the years. Alas, we live and learn...which does not seem to be something Konami was doing in 1989 when they made this game.
When I played it as a kid, I honestly thought it sucked even by the standards of the day. The graphics barely resembled anything from Castlevania and I honestly thought the game was too hard. With time and introspection, I came to realize I was a kid with a single digit age and likely didn't have the level of skill necessary to-okay, yeah, you can see where this is going: this game just sucks.
Hard? Yes. Impossible? No. Worth it? No.
I realize that a lot of the complaints about it I have are due to the limitations of the Game Boy (which did come out the same year as this game), so I'll attempt to be as fair as possible given that we're dealing with a handheld game and not a console or PC one.
You have your standard assortment of weapon - no, not weapons, that would imply variety - being the traditional Castlevania whip. Vampire Killer has two upgrades the latter of which lets Christopher shoot a fireball out of it to hit enemies for a slightly less arduous attack. Like with traditional Castlevania, you crack the whip at a baddie - sometimes more than once - and they die, carry on as you like. Except when he gets hit, Christopher apparently decides to switch back to the whip with the least range and strength in...shame, I guess?
This is something that's never really made sense to me in Castlevania in general. You don't just switch to your weaker weapons just because you got hit once, especially not in games with health bars. Super Mario Brothers did that, but Super Mario Brothers went by the credo of "two hits and you're dead" not "I have brought dishonor on my entire family by not dodging a giant eyeball falling from the ceiling".
Oh, yeah, Dracula has giant eyeballs as an obstacle in this game. No idea where he was getting those from, maybe he tore them out of Galamoth and I bet most of you have no idea who the hell that even is without using Google.
Regardless, you will get hit seeing as the game's controls are so bad. Christopher walks like he's hip deep in quicksand and has no sense of urgency about getting out. His jumps are even worse, though bad jumping was pretty much the standard until at least Super Castlevania IV, when you could control your momentum a bit better.
The lack of secondary weapons is a glaring flaw in this game, particularly with how important they are in other games in the series. This is particularly bad when you get to the end of each of the four levels and get into a boss fight. In other games, there's some strategy and tactics involved that the secondary items can help the player out with in their battles against the occult horrors under Dracula's command. Sadly, The Adventure is just dodging their attacks (if you can) and peppering them with whip shots...which is a bit of a problem if they already have hit you and you have the two-pixel long mess of a weapon.
Health pick ups are actually far more common in this than in previous or later games, being hearts that you whip out of candles in both and against the traditional Castlevania sense. It doesn't really bother me, seeing that the absence of secondary weapons means a lack of a need for ammo, but it's kind of jarring given what hearts traditionally do in the series.
They are, at least, a tender mercy that is sorely needed. It's almost as if the developers realized how unwieldy their game was and tried to use this as recompense. A nice effort, but you really should have just fixed the game.
Sure, it was a Game Boy game, but none of this is really any excuse. The Game Boy produced several fine and fondly remembered games over it's tenure, but it crapped out more than a few bad eggs as we see here.
I'm not exactly asking for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins here. It almost would have done them better to just port over Castlevania. It wasn't as if they put too much effort into the art design. Limitations aside, everything in The Adventure is dull and gray and flat. Would it have killed them to at least try to evoke the spookier atmosphere of the games on console?
Apparently yes, because they avoided it profusely.
I could keep going back these points that annoy me but, needless to say, Castlevania The Adventure is not a very good game. It's basically a brilliantly restored and maintained model car that the owner suddenly decided to cover in bleach, take off all four wheels, tear out all the upholstery, and then set on fire.
Or to put it another way - Castlevania The Adventure is not even remotely worth the adventure.
Castlevania The Adventure is brought to us by Konami for Game Boy.
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