CORBIE'S GAME BLOG

There are very few NES games that I loved as much as Castlevania. It almost made this list, but unfortunately its sequel, Simon's Quest took the spot instead. Simon's Quest took the platforming action of Castlevania and injected RPG elements into the mix to form a much more non-linear adventure. It also required you to track down the different body parts of Dracula in order to advance to many later parts of the game. Another unique feature to the game was the way the game used an internal clock to change the setting from night to day and back again. During the day you could talk to the many townsfolk and purchase items at the various shops in town. During the night, however, the zombies came out in towns and enemies in the forests became even tougher to defeat. While some Castlevania fans weren't too thrilled with these changes, I think it made the game a lot more in-depth and fun to play.

After getting this game for my birthday, I can't count the many hours I spent trying to beat this game. Spending hours at a time hunting down body part after body part trying to advance to the next area. The wide open spaces and tricky placements of hidden stairways also made it difficult to find some of the secret areas in the game. Once you reached a castle, things began to look and play more like the original Castlevania. There were spike-filled pits, pinpoint platform jumps that had to be made, and enough enemies and dissapearing ledges to keep your extra men dissapearing at an alarming rate. The music was one of the strong areas of the original Castlevania, and Konami spared no expense when it came to this sequel. In fact, some of my all-time favorite Castlevania tunes come straight out of this game. If you're a Castlevania fan and you somehow missed this release, please go track one down and give it a go. Not only is it one of the most challenging of all the Castlevania games, it's also one of the most fun. I just dug it out and played through it again on my NES about a month ago, and I keep holding out the hope that Konami will update and re-release this game for one of the current game systems out there. I can always dream.