3000 unread messages? Yeah. I’ll get to it blinking envelope. I’ll get to it.

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And that reason is to pick up chicks. Hey ladies, want to hear my thoughts on the two party system? I bet you do.

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No, really, if you went out and got yourself one of dem dere new fangled iPhones but just can’t for the life of you figure out why everything you click that offers you free ringtones makes your computer die a slow death, you are in luck! All you need is mp3s with no DRM and iTunes 8. Although, if you found getting ringtones difficult on the iPhone to begin with, this is probably way too computery for you. Just go put a helmet on and watch some cartoons. There. That is better, isn’t it?

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I don’t know about you, but the idea of paying $10 bucks a month to be able to upload the upskirt pictures I take at the mall directly to a picture frame in my parents basement doesn’t seem all that appealing when I can just plug my camera directly into my computer when I get back from my “sightseeing” trip, but maybe you can find a better use for it… like planting one in a friends house when he is having his girlfriends parents over and taking pictures of your junk while they are eating dinner. Sorry Bob, but that is what you get for not letting me sleep with your sister.

Consider us even.

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As I’m sure you already noticed, iTunes has released its new version 8.0 and, before I could even make a post about it, version 8.0.1 and its bug fixes. Since I’m new to the iTunes game and will always be happy with my beloved Foobar, I don’t know what the etiquette here is, although I’m sure you all have something to complain about. I’ll focus on how Genius refuses to do anything for me. Am I really that pretentious and my musical taste that obscure that the genius bar refuses to recommend anything that will go well with my Icelandic synth-pop collection?

What did you say? It works well you’re your Lil Wayne songs?

Sigh.

It is so lonely here on this side of taste.

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Apparently the ROVIO is a robotic sentry for people who need robotic sentrys, like Bond villains. From what these fine folks with the absolute coolest job ever have to say in their review, the ROVIO is some sort of messiah like robot and, at $300 dollars, it actually seems pretty affordable considering how awesome the thing is. What do I know though, I once spent $800 on a robot that was supposed to keep my sister from coming into my room and moving my collectible Robot Jox figurines around, but when I got it I found out it was actually just the insides of a Colecovision fastened onto a roller skate with electrical tape. I got my moneys worth.

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EDIT: Apparently we beat Engadget to this. Hah! Serves you right for letting us copy all your news for the last few months. Wait…

I accept paypal.

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What?

You don’t have 800 dollars of disposable income? Well get out of here Captain Poverty, I don’t want you getting your hard knock life all over my wealthy blog.

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Real gamers still won’t care.

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I remember I once paid 170 dollars for an ATI 850xt. I hate you computer gaming, you are like the Ike to my Tina. I mean that both because you beat me and you are dead.

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It must have been, for now I see the truth.

Now I realize how much fun can really be had with this system, I mean, a pedometer peripheral! Now I get it! Now I see the appeal! I can’t wait to strap this thing to my belt buckle and play the new and exciting Wii title, A Nice Casual Stroll Around The Mall Right After It Opens 2009.

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I had actually known about this for a while thanks to spending lots of time dressed as a teenager and hanging out at the mall along with talking to enough people who were conned into thinking Gamestop would actually be a good job and not a retail hell too evil to comprehend, but now Youtube has given us visual evidence; In older, smaller stores, the only concievable place to store video game consoles is the bathroom. Yum! I don’t really know why people are freaking out about this, it isn’t like the first thing you do when you get a new system is lick it. Out of all the horrible things Gamestop does, this ranks pretty low. It would be like if Michael Vick was actually vilified for not washing his hands before making cookies, and not vilified for the fact he was a terrible quarterback.

What? I don’t remember him doing anything else wrong.

EDIT: Hey PETA, I’m just kidding. Isn’t there a KFC you should be protesting?

Diamond has gone on record saying that absolutely nothing is wrong with their cards and that next month, instead of making any attempt to fix the issues that exist they will simply make tens of thousands of more flawed cards and inundate the market with them in a surge of shoddy products.

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Castlevania Legends
System: GB
Genre: Action/Platformer
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1998
Country: US

Why couldn’t this little Castlevania excursion ended on a high note?

Here we have it everyone, the very last installment of my month long journey into the Castlevania series. There are still plenty of games in the Castlevania series that I haven’t touched on, but that is because of my classification of classic systems. I may get around to the GBA games, and someday when I lump PlayStation, N64, and PS2 games into this little column I will expand on this series, but for now it ends with this title. The last “classic” Castlevania game to be released in the states.

What a let down.

The story in this game pretty much doesn’t matter, and that is from Konami themselves. Legends is one of the handful of Castlevania games to have the dubious honor of being stricken from canon. In this title, you are the hero Sonia Belmont. Yes, Sonia, a lady Belmont who took control of the Vampire Killer after some whip envy. If this game were canon it would be impressive that Sonia broke through the glass ceiling of slaughtering Dracula and struck a blow for women vampire hunter’s rights world wide. She is like Susan B. Anthony and Indiana Jones’ illegitimate child.

Anyway, this game also throws in Alucard for a minor plot point that seems to suggest some hot vampire on human romance was going on during this particular era. That just seems funny to me. What is the deal with female leads in vampire related entertainment always eventually falling in love with a vampire? Sexy, erotic vampire stuff is the absolute bottom of the creative totem pole. I’m looking at you, Twilight novels, and especially you, Laurel K. Hamilton. It is all just literotica for fat goth girls.

Speaking of fat goth girls, that is about how fast as our protagonist moves. This game is certainly comparable to the trainwreck that the first Castlevania Adventure on this same system was. While that game was certainly leagues worse than this, this one still doesn’t escape horribleness. Instead of secondary weapons, Sonia has a limit break kind of attack that you can change at anytime. You get these attacks by defeating various bosses throughout the short game. Of course, none of these abilities are particularly useful. They could, in theory, come in handy in the boss battles- that is if they weren’t already so blasted easy.

The addition of burning mode seems to try and offset some of the glaring issues with cheap enemy AI by turning Sonia into, well, a walking burning thing once a level. But its existence leads to making boss battles almost a complete joke. Sonia turns invincible and causes damage equal to the vampire killer by just touching her enemies. It would be unbalancing for the player if the game didn’t do so much to make the experience suck.

This game falls into the same trap that other poor Castlevania’s fall into. It isn’t that the game itself is difficult, it is that the gameplay is so frustrating that it makes it so. Instead of improving AI or level design they simply remove any useful secondary power, any alternate whipping directions, or any sort of speed and ease of movement control. This makes the game difficult and adds a slight amount of playtime to it, but does so at the expensive of any real enjoyment in the game whatsoever.

I should try and say something positive here. The music really is pretty good considering the limitations of the ole gray brick. I feel like myself and every other person to ever review Castlevania games are obligated to make the same statement about the music over and over, like a sort of reviewers Groundhog’s Day, but it is really true. Castlevania contains one of the best if not the best, soundtracks in the history of video games.

Now the bad; everything else. Graphically this is a few steps back from the earlier GameBoy title, everything is too small and lacks any detail whatsoever. The intro and the drawn portraits of the characters in the two plot development portions of the game all seem well done, but when it comes to actual gameplay the game just loses its fragile hold on mediocrity and plummets into the Territory of Excruciating Terribleness.

In the end, Castlevania’s send off on our most well regarded and nostalgic generation of video games isn’t good as a Castlevania game or a platformer in general. It is simply a below average, forgettable title lost in the sea of mediocrity that existed in most of the GameBoy’s library. This one has almost no reasons to play it once, and certainly doesn’t have a single reason to warrant a return play through. Avoid like you are a sexy, androgynous vampire in a poorly written erotic vampire novel and this game is garlic, or masculinity.

Castlevania: Dracula X
System: SNES
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1995
Country: USA

I really should have just reviewed the PC-Engine one. Disappointment? Thy name is Dracula X.

Now to avoid confusion, this isn’t my review of the absolute classic “Rondo of Blood”. This is the SNES port of the same game, but for those who have played the original I really should point out that the two games are barely recognizable outside of the plot and a few details. Rondo of Blood is probably one of the greatest action games, if not the greatest action game, to ever hit any system to this day. Dracula X, bizarrely enough, is such a poor port that it is actually considered a step backwards from Super Castlevania IV in both the graphic and gameplay departments. In fact, this game feels more like a NES Castlevania game then even Castlevania III did, and that game actually came out on the NES!

As I said, the only thing Dracula X has in common with its PC-Engine counterpart is, at least vaguely, the plot. I say vaguely because Rondo adds a whole lot to the lore of Castlevania, where as Dracula X kind of skirts around it and brings everything back to the basics. Dracula has been resurrected, and since he is feeling a little frisky he has kidnapped both the sister and the girlfriend of Richter Belmont.

You know, you would think that after having your ass kicked every hundred years for centuries by a member of the same family you wouldn’t really want to try and antagonize them even more. You would think that a doctor would be smart enough to know better.

I digress, the story is basic Castlevania fare. You know this all by heart. Normally the gameplay of these titles are enough to mask the fact you have played the same plotline with a different main character ten times by now, but with Dracula X it is such a big step backwards that you can’t help but notice the shortcomings of this paint by numbers plotline.

The additions made to the series in Castlevania IV have been removed and replaced with absolutely nothing. There is no whipping in eight directions, there is no flaccid total control of the vampire killer, you won’t be whipping onto anything or finding alternate pathways in the background. Instead everything is as back to basics as you can possibly imagine. They even removed whip upgrades, which just feels so horribly wrong when you stop and consider that upgrading your whip was the only feature that is in EVERY Castlevania game. I can never understand how things like that aren’t only discussed but agreed upon in development meetings.

You whip, you jump, you whip a little bit more. It is the generic Castlevania formula and Dracula X adds nothing to it to make things feel fresher. They did keep sub-weapons and the use of an item crash feature, but you won’t really find yourself using it all too much outside of the occasional boss battle. The fact you have a item crash without even having an item comes in handy during two frustrating levels that require you to carry a key instead of your secondary weapons, but it isn’t really all that helpful since you can’t choose what direction your attack will follow.

The difficulty of the game is a mixed bag. Castlevania seems to suffer from this more than most franchises, but this game is hard for all the wrong reasons. Every sub-par Castlevania game has the exact same flaw. The level design and lack of effective attacks or responsive controls lead to the game being cheap. You will find yourselves fighting tons of hard to hit baddies on precarious ledges. You will find out the hard way that the slight delay in controlling your jumps will send you plummeting to your doom. Combine this with the inexplicable return to Castlevania Adventure’s plodding movement speed and you have a cocktail of boredom. Questionable level design and ramped up boss battles also help to unbalance the game and make it almost a chore to play.

Not a long chore though, it isn’t yardwork or mowing the lawn. Since the game is actually shorter than the very first Castlevania, it is more like setting the table. The repetitive, sluggish table.

Konami made an attempt to give the game some replay value by including three separate endings that cause you to take different paths and make different decisions in the game, but the change actually is limited to about four screens in the fourth level. That is what the key I mentioned earlier is for, unlocking two doors within the span of a level. After that, depending on whether you got them both, just one, or none at all, you will be treated to endings that are ever so slightly different from one another.

Awesome.

The game also takes a step or two back in this category. They went for a more anime-like, realistic feel. Colors are muted and the backgrounds aren’t really all that detailed, so the game feels bleak but probably not in the way they intended. Gone are the nearly ridiculous amount of showy, flashy graphic choices. There will be no rotating levels or anything of that ilk. This game is straightforward in every way.

Even the music takes a little bit of a hit, although in the world of Castlevania the soundtrack can never be bad. I don’t know if it was my copy of the game or if it was the game itself, but the music was much more simplistic and tinny than what we have come to expect from the system and the series.

If you haven’t gotten the drift yet, I’m trying to say that this game is a huge disappointment. It is almost funny to consider how Bloodlines was a “weak” release on the Genesis and may have lead to a lack of development on the system from the Castlevania franchise, yet this title is leagues below it. This generation of systems just was not entirely kind to the series.

If you are playing along at home, this one isn’t one to avoid. It isn’t a horrible game at all. Just a bland platformer that is barely worth a single playthrough, it just seems worse when compared to the pedigree that exists before it.

BUT, if you have access to Rondo of Blood, just skip this one. You should have been playing that already. You should be doing nothing BUT play that game. What are you wasting time reading things on the internet for? GO! NOW!

Castlevania: Bloodlines
System: GEN
Genre: Action/Platformer
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1994
Country: US

All aboard the Belmont-boat as this train keeps truckin’ on!

Today’s installment gets me to the Sega Genesis’ only Castlevania game, Bloodlines. This game is all but forgotten when people talk about the series, but should it have been? DETAILS AT ELEVEN!

So here it is, the first Castlevania game to take place on Nintendo’s former mortal enemy. This would have been quite a huge deal in 1994 during the height of the intensely bitter 16-bit console wars. Although some people will make the argument that the current console wars are the most embittered, the fact that the term ‘console exclusive’ is pretty relative and short lived now shows that things aren’t really that hardcore. In the days of the Genesis versus the SNES, however, you made your decision and stuck with it. There would be no Sonic’s on the SNES and there would be no Mario’s on the Sega. Very few series actually crossed both systems, and even fewer were successful on both.

Castlevania: Bloodlines seemed to have a decent shot at bringing an arc of the series to the Genesis full time, but somewhere along the line it tripped up a little and this turned out to be the only Castlevania game on the system.

Bloodlines takes place in the early parts of the 20th century, marking the closest the timeline had come to the modern era at that point, and revolves, obviously, around killing a resurrected and returning Lord Dracula. At this point in the series the plot and continuity were really beginning to take a life of their own and really made the franchise stand out against the competition. This particular game adds to the mythos by attempting to intertwine the Castlevania mythos with Bram Stroker’s classic novel. With that said, the main characters of this game are not Belmont’s. They are John, the son of Quincy Morris from Dracula, and the vaguely familiar Eric LeCarde. Both have their own motivations for defeating Dracula, and John even wields the Vampire Killer itself, but neither are full members of the Belmont clan.

The story is definitely interesting, and it is made even more interesting by Konami’s attempts to tie the game into both well-known fiction and historical relevancy. I am of the opinion that Konami didn’t just do this to add some color to the series and spice up a plot that was in danger of getting stale, but the main reason for this plot experimentation was to cut their losses if the Genesis version did not pick up and turn into the franchise they expected it to. By not putting a Belmont into the main game, and instead doing something as different as trying to combine the game with a preexisting work of fiction, Konami made it so that if something had gone wrong and the game just plain sucked, they wouldn’t have wasted a viable canonical plot on a failed experiment.

The fact that they happened to install a pretty engrossing story showed that either Konami really knows what they are doing and was so full of great ideas they could throw this one out there, or that Konami is just super ultra lucky and falls assbackwards into gold. If you ever actually looked at some of the decisions made with the original Castlevania, you would find this last explanation to be more likely than one would think.

The story wasn’t the only place where Konami decided to try something new. Bloodlines is rare in the series as most of the game doesn’t take place in the areas around Castle Dracula. You will find yourself traveling across all of Europe in your attempt to thwart Dracula once again.

You also have the option of playing the game with either John Morris or Eric Lecarde, a seemingly thinly veiled reference to Alucard. Both characters play slightly different, but being able to only play the game through as one of them at a time seems like an oversight. On top of that, beating it with either character doesn’t garner a separate ending. There really isn’t a single reason to replay the game after the initial playthrough unless you are truly curious to see what the other character plays like.

In theory, since each character uses a different weapon and has different abilities, the game must have some sort of inherent replay value. Problem is, it doesn’t. The endings don’t change, and the characters paths through the levels only differ in the absolute slightest way; it is almost not worth mentioning.

On top of that the controls for both characters are a little bit strange. Using the Vampire Killer whip, you can once again only whip in the direction you are facing, but now you can whip in an upward diagonal way. This seems helpful until you realize that you can now hook and swing off of any surface, no matter what. Apparently the Vampire Killer is part bat-grappling hook or something now. This is helpful for the one or two parts in the game that revolve around having to leap huge gaps, but it is just flat out annoying every other time.

Graphically this game is nowhere near what Castlevania III was. Without the bells and whistles that the SNES games had, the comparison between the two games isn’t pretty. The comparison between the music is about the same thing. On its own, and on the system, Bloodlines looks good. You can’t help but look over the fence and see what III and Dracula X looked like though, and that detracts from the enjoyment despite everything not looking bad at all. The color pallets are neat and despite a couple bizarre level choices, all the backgrounds look great.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the games look is that it marks the first time a Castlevania game reached the western shores unmolested by Nintendo’s fingers of censorship. The game is bloody and holds a ton of religious overtones that would have been replaced with kittens and flowers by Nintendo. This doesn’t really add much to the gameplay but it definitely makes the game unique when compared to its Nintendo cousins.

While not the knockout punch that Konami was probably hoping for in the jump to the Genesis console, Bloodlines is a decent game that is only considered a letdown due to its pedigree, lack of replay value, and slightly flawed gameplay.

Score: 80

If ever a movie deserved to be reviewed solely by a picture of a pear with a goofy mouth, it would be this one. The Mutant Chronicles is a walking LOLWUT of epic proportions.

On the surface, the movie seems like it might have some sort of entertainment value to it beyond the explosions and bloodshed, and the fact that, somehow, they gained the services of Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane, and that guy from Being John Malkovich, whats his name… oh, John Malkovich. When you see that these guys have attached themselves to the film you kind of feel a glimmer of hope.

This glimmer is quickly set on fire within the first two or three minutes of the film. The exposition is ridiculous and the story that is framed is almost offensively dumb. As legend tells us, something came from space that makes evil zombie things with BONESAWS for arms out of humans. Thankfully though, this thing is locked away safely under a very loose manhole cover. Now, in the distant future, four corporations fight for control of the worlds limited resources (no, none of them are Halliburton, although they might have been more evil) and, by way of movie magic, a battle between two of the corporations unleashes these evil mutants upon the world. This movie is their chronicle.

When you read over that Academy Award worthy plot, you have to stop and hope that the action and the special effects can carry the film to a watchable level, you also have to stop and realize why this movie had absolutely no advertising support. Always a bad sign. The special effects try to invoke images of the Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow but still look just as weird. Not good weird like it was a stylistic choice, but just plain weird. Everything is really bland and lifeless, it seems the film tried to go for a bleak feel but ended up just making everything look dirty. In fact, I was about to talk about the one decent special effects scene in the movie but realized I had somehow convinced myself the opening for Unreal Tournament III was in this film.

So, yeah, Unreal Tournament III was pretty sweet.

Really though, outside of maybe two big action pieces, this entire thing is a convoluted joke. Perlman just mails it in, Malkovich doesn’t even want to be there for the three minutes he is in the movie, and Thomas Jane ruined the Punisher. It would be hard for me to really help you understand how bad the acting is in this movie, but maybe the best way to put it is that Devon Aoki has a huge speaking role. And I feel I should point out that at no point does it end up with her being naked.

Honestly though? This may have been the perfect storm of direct-to-dvd garbage. Established actors who clearly had nothing better to do that week? Check. Wannabe action-star lead casting? Check. Bottom of the barrel special effects? Check. Convuluted, often hilarious plot with vague political or sociological moral to the story? Check. Based on a previous property with very little name recognition and/or a fanbase that is so small and far out of the advertising sweet zone it almost seems ridiculous they would bother getting the rights to the said property at all? Double check. I should probably go look at IMDB and see if this was actually a Sci-Fi Channel Original. You know, that might be harsh. I wouldn’t want to lump the people involved with such powerhouses as Pterodactyl, Chubacabra 2, Minotaur, and SS Doomtrooper in with this Mutant Chronicles nonsense.

In the end, I guess if you are really, really, REALLY craving a brainless sci-fi movie with a little gore, but can’t seem to find anything else decent then you may as well check this out; but if you have any taste whatsoever than I am sure you can find something better to do with your time.

Cross-stitch maybe? Taking up an outdoor hobby?

Anything but this.

Score: 21

Kid Dracula
System: GB
Genre: Action/Platformer
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1993
Country: US

Here we go, finishing up the Kid Dracula series within the Castlevania universe. You may have noticed that I skipped the legendary “Rondo of Blood”, but I made an executive decision here. Since that game came out on a disc medium, and therefor is not a ROM, I won’t be reviewing it.  I may get to it at a later date, but just not within this incredibly interesting ongoing series.

In the same vein (get it!) as Super Castlevania IV, Kid Dracula is both a sequel and an obvious remake at the same time. The difference is that, where Super Castlevania IV was a graphical improvement over a game that was previously released in America, Kid Dracula seems to be the Game Boy sequel to a game that never saw the light of day over this side of the world and, because of that, decided to keep most of the original game intact while throwing in a few little differences and a new plot.

You may remember from my previous review that Kid Dracula fought the evil space dragon thing, Garamoth in the place of his famous father and handed him his scaly ass. The plot of this game is no different, as Garamoth has returned for more and, somehow, lured all his reformed minions back onto his side despite the fact at the end of the first game they all began to serve Kid Dracula. Apparently minions are notorious flip-floppers, so I’m going to assume they are all Republicans.

Topical!

That is pretty much it though; an exact replica of the first game except for the fact Garamoth has returned instead of simply appearing. At least they make a vague attempt to explain why Kid Dracula would have to regain all the powers he already learned in the first game, but their explanation of it is simply “HE FORGOT! HOW WACKY! WOMP WOMP!”

It is clear that Kid Dracula definitely tried to push the comical aspect of the storyline, but there is really only so much you can do on the old brick handheld so it definitely comes off as flat and corny most of the time. It especially doesn’t help if you’ve played the first game and seen most of these gags before.

Just like the original Kid Dracula, it is more Mega Man than Castlevania. From the bosses to the imagery to the weapon system it looks and feels like a Mega Man title instead of a Castlevania game. You shoot fireballs in order to defeat your enemies, and by holding the attack button you shoot a more powerful version of it, unless you switch to one of your learned attacks, in which case your charged shot will be replaced by your newly selected skill.

Yup, just like Mega Man.

You learn new skills after beating each level, and said new skill is usually utilized at some point in the level you received it. It is pretty predictable and the times to use each skill are pretty obvious and don’t really give you any alternative methods to get around them, which is unfortunate since that would have added to the near nonexistent replay value of the game.

In the tradition of the NES title by the same name (post translation) you can earn extra lives by collecting coins and gambling them in between levels doing simple minigames. In the NES game, the minigames were distracting and nonsensical; in this title they are no different. I can’t put into words how much I hate these bland time fillers. They had to only have been thrown in as an afterthought in both cases. Previously you had to play one or two of them and get lucky in order to get enough extra lives to continue, but in this title the difficulty is so ramped down that you wish you could just hack the cart and remove all mention of those terrible minigames.

The enemies and bosses aren’t necessarily difficult but they are certainly occasionally cheap. In fact, in the vein of Super Castlevania IV, the game is significantly less difficult than its predecessor. With improved controls and slightly simplified levels (this is incredibly obvious in the roller coaster level where you now seem glued to your cart instead of struggling to stay on it) the game feels pretty easy and incredibly short. It even lacks the drastic difficulty jump that nearly made me punch a kitten in its predecessor. Super Castlevania combated these issues by making the game a little longer and quite phenomenal to look at, whereas Kid Dracula doesn’t really have that option as it is on the ol’ brick.

The graphics are actually quite nice when considering it is just the black and white Gameboy. The sprites are all large and, even despite the pallet limitations, varied enough to keep the game from getting too drab. The inclusion of cutscenes to further advance the plot is also a nice touch, and the animation on them is surprisingly good. The game really isn’t bad to look at which is pretty impressive on the granddaddy of handhelds. It takes the same approach as the original title by turning recognizable Castlevania elements into kid friendly cutesy ones. There aren’t any dark, gothic, Cure fan overtones to this game.

This also applies to the music, although unlike the actual Castlevania games the music in Kid Dracula is entirely forgettable and even downright mute-worthy in some sections. That feels like blasphemy to say in relation to a game even loosely related to the Castlevania series, but I assume there was only so much they could do. Still, a little bit more effort into upholding the legendary aural pedigree would have been nice.

When all is said and done, Kid Dracula is a decent sequel/port of a game that very few people really ever got to play. It is worth a little bit of your time due to its occasionally funny dialog and relatively entertaining platforming, but really, if you were going to play one of them, the NES version is superior due to its playability, graphics, and challenge.

Score: 79

Super Castlevania IV
System: SNES
Genre: Action/Platformer
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release: 1991
Country: US

Super Castlevania IV, also known as the big budget remake of the original Castlevania. The odds are, this probably mind fudged you graphically the first time you played it.

Super Castlevania IV is the fancy, Hollywood remake of the original Castlevania. For some reason they decided to add the IV to the title, but this was way before anybody actually cared about things like series canon or continuity, and at that point the series was still small enough that Konami clearly didn’t think of dropping the number and just calling it Super Castlevania in order to try and make a few more dollars off of people. Yeah. Video game marketing wasn’t super logical back then. The question is whether or not this is a remake like The Fly, where the positives of the original are accentuated and built upon with a host of new additions, or is it more like Dawn of the Dead (or essentially every other remake and/or Michael Bay movie) where the positives from the original are warped and hidden by flashy graphics and horrible everything else.

This is the basic boy meets Vampire, boy slays vampire story that has been keeping the series running strong for 20 years. Since it is really a remake of the original Castlevania, the titular Belmont hero, Simon, is back to whip some vampire ass. They actually took a step forward in fleshing out the game’s plot by including a relatively long intro screen that explains what a bad dude Dracula actually is. Every hundred years, give or take, the forces of good for inexplicable reasons start to weaken which gives Dracula enough power to burst out of his coffined slumber and start to wreak havoc upon the country side.

Hmm, looking at the current world, one has to wonder when Drac is going to make his appearance. He seems overdo.

Although this game is clearly Castlevania, the gameplay has been altered and revamped to an almost unrecognizable degree. Of course you still jump around whipping various themed enemies, but now you have some new skills at your disposal. For instance, and this might absolutely blow your mind, you can whip in any direction you desire. Not only up and down, but also friggin diagonally. It is like a Christmas miracle. A vampire infested Christmas miracle; obviously the best kind. On top of that, throwing your secondary weapons is now done through the right trigger button, which means you can crouch and chuck boomerangs and other things at anytime you wish. The game also gets a little bit more forgiving with the timing of your jumps due to being able to slightly alter your trajectory as you come down.

You also have the option of keeping your whip unsheathed and kind of wiggling it at bad guys. There really isn’t an adequate way to explain this. If you hold the attack button Simon won’t put his whip away and, instead, will kind of hold it in front of him in a very disturbing and ridiculous looking manner. I guess the word I’m looking for is ‘flaccid’. You can kind of let it dangle there and use it as a shield, and, technically, you have full range of motion with it so you can hit anything in any conceivable direction. It just looks absolutely horrible when you do it.

The glaring problem here is that, while Simon has tons of new and powerful moves in his inventory, the enemies don’t really compensate for it. This is probably one of the easiest Castlevania games out there. From the smallest bad guy to the biggest boss, it really isn’t a challenge. There are a few parts that stand out, but you can probably get through this game with extremely limited restarts. The boss fights suffer due to the fact the whip now stuns most of them, so the fights become more of a symphony in button mashing as opposed to the basic strategy generally employed by other Castlevania’s boss fights. The only truly difficult parts are some of the platforming components, and even then the new additions will let you get through it easy. I wouldn’t say it was dumbed down, but the additions weren’t complimented on the other side of the spectrum, at all. You can find yourself blazing through this game in a matter of an hour or two, especially when taking into consideration the lack of replay value.

You do unlock a hard mode after you beat the game once, and the hard mode actually seems more balanced than the regular mode, but it is still beatable with a minimum of fuss if you master the new whip mechanics. Taking away from the replay value is the fact they didn’t throw any alternate routes into the game. It, like the first Castlevania, is a pretty straight forward romp. Some levels have steps that make you choose between one set of power ups or enemies and another, but if you wanted you could just backtrack and go the other way but it is hardly necessary. Powerups and hearts are extremely plentiful.

It feels a little like when they made this huge jump to the more powerful SNES, they wanted to rope in that new generation of graphic savvy gamers and didn’t want to send them away by giving them a difficult game, so they compensated for it a little bit too much and removed almost all of the challenge. It is also possible that the majority of the development time was put into the astounding graphics over the mediocre gameplay.

This is where this game keeps its mystique. You won’t really hear people decry the gameplay as much as you will hear them extol the glory that is the graphics and sound of Super Castlvania. Sure, Mode 7 and parallax shading and all those other brand new graphic methods could get pretty gimmicky at that time, and this game is no exception, but if you can remember the first time you played a game with this level of graphics you probably remember being absolutely mind fudged by it. The game is simply gorgeous. Even the gimmicky levels and bosses don’t really detract from the accomplishment. At the time Super Castlevania IV was as good as it got. The sprites are all big, colorful, and clear to what they are. The backgrounds are active and generally help add to the dark feel of the game. The only complaint of the Mode 7 gimmicks is that, well, they do kind of fell like they were shoehorned in. The levels that really take advantage of it are definitely neat to look at and offer a change, but the change can be kind of jarring and will probably cause you to die a handful of times until you get used to it. These graphical additions, including a very small amount of interaction with the backgrounds, tend to come off as gimmicky. It is impossible to downplay how amazing the rest of the game looks though, so the gimmicky Mode 7 experiments don’t do anything at all to detract from the overall game.

Even despite the groundbreaking visuals, it is the audio that keeps Super Castlevania IV talked about. This game is one of the definitive soundtracks on a system that hosted literally dozens of absolutely classic aural treats. Within the game are enough new tracks interspersed with the classics to keep everything fresh. Couple that with one of the most memorable and well composed ending themes to ever grace ANY system and you have an absolutely legendary soundtrack.

In the end what we have here is a game that is clearly an improvement over the original in a few categories, but a step backwards when it comes to the actual challenge itself. The rating of this game has to come down to whether or not you rank challenge above everything else. I do in certain situations, but since the game was watered down due to attempted improvements, I feel like giving Konami the benefit of the doubt. It may be easier than the original Castlevania, but it surpassed it in every other conceivable category and presented a super enjoyable experience.

Score: 86