Why did I wait so long to play this?
You all don't need me to tell you how great Super Castlevania IV is, do you? I mean, this game is just a few weeks over 23 years old. It's considered a classic of the SNES, and maybe the best of the entire, girthful (ugh, sorry) Castlevania series. Surely, all of you out there don't need a clown like me to expunge on the fabulousness of this game? Well, you've found yourself here, one way or another, so just humor me, please? I received this game as a gift for Christmas, shit, probably ten years ago. So, unlike the other games I've played and beaten so far as part of my backlog eradicating efforts, this one is a true backlog game. Just sitting, since I was in high school, waiting to be played. Besides playing the first three-or-four levels of the original Castlevania on an emulator (I know, I know, emulators are bad. Fucking blah blah blah), and playing the very tiniest amount of Simon's Quest, I have absolutely no knowledge of this series. In fact, the only other Castlevania game I have is Lament of Innocence for the PS2. Anyway, before I started playing IV on Halloween (how fitting), I had played it briefly two or three years ago. I beat the first two levels I think, but for some reason I remember not thinking it was amazing. Well, after playing through it fully and beating it, I can say that, yes, it is amazing. I actually had a hard time coming up with any cons for my list. But, no game is perfect, so let's jump right the fuck in.
CONS:
- Some of the platforming can be finicky and unnecessarily tough due to the slightly stiff jumping. It's not a huge deal, and certainly doesn't detract from the game in any meaningful way
- That damn knock-back can be very aggravating
- Touching the SIDES of spikes kills you (I added this after I came up with the initial list of cons)
PROS:
- Great graphics/backgrounds. Lots of detail
- The boss battles are almost all awesome. Each boss is unique and varied
- The game is challenging, but it's fair (minus the platforming grievance from above). It's also quite fair about giving your continues.
- Overall, gameplay is smooth and just fun as hell.
I'll get this out of the way quickly, because there's much more good to talk about than bad. There's a decent amount of dangerous platforming in this game. That's all fine and dandy, but the stiff (not entirely) jumping controls add to the difficulty somewhat. Stage VII, which is the library level, has a section where you have to jump between fast, floating books. Below you is the instant death of horrible nothingness.The books float around in a pattern, which can be predicted by watching them go around a few times. This whole section is nerve-wracking enough (especially with enemies waiting to knock you off your small platform), but add in the un-fluid jumping, and it compounds this into a panic-inducing ordeal. Okay, perhaps that's hyperbole a little bit. But Simon doesn't jump like he's an ass-kicking vampire hunter. No, he jumps like a Yale-y would (?????). That is, very stiff and nonathletic-like. There's another jumping section during Stage VI that, while I might have only died once during it, still felt unnecessarily annoying.
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| Giant chandeliers for no reason |
You're in this large, black room. It flashes red (not sure why, but it's awesome), and you have to jump from one platform on a giant chandelier to another. There are a total of four or five of these giant chandeliers. Again, it's not super difficult, but your jumps have to be fairly precise. No barely grabbing onto an edge of a platform. You better be pretty well in the center.
Another minor annoyance are the stairs. If you are at the top of a set of stairs, let's say, and you have to jump to a platform above, you better make sure you are COMPLETELY clear of the stairs. Otherwise, you'll just be stuck on them. This is barely even a problem, but it's one I faced several times.
Probably my biggest problem with the platforming sections came towards the end of the game. Stage A (for whatever reason, after Stage IX, instead of Stage X, it's Stage A. Go figure) has you in a large clock tower sort of deal. You have to jump on lots of spinning and moving gears, and you have to hook your whip onto various moving things. This stuff all got very, very aggravating, and this was by far the hardest area of the game for me. As well it should be, I suppose, since it's the penultimate level of the game. Even so, with controls that were just a tiny bit tighter, these areas would have been more manageable. Now, like I said, I'm barely familiar with the earlier NES iterations, but I know those had woefully bad controls. I know the ones in IV are lightyears better, so I'm really nitpicking here. But hell, like I (and I'm sure many others) have said, it's hard to find some damn cons or flaws in this game.
My other con, though, is a little more legitimate. Whenever Simon takes any kind of damage, he gets flung back. I'm sure fighting all the undead creatures of the night is rough business, and I'm sure getting hit by a skeleton's sword, fireballs, or other such business would hurt, and perhaps even send you stumbling back, but come on now Simon. Small things even, like bats, gold dust, a mummy's tatters, bones, and other miscellany that should not have the power to knock a full grown man back several feet, do knock a full grown man back several feet. What's the big deal, you might be asking yourself. Let me lay out a quick scenario: you're hopping across books. One fall means death. Let's say you get to the end of the section, with full health, and take a hit from a skeleton. Normally, it'll take off two-or-three ticks of health. Sucks, but no biggie. But, since you're standing on the edge of a platform, you fly back like you were just hit by Dracula himself, and you're dead. Pretty damn cheap. All in all, over 7+ hours, it probably happened between 6-8 times. Not a huge number, but very annoying, and something that should have been easily fixable from the original trilogy.
One more thing: spikes. Fucking spikes. They really become a pain in the ass in Stage VIII. Platforms swing back and forth, or ride up and down, during various parts of the level. And they have spikes underneath them. Obviously, touching the spikes hurts. In fact, it kills you. Automatically. The worst is the fact that touching the sides of the spikes kills you. WHY WOULD THAT KILL YOU? They are perfectly smooth. Many, many deaths came at the hands of THE SIDES OF SPIKES. I'm tempted to add that to my cons list, quite frankly. I think it's lazy and nonsensical.
You know what, I DID add it to my list of cons. Take THAT, Super Castlevania IV!
Okay, enough complaining. That turned out to be longer than I was anticipating anyway (what else is new?). On to the goodies!
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| My phone camera really washed out the colors for a lot of these pics |
The graphics in this game are great for the SNES. The pics I took do them no justice. That's what I get for using my phone as my only means of screenshot capturing. The above picture is I believe the beginning of Stage IV. At any rate, the backgrounds are really well done. They
often have little animations that don't add anything directly to the
game, but they are great flourishes. Things like books rattling on bookshelves
in the library; green slime dripping in the sewer-like level; bats flying in
the backgrounds; things glistening in the treasury level; and other various
things that add to the creepy atmosphere. I didn’t take good enough notes on
this, so I’m being general here, but the cool stuff in the background makes this
game infinitely better. There are other cool things too, like the level where
the background rotates while you stand in the middle, sort of like you're in a giant tube. There's the other level where the whole screen rotates
as you hang precariously over spikes. The aforementioned chandelier segment I
also thought was interesting.
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| Picture doesn't fully show it, but this area is really cool |
Besides the backgrounds, the enemy sprites are also great.
There are an enormous amounts of different enemies, and there aren’t too many
that are used in more than one level. There’s skeletons (and a few different
varieties at that), zombies, floating eyeballs, haunted tables (yup!), ethereal
dancers, evil hounds, skeletal dragon head-things, etc. All these enemies are
bright and vibrant. I love the overall look of the entire game (again, it’s a
game full of monsters. What the hell is there not to like?). Oddly enough,
Simon is probably the worst-looking sprite in the game.
I’ve decided to
dedicate an entire post to the bosses in this game, so I won’t spend much time
on them here. I will say, all the bosses look fantastic, and they are very
unique. They didn’t just slap new color palettes on regular enemies and call it
a day. Each level (except one, for some reason) has a boss at the end. One
level (four, maybe?) has two bosses, and the final level ends with a gauntlet
of four (!!!) boss battles in a row. You’ll fight classic monsters, from Greek
mythology to the old horror movies; you’ll see the likes of Medusa, a mummy,
Frankenstein’s monster, Death himself, and Dracula. Plus, there’s a score of
others. As I said, they all look especially good. Some are huge, some are
transparent, some are bizarre, but all just make me so very happy. If anyone
out there enjoys 16-bit boss battles and hasn’t played Super Castlevania IV,
I’d almost recommend it just for the bosses. I will say, though, they generally
aren’t too difficult (until you get to the last damn few levels). They are all
basically just endurance matches. Just outlast (and out-hit) the bosses. There’s
not a lot of strategy for most. Still, I love them.
The game starts off easily enough. As you progress, it gets more difficult. I think the learning curve is pretty gracious. You aren't immediately thrown into a hellish nightmare of a level at the onset. But by the end of the game, around Stage VIII or so, it gets quite difficult. Almost all the difficulty is fair, however. Besides my griping about some of the platforming, and that bullshit knock back effect, everything else in this game is the perfect amount of challenging and doable. Besides the enemies, you'll have to go through sections of collapsing staircases (and other collapsing structures throughout), sections where spikes must be dodged, sections stuffed with enemies, sections where you have to jump from flying platform to flying platform (as you hurl towards spikes too), and in general lots of sections of perilous danger. You start the game with five lives, and you can accumulate more (I assume through the collection of points). Five is a pretty good amount, too. Let's say you exhaust all five lives on Stage III (what, do you suck or sumthen'? Kidding, of course! I suck). If you decide to continue, you'll start at the beginning of Stage III. It sucks if you use your last life on the boss, but at least you don't have to play through the game in one sitting. And if you get five more game overs on that same level, you'll still start at the beginning of that level. So anything can be overcome through perseverance and an eventual knowledge of how the level will play it. Compared to other games of its time, it's fairly forgiving. And, towards the end of the game, getting game overs will start you right outside the boss rooms. This is incredibly helpful. Finally, after every boss you can get a password to start you at the beginning of the next level. The password system is very easy, and it's not a long complicated thing, like in the game Phantom 2040 for instance.
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| Blurry pic of the password screen |
Finally, overall, this game is just fun as all get out. The whip action feels very responsive, and you can whip in any direction your heart desires. There's no enemy that's too small, or too high in the air, to escape your mighty whip of doom. You start with a small brown leather (I guess?) whip, but you can upgrade it to a longer, chain-like whip. I'm honestly not sure what the upgrades do besides adding much needed length to your reach. I had thought that it gave your attacks more power, but I'm not sure it's true. Still, the extra length is very helpful. You can find these upgrades, hearts, money bags, health items, and sub-weapons by hitting candles on the wall. It's automatic after a few minutes: you see a candle, you hit that thing. Hearts, contrary to probably every video game in the history of video games, don't give you health. They give you ammunition for your sub-weapon. These sub-weapons are very beneficial. You can get a knife, an axe, a cross, holy water, or a stopwatch. The knife is just a normal projectile that goes straight. It's counterpart is the axe, which is also thrown, but it flies in an arc. The cross is the best sub-weapon, because you can throw it straight out, and it'll go to the edge of the screen, and return to you. So you can get two hits in on anything. The holy water weapon is thrown, and burns anything it touches. It isn't great. These all take just one heart per use. The stopwatch will freeze everything on screen for a time. It's can be a great help, but there's two problems: it costs FIVE hearts per use, and I only found one throughout the whole game. Granted, I didn't search every nook and cranny, so I'm sure I missed a few, but still, through the normal course of play, I found one. Not worth it. You can also find double- and triple-shots, which allow you to throw two- or three of your items at a time. This is a good thing.
You heal yourself by finding small pieces of pork chops from the candles. This restores a small amount of health. You can also break pieces of certain walls and find full pork chops. Unless you are down to one or two hits left, this will fully refill your health. Why pork chops? I have no idea. What the hell not, really? Why couldn't pork chops be the ammunition, and the hearts give you health? The money bags I mentioned give you points. You can find an item that kills any enemy currently on screen. Again, helpful, but they are few and far between. I think that about covers the candles anyway.
The goal of the game is to get to the end of every level, beat the boss, and advance. The ultimate goal is to find Dracula and kill him. The gameplay makes this journey very fun. Most enemies can be killed with one or two whip hits. The most you'll have to hit an enemy is four times (I believe). This keeps everything moving pretty quickly, where you don't have to whale on an enemy ten times to kill it. There's a nice mix of platforming and action here, so the game always feels fresh and new. Nothing is really recycled either. Part of the fun of the game is seeing what is around every corner. What new enemies will you face? What new level designs will you have to get through? How awesome is the boss for the level going to look? All things I thought during my playthrough of the game.
This is a game I wish I had played as a kid. But I didn't, and as such there is no extra nostalgic factor I can attach to it. But maybe that's a good thing. Experiencing this game for the first time as an adult has made me appreciate it more than my dumb kid/teen self would have. So, girls and guys, if you have this game sitting on your shelf, unplayed, change that immediately! If you don't own it? Well, you could buy the cart, but it'll set you back $35. I would say it's worth every penny. I probably won't play this game again for a while, but you better believe I will play it again down the road. It's too much fun not too. I hope someone out there has been persuaded to play this game. Or someone out there was at least even mildly entertained by my musings. I have a good deal of fun writing these, and I hope all who read them enjoy them half as much as I enjoy writing them. If nothing else, maybe you could get a new perspective (from someone who is hardly an expert on video games, let alone retro ones) on some game that you hadn't considered. Or maybe you could just read this and say, "Stop using so many parenthesis you fucking clown. I'm not reading your amateurish writing again." That's fine too
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| Another game down! |
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