I
t’s been a while since I’ve had the time to really work on beating some NES games. As summer approaches, and I’m faced with a less stressful job, that time has started to open up. So to start off, I’m going to tackle one of the more controversial games in the NES library: Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest
Castlevania 2 falls in line with many of the sequels for the NES (Super Mario Bros. 2, Snake’s Revenge) in that many people found it vastly inferior and frustrating when compared with their predecessors. Castlevania two seemed like a game that started out with some big plans, but ended up falling far far short of the expectations. For example, one of the ambitious features was a day/night cycle that changed enemies on screen. Seems like a straight forward idea, but its execution comes off as a completely jarring experience. With each cycle you are met with a dialogue box (No way to skip) and about a 10-15 second animation. First time it’s cool. After the 3rd you’re totally sick of it. You are also confronted with insanely cryptic puzzles, almost no bosses, and lots of moments of pure frustration. One quick Google search and you will find scores of venomous reviews.
Sounds like my kind of game.
For this game challenge I will be working under the following conditions:
Original Hardware
No turbo
No save states
No cheat codes
7 Days.
Starting Monday night I’ll start on beating this game, updating both Twitter and this blog with each post.
Hopefully by the end of this week I’ll be able to upload a victory video!
UPDATE for April 22nd
So I finally was able to get some time to play and so far so good. I’m about 1/2 way through the game with not a whole lot of difficulty. Overall I’m seriously enjoying this game a lot. The RPG and time elements don’t really bother me, and outside of some really annoying jumping moments it’s been pretty fun. Most of the puzzels aren’t THAT bad though I can imagine them being horribly annoying in the early onset of video games.
One of the other interesting things about this game is it has multiple endings. Unfortunately I didn’t move fast enough to get the super good ending but I’m on track for the normal one at least. I ended up having to continue at a really crappy time and it cost me a ton of time re-farming hearts.
Hopefully my next update will be a video of the ending!
Here are some pics. I apologize for the low quality but I actually prefer to take pics with a phone. I use original hardware and I want to prove it’s really me doing it with no assistance.
The Musician, the Gamer, and the Instructional Designer 
I just decided to crack down on beating the original Castlevania! I’m at Death…
Yeah that hallway is insane. Some people put up vids of using Holy Water and trapping him (same with Dracula) but that implies you a) have Holy Water and b) you can get down that hallway with it and with enough health. I never use emulation when I beat a game so it’s quite a challenge.
Yeah I just picked it up a few days ago along with Simon’s Quest. My goal is to beat these games the way they were meant to be played! I’ve hit continue so many times I can fly through any of these stages with ease until I get to Frankenstein and Death.