Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES Review)

November 9, 2024 by 5 Comments

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1989
Designed by Ste Pickford & Steve Hughes
Developed by Zippo Games via Rare Ltd.
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Oh, thank heavens that all the good stuff was removed from the first game and all the crap stuff was left in, like sliding-based punishments for platforming f*ck-ups. I was worried this wasn’t a sequel!

Look, I can’t argue that Wizards & Warriors was some kind of amazing platforming adventure. It’s probably one of the worst games I’ve ever given a YES! too. The main criticism was as follows: “Most damning of all is that Wizards & Warriors has one of the most flimsy and unimpactful primary weapons in the history of gaming. A sword so weak that it’s genuinely embarrassing.” That returns for the sequel, and this time, there’s no permanent boomerang-like weapon to supplement it. I suspected the “Dagger of Throwing” single-handedly saved Wizards & Warriors from being flushed into the sewers of gaming history, and Ironsword confirmed that I was mostly right. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if that dagger is a big reason why Ironsword sold well enough that it got yet another sequel. The third game, Kuros: Visions of Power was the end of the franchise. I honestly wonder if people who bought Ironsword felt like they got ripped-off when the best part of the first game wasn’t in the second and “noped” out of the franchise for good. Because Ironsword, a game with SWORD right in the title, has the worst sword combat I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s awful.

The only attack resembling one with any reach is to duck and attack. This allows you to poke at enemies like you’re checking to see if they twitch. This is the only range you get for at least half of every level.

I’d call this “flail-based combat” but that seems far too generous. Flailing implies some sort of striking attack, but almost all your moves stay close within the character sprite box itself. Because of the complete lack of range, your sword is little more than a glorified shield that you have to just wait for enemies to run into. It really, really doesn’t help that most enemies are optimized to work around the sword by circling around you and coming in at you from below, which there’s really no way to defend against. As the game progresses, you can pick up shields and helmets that I assume shrink your collision box, but even late in the game there were enemies that could take an entire life bar down to a sliver or worse from a single hit. But even in instances where they’re coming right at you in a straight line, swinging the sword is ineffective, and there’s never any OOMPH when you actually do successfully land a blow. Oh my God, I figured out the word I’m looking for! “Shoo.” That’s it! Ironsword is shooing-based combat! “Shoo, get away from me, bat! I’m only wearing F*CKING ARMOR!” And by the way, how the hell does a bat flying into a knight’s armored knee do a one shot kill?!

I knew Ironsword was heading to the dump when the second area in the game was a cloud-based trampoline park where you have to hop around to explore. That’s a mid-to-late game trope, not something you can pull out as early as Ironsword does.

By the way, you do get projectiles, but how Ironsword does it is kind of strange. The first four game worlds are divided into two areas, the second of which will always contain a spell that you need to shoot the boss with. Once you have the spell, the projectile can’t be turned off. If you want to use your sword to defend yourself against basic enemies and your magic meter is anywhere but empty, you HAVE to shoot them and waste what can be a precious resource. Disappointingly, none of the four magic spells you pick up feel themed to the stages. They’re just four different types of basic video game peashooters, and you lose them as soon as you beat the boss. There’s apparently a way to trick the game into keeping them, but I never pulled it off, and I was trying to! I also didn’t really care for the projectiles because it didn’t feel like it fit the vibe the game was going for. They’re guns, more or less. This is Wizards & Warriors, right? It doesn’t FEEL like magic. The air one shoots in front of you. The fire one is lobbed in a way that reminded me of a grenade. The best one was probably that fire one, but only because the boss was built specifically for it. I would normally compliment that, but it was hard to take it seriously when it looks like something drawn by a 6 year old with MS Paint.

(blinks) Seriously?

The best thing I can say about Ironsword is that the exploration is fine. The emphasis is kept squarely on locating stuff and plotting your jumps to avoid slopes that cause you to slide and lose progress. In the first half of each world, you have to find some kind of golden doodad to give to an enormous animal, who will give you passage to the second half of the world where the attack spell used to beat the boss is. Along the way, you can find (and buy) keys to open chests, some of which have treasure and some of which have single-use spells that can give you temporary buffs or alternative means of slaying baddies. There’s also permanent upgrades to your sword, shield, and helmet (along with a single movement upgrade that you find in the final level).

This is in the shop in level 2-1. You get what sure seemed to me like the most effective melee weapon in the game barely one-fifth of the way into Ironsword, which means it’s not exciting to find swords afterwards.

The way the upgrades to the sword were scaled didn’t work because the best weapon can be gotten in the first part of the second level. I got this lance-looking thing in from the shop above, the Diamond Sword, that sure felt more effective than the shorter-range swords. The most effective “attack” in the game is jumping into things because, like the first game, you stiffen-up when you jump and hold the sword upright, like you’re skewering enemies. Don’t mistake this for feeling good. It’s got no weight or OOMPH at all. Again, the sword is a glorified shield itself. That’s why having a lance that extends beyond the sprite itself is especially valuable because the best you can hope for is to position yourself in a way where enemies fly into it without having to press the attack button. Attacking is more likely to expose you to damage than sitting still. By the way, I was crushed when I saw that I’d assembled the titular Ironsword after beating the fourth boss, because it meant I had lost the more effective diamond sword. Sure, the Ironsword has the permanent ability to fire, but it was the final level and enemies had an easier time getting through my defenses with the Ironsword than they did the Diamond Sword. What the ever-loving hell were they thinking?

It looks SO FUN in screenshots, but Ironsword isn’t even a tiny bit fun.

Anything else I can say about Ironsword is immediately overridden by how historically terrible the combat is. While the jumping physics and level design, along with all the sliding, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it does work. But, the combat is the worst, so who cares? The bosses do feel.. large, I guess. I mean, the game ends with you fighting the four LOGOS of the bosses (one at a time, mind you), which are smaller than your sprite, and then the game just ends after you beat the last one. It’s one of the worst last bosses I’ve seen, but the other four bosses are alright, I guess. At least you can shoot them. Too bad the combat along the way is the worst. And the game looks gorgeous, with some of the best sprite work on NES. Who cares though, because the combat is the absolute worst!

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And hey, no grinding-up gems to get past toll booths this time. Crying shame that the combat is the worst. Also, and people might disagree, but I think the color-coded keys and treasure chests from the first game were that game’s strongest concepts. They just worked for me and made for an effective primary driver for the entire game, but that’s COMPLETELY gone in the sequel. Doors never require keys, keys only come in one flavor, and keys are ONLY used on chests. There’s no permanent secondary items, an aspect of Wizards & Warriors that made it so weirdly compelling, like the Boots of Force or Feather of Featherfall. How the hell did they maintain the emphasis on exploration while surgically excising almost every exploration element from the original? It’d be an impressive feat if Ironsword wasn’t so f*cking horrendous.

If you’re low on money, you can gamble. I most certainly did not cheat using save states and rewind at any point in this review to build up my loot and make shopping go quicker. Why would you think that? DAMN YOUR ACCUSING EYES!

Everything comes back to the combat, and the ultimate deal breaker was how inconsistent and awful your defensive collision detection is. Ironsword is probably one of the most fascinating games to experience with modern emulation tools, especially rewind. Because there was never any consistency to when I did or didn’t take damage. Enemies that scored one-shot kills in one instance took only a tiny sliver of health the next time from nearly the same angle. HUH? This was constant throughout Ironsword, to the point that I started laughing hysterically at it. It reduces the defensive game of Ironsword into something that feels like real-time Dungeons & Dragons-like probability. Sometimes enemies would hit me in the feet and die, and other times I’d start to blink from damage. WEIRD! But it makes Ironsword a game where you can’t properly gauge risk when you’re dealing with enemies. I assume all this was intentional, but I’m not sure why anyone would make a game that plays like Wizards & Warriors does have combat like this, because it doesn’t make for a fun game!  It’s all frustration and no reward.

Believe it or not, that little smiley face is one of the last bosses. I told you that you’re fighting logos!

I’m not sure what the point of Ironsword was. It seems that almost everything that made Wizards & Warriors ultimately work was dropped from the sequel. Wizards & Warriors is sloppy as all hell too, but it had moxie, for lack of a better term. Like the Dagger of Throwing, the Potion of Levitation, and the Feather of Feathered Feathery Feathers were there because the designers were bound and determined to take the abject disaster of a game they built and shove it, kicking and screaming, over the finish line of decency by sheer force of will. That’s ALL gone from Ironsword. It’s everything bad about Wizards & Warriors with none of the good. It’s fascinating! Like someone saw the sales figures of the first game and wanted to convince themselves that the core swordplay and jumping physics were the real reason for the success and not everything else that had to built around that sh*t to make it worthwhile. I’ve never seen a sequel like Ironsword, and that’s a statement that everyone should celebrate.
Verdict: NO!
And yes, I can totally believe it’s not butter. It’s margarine. I know what margarine tastes like.

Great job, Timmy. Keep up the good work.

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What I’m Playing Right Now #18 – Colecovision: The Awesome Console That Can’t Have a Collection

November 5, 2024 by 1 Comment

Need a giggle? Just imagine a person waking up from a coma since 2015. It kind of is funny to think about. Well, assuming they don’t have severe brain damage. So, what AM I playing?

COLECO-ENVISION

I solemnly swear I’ll never do another review like the Campaign ’84 review again. Yea, that crossed the line from “silly” to “stupid” and whatever else you think about me, I learn from my mistakes. BUT, there was something positive that came out of that review. It gave me a chance to glance at the Colecovision library, which I haven’t done a lot at IGC. Actually, before Campaign ’84, I’d done exactly one game, and it never even got released. It was Pac-Man, which you can read in Pac-Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include. It got a YES!, so after today, Colecovision is batting .500. The Yankees are looking to sign it, but it’ll probably do time in the minor leagues first. You don’t want to rush these things.

This is my new favorite screenshot. Of all time.

Anyway, Coleco, and WHOA, what a library! Of course, it’s a problematic library for a modern collection like Atari 50. See, almost every major game on Colecovision is a licensed game, in some form or another, but mostly arcade games. That was Coleco’s business model. Coleco spent most of their budget securing Donkey Kong, 1981’s hottest arcade game. In fact, Warner Bros. brass was shocked by Ray Kassar for declining to simply match Coleco’s $2 a cart bid (some sources say $1.40, like the Wikipedia page, but the Colecovision page says $2, and I’d always heard it as $2). Kassar refused, claiming $2 a cart would screw up their margins. It’s a little more complicated than that, since Coleco had a side business that Atari didn’t in those little arcade table tops like the one I reviewed in LCD Games IX, which net Nintendo an additional $1 per unit. Still, it was unfathomable Atari refused to match the offer. The Warner suits even told him something to the effect of, in another year, he’d sell his soul for a deal that good. It gets even worse when you consider that anyone in their right mind would have known that, without Donkey Kong, Colecovision was dead on arrival no matter how good the rest of the software was. This isn’t a knock on the rest of the library. It’s a GREAT library, but there’s nothing on the level of Donkey Kong in terms of cultural impact. It was so desirable people would pay good money JUST to play a convincing home port of it. A fact of life Atari knew the value of already from Space Invaders. It’s absolutely unreal Atari didn’t get Donkey Kong.

And Donkey Kong on Colecovision is solid. The playfield is reversed which is weird, but the gameplay is the same. The worst aspect is that a lot of the personality is missing. Like the barrels don’t explode with a satisfying sound effect like they do in the arcade. Killing a barrel in the Coleco version makes a noise similar to picking up a coin in Super Mario Bros. But, it’s fine. Donkey Kong CV isn’t an amazing game, but it is convincing. That mattered a lot more in the early 80s than it does today.

Coleco was ALL-IN on Donkey Kong, and with the remainder of their war chest, they secured high quality games with cult followings. Stuff like two favorites of mine: Lady Bug and Mouse Trap. These are GREAT GAMES that Atari had the path to secure and didn’t. Colecovision owners certainly had a wealth of great software. But, the problem is, that doesn’t transition well to a retro collection today, in the 2020s. Colecovision is a console entirely defined by other people’s games, like no console before or since. I bet the average gaming fan can’t name a single unlicensed Colecovision game. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. Coleco went where the market was at the time, which was arcade ports. But, they weren’t making arcade games themselves, so even their first-party games were essentially third-party games. That creates a problem for access NOW. Below are six games that have a pretty good chance of getting a YES! from me: Pitfall!, Popeye, Cabbage Patch Kids, Mr. Do!, Burgertime, and Carnival. Each of those six games are owned today by a different company.

Pitfall (Rights: Activision)
Popeye (Rights: Nintendo)
Cabbage Patch Kids (Rights: Konami & Jakks Pacific)
Burgertime (Rights: G-Mode)
Carnival (Rights: Sega)
Mr. Do! (Rights: Saudi Arabian Misk Foundation)

And that likely will keep Coleco forever out of reach. OR WILL IT? There IS a way Digital Eclipse could do a Gold Master Series for it. It just wouldn’t look like a normal Gold Master Series release. It would require selling a base that contains the documentary without any games at all. Just the raw documentary/history/behind the scenes feature, however many chapters that is. You could sell it as low as $9.99 to $19.99, depending on if you can include a teeny tiny handful of games. Probably no more than five, and they’d have to be ones that Atari already owns. The real magic happens when you sell the licensed games at $0.99 to $1.99 a pop as DLC. Or, sell entire chunks of games, IE every Konami port comes in its own $9.99 pack. Why not? People REMEMBER the Colecovision. Like most classic platforms, it has a passionate fanbase that still develops new content to this day for it. While it almost certainly has no path towards the type of compilation the platform deserves, one that can put money in every rights holder’s pocket isn’t out of the question. It would suck to do it that way, but someone has to test the waters on this model anyway. Might as well be you, Digital Eclipse/Atari.

But, I’m not doing Coleco right now. I think that library will mostly show up when I look at ports of popular games. Expect it to be a “Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include” staple.

IRON-BORED

“WEEEEEEEE!”

Yep, that’s Fabio.

I really am just treading water until Tetris Forever, Taito Milestones 3, and Power Rangers hit. If you see a slowdown in reviews soon, that’s why. I’ll be posting at least daily updates on those reviews when I start them, but until then, I hit the randomizer using only my review pool, and it spit out the sequel to Wizards & Warriors. I gave W&W a YES!, but very barely so. If that game hadn’t had the boomerang-like throwing knife, I don’t think I would have liked it. Luckily.. or unluckily, more than likely, I can now directly test that theory. That’s because the sequel, Ironsword, has none of that. You do get projectiles unique to each stage which are used specifically to fight bosses, but you get limited ammo. In fact, one of the objects of the game is to build up enough ammo to beat the boss. Otherwise, this is a sword & sorcery game where your hero has almost no attack range and level design based around leaps of faith. This isn’t going to be pretty, folks.

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Campaign ’84 (Colecovision Review)

November 5, 2024 by 1 Comment

Campaign ’84
Platform: Colecovision
Released in 1983. See, campaigns starting too early isn’t new!
Developed by Sunrise Software Inc.
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I’m Catherine Vice, and I approve this message.

My fellow Americans, I’m humbled and honored to accept your nomination for President of the United States. If elected your leader I will ban.. shoes with laces what the f*ck? And also make Oysters the national food are you f*cking kidding me? Are you sure this is what polls said the people want? Wait.. is that why I’m also taking away the shoelaces? To prevent a epidemic of suicides when I mandate people eat snot on a rock? You DID poll on this stuff, right? What else did you poll on?

Oh wow. What do you mean all the good issues were taken? THAT’S NOT HOW POLITICS WORKS, NUMB NUTS! How much am I paying you? Contingent on if I win, right? Son of a bitch. Well, that list is.. batsh*t and worthless. I’m almost certain that Pet Rocks don’t hold jobs. Just because people use them as doorstops doesn’t mean they get paid! NO, NOT IF THEY’RE PAPERWEIGHTS EITHER! I KNOW THE CONVENTION CAN HEAR ME! Uh, yea, no shoe laces, Oysters for all, and uh.. What polled highest with working men? Um, ban water guns! I guess that’s something you all care deeply about for.. reasons, but worry not, fellow citizens! I’m making that my #1 priority! As your president, I’ll personally assure you that you never have to worry about some stranger getting your wife wet while you’re at work!

Thank god they only saw the wig and not the dead hooker I was standing over.

I chose to be the elephant because I think people are more likely to vote for someone who steps on them while riding an elephant and not a donkey. There’s dignity to dying via elephant trampling, but a donkey? That’d just be rude! This will matter, trust me. I’m campaigning on oyster rights, for God’s sake. I need every advantage I can get! So, let me get this straight, I just walk around the literal borders of the states, trying to collect white items while avoiding red ones? Are you SURE this is how you run for President? Ain’t I supposed to be shaking babies and kissing hands and not walking around.. ooh, good catch, KISSING BABIES and SHAKING HANDS. Actually, don’t watch the 6 o’clock news. You’ll find out why tomorrow. And you’re POSITIVE that this walking along the edges thing works? Taft did it? Well, hey, can’t argue with the results, right? It’s Taft! Wait, the first time or the second time? Both times? Hell, I’ll take coin flip odds. Okay, I got this. Kiss babies, shake hands. Someone hand me a marker so I can write that on my hand. Make it a permanent one. Actually, hey Lenny, do you still have that tattoo gun?

Hey, I know you’re my campaign manager and I hired you presumably because I trust you and not because I was high at the time, but you’re certain that starting my campaign in Nebraska was a good idea? That’s not how the saying goes. It’s how MAINE goes, so goes the nation, AND EVEN THAT’S NOT TRUE! So, you’re sure that, to win the presidency, I have to just run over citizens with my elephant? They like this? Just double checking, but this is PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES we’re talking about, and not the President of Sadomasochists of America, right? Because I’m term-limited out of that. Pssh, eight term limit my aching ass. So, step on the people and I win, right? Oh, ONLY HALF? Duh, of course. 50.0001% of the vote gets me 100% of the state’s electoral votes. Let freedom ring, baby! And yes, that counts for Nebraska and Maine, even though in real life each district gets their own electoral votes + 1 for the state’s popular vote. That’s fine, though. I can step on half the people to become President. Hell, I’ll step on ALL the people. It’s basically why I wanted to run for President anyway! But, I do have a question.. what are these numbers here?

So, if I understand correctly, those are the issues that you so diligently polled on from the start of this review campaign. The ones that just float without being highlighted are things I’m FOR and the numbers that are inside out are what I’m AGAINST. At the start of the game, I mean campaign, all eight “issues” default as “AGAINST” and I could have changed any, all, or none to “FOR” and they mean NOTHING because it just changes whether I get popularity or lose popularity when I collect numbers as they randomly appear at campaign events? And the ONLY campaign events involve stepping on voters with the animal of my choice? Why can’t it be the “IN NAME ONLY” animals? I’d much rather play as a RINO or a DINO. They’d be much more fun to step on people with!

Well, my campaign is going.. swimmingly. Which doesn’t mean I’m drowning, despite what the spin on Reddit says. FAKE NEWS! Besides, I literally inherited Fort Knox and sold it for scrap, which somehow added 30 campaign hours and almost certain federal indictment. Gas up the campaign plane and find me a country without extradition, just in case. Preferably one with a better form of government than this. It’s just clumsily moving along state borders while mashing the fire button and hoping I find the right spot. That’s literally how you campaign in Campaign ’84. You have to walk around the edge until you find that state’s invisible “entry point” but you also have to press the FIRE button, which sadly doesn’t fire my campaign manager. Most entry points were at the top of the state, but not all of them were. There’s also no Alaska and Hawaii, and it’s hard to squeeze into the rinky-dinky states.

This really is the ONLY campaigning you do. And, once you get fifty percent of a state, you want to deliberately maroon yourself onto a single voter. Once someone is run over, you can’t move to that same spot again, at least until the next campaign out of respect for the breathless supporters who sacrificed themselves to my campaign. It’s sort of like reverse Snake. It’s actually harder than it sounds too, because you can move diagonally, and you can’t leave a state until you have no moves left to make. I screwed myself over multiple times by leaving diagonal moves, and every second counts. But, if you collect the right issues, they give you an automatic popularity boost. Just two should put you over 50% for that state, which is enough, and that goes a LOT faster than scooping voters one at a time. Also, Stars & Stripes Forever plays during this whole thing, and it’s intolerable. Thank god the campaign season is almost over. This is boring. Well, here was my.. genius campaign manager’s brilliant electoral strategy. Remember, I need half the electoral votes +1 to become President of the United States. 270. If it’s 269, horseshoes are thrown until a winner emerges.

And that netted me a total of………….

Oh, thank God. You see, dear readers, I actually didn’t want to be President. I just wanted a steady gig as a talking head on cable news. Easy money! Thank god I came up exactly four electoral votes short. I’ve had my concession speech ready for a while. Don’t tell anyone, but I actually wrote that first, before I even announced my candidacy. Real tear jerker. Magnanimous call for unity and, you know, thanking my voters and sh*t. Best of all, I never have to play Campaign ’84 again, one of the absolute most pointless games I’ve ever played in my life. It works neither as an educational game or a joke game, because the jokes begin and end with the campaign issues at the start. Nothing happens. One mini-game! Thankfully, the campaign season is over, and best of all, I LOST! I’ll just call the poor son of a bitch who “beat me” and.. hey wait. If Alaska and Hawaii aren’t in this, then wouldn’t 266 be a little more than the.. the.. majority of electoral votes?

Oh no. OH GOD!

Holy f*ck I’m President Elect of the United States.

Oh god.. that means I have to run again in four years.

I shouldn’t have banned shoelaces.😭
Verdict: NO!

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What I’m Playing Right Now #17 – The Pinball M Update!

November 5, 2024 by Leave a comment

Sorry for the lack of updates over the weekend. I really don’t want to burn out, so I am going to stop the Contra marathon and just start picking other games. I will do Contra III, Contra Force, and Contra: Hard Corps at some point in the near future. I think there is such a thing as “too much of a good thing. I’m facing two reviews that I do have to complete in their entirety (Tetris Forever and Taito Milestones 3) coming up, I’m pacing myself a little bit leading up to them. Plus, in general I need a variety of games to keep myself from getting bored. I admit I’m worried about Tetris just from the “so many similar games” aspect. It’d be weird if I wasn’t stressing that. Hey, I *LOVE* Tetris, but that’s a LOT of Tetris in that collection. I have the same problem with pinball, which is why I tend to review pinball in sprees. Speaking of which, I had an enjoyable weekend with my family catching up on our escape crate backlog. We didn’t play quite as much pinball as we thought we would, but we did get what we needed. So, what AM I playing?

A quick update: Rocky Horror Picture Show is a no go RIGHT NOW due to epilepsy concerns, but a patch is coming.

PINBALL CHICK UPDATES

The Pinball M Definitive Review is updated now to include the Camp Bloodbrook review! Remember, all my pinball reviews will be updated as we go along, adding more ratings from the rest of my team or revising ratings as the tables get patched. As far as I’m concerned, every review is not finished, and won’t be finished until Pinball FX/Pinball M are retired from active update. Pinball M wasn’t the only table I updated today. The Xena: Warrior Princess review was also updated to include Dash’s score. He rated it GOOD, dropping the scoring average to 4.16. That’s still an average higher than GREAT and a Certificate of Excellence winner.

A little on the nose.

Today, instead of watching cable news, we’re going to be playing pinball in my house. Two tables specifically that are long overdue for reviews. Princess Bride and Goat Simulator. Princess Bride I really didn’t like when it launched, but Jordi played it post-patch and says it’s improved. So, that’s up next. As for Goat Simulator, it really does look like Goat Simulator will be getting an award from us. It’s currently holding a scoring average of 4.2, which is good for a Certificate of Excellence. Sasha (aka “Sasha the Kid” as we call her) even rated it MASTERPIECE and said it’s her favorite new table of 2024, even more than System Shock.

Yea, that sure looks like a Goat Simulator table. But it’s actually a ton of fun. Designer Thomas Crofts has a tendency towards.. ahem.. brutality. But, he wisely avoided that for this table that should be a pin that appeals to all ages and skill sets and not just hardcore pinheads. Stay tuned for those reviews.

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What I’m Playing Right Now #16

November 2, 2024 by 4 Comments

November is here, and the start of one of the busiest seasons for games I’m dying to play I’ve ever had since starting this blog. The lineup for Atari 50’s second DLC pack has been announced. I don’t want to say I’m disappointed in it, but I was really hoping for more never-before-ported arcade games. It’s mostly Mattel-developed Atari 2600 games that likely offer a hint of what the NEXT Gold Master Series release will be. Hopefully they get some licenses if Intellivision is up next after Tetris, and all indications are that it will be. While sports leagues are out of the question, stuff like He-Man, Dungeons & Dragons, and Kool-Aid Man don’t belong as post-review bonuses. Anyway, here’s what’s included. Unless otherwise stated, everything is for the Atari 2600.

  • Air Raiders
  • Antbear (Never Released Prototype)
  • Armor Ambush
  • Astroblast
  • Frogs & Flies
  • International Soccer
  • Dark Cavern
  • Star Strike
  • Super Challenge Baseball
  • Super Challenge Football
  • Swordfight (Never Released Prototype)
  • Sea Battle (Never Released Prototype)
  • Tower of Mystery (Never Released Prototype)
  • Video Pinball
  • Basketball
  • Hardball (Atari 8-Bit PC)
  • Final Legacy (Atari 5200, Never Released Prototype)
  • Xari Arena (Atari 8-bit)
  • Desert Falcon (Atari 7800)

Surely the Kool-Aid people and Atari can come to some kind of a deal, because I actually gave the 2600 Kool-Aid Man a YES! in The Games They Couldn’t Include Part Two. Tower of Mystery is the most exciting of the new games. To put it in perspective, I don’t even have the ROM for it. This is a NEWLY DUMPED ROM that started development as a port of Intellivision’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series. There’s something about newly discovered/finished prototypes from long before I was born finally coming out that puts a tear in my eye. The other big announcement is Tetris Forever added two more games: two completely different MS-DOS versions of Tetris. A few people have asked if I plan on ranking the games included. I am not. I think the YES!/NO! system will be good enough. Not that I think “Tetris is Tetris” because that’s lazy, but I think it’s just plain unfair to compare a primitive PC version to an SNES version. I also don’t plan on reviewing the Arcade Archives version of Tetris. Besides the bonus reviews, this will be enough Tetris to last me into the 2030s. So, what AM I playing?

Contra III - The Alien Wars (USA)-241101-234253

Yea yea, I’m supposed to be playing Contra Force, and I am, but this is the one everyone wants a review of. This and Hard Corps will give me a complete review of every Contra Anniversary game, and that’s my current priority. But, this is just treading water until the big November games hit. And Saturday will be “Family Day.” Sasha has no Taekwondo class today, so we’re going to be dueling all day at Camp Bloodbrook for Pinball M. And I get to stay up all night grinding the buffs for Arcade mode. Joy. I can say 100% for sure that the Pinball M version has none of the problems that the Pinball FX version has. We’re all enjoying what we’ve played so far, but the time to SERIOUSLY play it and try to defeat each-other is today. I’m hoping to at least have the Vice Family scores up by Sunday in an update to the Pinball M review.

This is downloaded onto my Switch. From Freakzone, creator of The Angry Video Game Nerd games that I hold in much esteem. Sam, you made me roll my eyes within the first ten seconds of the game. You’re going to gaming hell, my friend. By the way, I’ve never seen the movie and I’m not going to watch it before I play this. So uh, this will be interesting.

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Castlevania: Dracula X (SNES Review)

November 1, 2024 by 5 Comments

Castlevania: Dracula X
aka Akumajo Dracula XX (Japan)
aka Castlevania: Dracula’s Kiss (Europe)
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released July 21, 1995
Directed by Kouki Yamashita
Developed by Konami
Included in Castlevania Advance Collection

This is the biggest tease of a set-piece, because Dracula X doesn’t have many more. Or any, really. Also, this thing ever shows up again. It’s not a boss or anything. It’s a random slow-speed chase that just ends without any pizazz.

After finishing Dracula X, I found myself staring at my screen, asking myself “did I even have fun with what I just experienced?” TWICE. That by itself is an ominous sign that this isn’t going to be one of the better Castlevanias. I played it for the first time in 2021 and I liked it, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember a thing about it except how awful the final battle with Dracula was and what happened in the above picture. Upon replay, that chase is really the only original set-piece in the entire game. The rest feels like a stripped-down version of Castlevania that runs through all the tropes from the previous four Nintendo games. Of course, this is credited as a “remake” of the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² game Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo. It’s not. I’m not even sure what the point of this is at all. Probably just being a quick, passionless cash-in before the Nintendo 64 hits, while SNES/Super Famicom owners are still hungry for software. It makes for an interesting review, if nothing else. It poses the question “if the game is made competently, is Castlevania’s core gameplay, all by itself, an automatic YES!?”

It sure looks like it’s going to be a fun time making your way to the Count.

It’s very easy to see why someone would be disappointed in Dracula X. All the innovations from Super Castlevania IV are gone. How gone? Gone, gone. You can’t even throw a sub-weapon with one of the shoulder buttons. You know, that convenience that opened-up the first SNES that was intuitive and comfortable? Well, screw you! That would be too easy, so back good old fashioned holding UP and pressing the attack button if you want to throw a boomerang. That really says it all about Dracula X. It’s a back-to-basics Castlevania game. Except, Dracula’s Curse was way more ambitious than this is. Dracula X’s has three major problems, and the first is that it’s too basic in every meaningful way. The level design is largely unoriginal. The opening stage, with the town burning behind you, feels like a cruel joke because that’s pretty much the end of Drac X and dazzling set-pieces. Everything else is a rehash of previous Castlevania staples run through a filter of blandness.

This screen kind of encompasses the Dracula X experience. Boring versions of themes and settings that have already been done better, only this time the game spams enemies in the most unimaginative way

It’s not like the level design is ever bad, but it just doesn’t do anything. I know the specific part where I asked myself “what the f*ck are they even doing here?” There’s a brief moment where the water starts to rise up slowly and you have to race against it. It’s been done in Castlevania before, but because Dracula X’s version uses two of the handful of last-pixel jumps in the game, it just feels less exciting and more of a glorified gotcha trap. But, even if it were idealized, it wouldn’t matter. It lasts maybe a minute, if that, and the safe-zone is so nondescript that I didn’t even realize I’d reached it. And that’s what broke me. The whole point of that type of design is you’re supposed to have an idea when the coast is clear and breathe out a sigh of relief. Without that, there’s no payoff to the tension you just created. Hell, in Castlevania III, the safety zone is exiting the screen, and it worked perfectly. Here, when I realized I was already safe and had been for a while, it wasn’t triumphant at all. It totally deflated me.

Can you see what got me? Yea, they hid an enemy between the foreground and the plane I’m on. So unimaginative. It’s just a booby trap, not a challenge. If I create a version of The Pit from Mortal Kombat in my house and then throw a rug over it and someone who expects to be able to, you know, walk on a rug falls into it, it makes no sense to scream “GIT GUD!” at them in their final moments of agony before the fade to nothingness eternal. They couldn’t have possibly known it was coming.

Dracula X feels like Castlevania made by someone who doesn’t entirely understand Castlevania OR action gaming beats in general, and that’s almost hard to believe. It’s not like Kouki Yamashita was some schmuck they found. He was one of the programmers of the NES Contra. That’s a pretty big game to have worked on, as far as pedigree goes, but it also tells me he should recognize what makes a good game. Combat alone can’t do it when you’re talking about a sequel, especially if that combat is lifted directly from the previous games. If the combat isn’t evolved, then you have to top previous settings and set-pieces, and Dracula X NEVER comes close. The only other option to topping previous set pieces is “be different” and this feels like a retread of locales and even gameplay segments from previous games, with NOTHING original after the first level.

Oh hey, look, the flying thing that drops the jumping thing.

It’s like the development meetings involved cracking open a Nintendo Power with Castlevania and just taking notes of what needed to go into the new game, without any context of how those previous pieces worked to be more than the sum of their parts. The level design is so bland and safe that it feels like it could be randomly generated by AI for how samey it is. “I guess we’ll split this screen down the middle and you walk to one end, then climb up the stairs and walk back the other way. You know, that thing that was as advanced as Castlevania 1 got? We’ll just redo that over and over, only it’s 16 bits now.” And that’s not an exaggeration. That’s pretty much as complex as the majority of Castlevania: Dracula X gets, and then the challenge is based around “how do you attack the enemies that are above or below you?” Like these pink knights with the spears are probably the most problematic non-bat enemy in the game. They can poke at you from above or below, and they have a means to defend against sub-weapons. A not-insignificant chunk of the level design throughout Dracula X is centered around JUST them.

Dude, Zordon was right. Too much pink energy is dangerous.

The sub-weapons activation isn’t the only back-to-basics aspect. The eight-way whipping is gone, even though this game is much more optimized for eight-way combat. The reason I didn’t think it worked in Castlevania IV was the enemies didn’t really attack from all directions. Eight ways of attacking requires eight ways of danger, because otherwise it allows you to preemptively destroy enemies before they pose a threat. Castlevania IV’s enemy attack patterns and placement, and even the boss fight arenas, only makes sense if you use the traditional “straight in front of you” Castlevania combat. Weirdly, Dracula X actually fits IV’s combat better. Enemies attack from below. Enemies circle around you. Enemies throw projectiles in multiple different angles. My bonkers conspiracy theory for Super Castlevania IV applies to Dracula X, only it’s the opposite: going off the way the game is designed, I could swear that it was meant to have eight-way attacking, only they changed their minds at the last second.

Fixed jumping is back, and I lost multiple lives because the game is counting on you over-jumping just as much as under-jumping. Hell, I was THIS close to dying after beating the last boss because of that phenomena. Dracula X is Castlevania: Dirty Pool Edition.

Forget Rondo of Blood. Dracula X is closer to a remake of the first Castlevania, and I’m not kidding. The combat in Dracula X is as good as any other game in the series. That’s why I think Castlevania: Dracula X proves that the franchise’s combat, historically awesome as it may be, isn’t enough to get you over the finish line by itself. It only works in the first game because of the tempo and amazing set dressing. Dracula X’s sets are boring, and it just never feels fresh. Even when it repeats established set pieces, they feel somehow lesser, even with technically superior graphics. Like, there’s a set-piece that feels almost entirely copied from the original game where you have to jump on a moving platform that carries you over a long stretch of water. It still works in the first game, but it doesn’t here because this is supposed to be a sequel. It doesn’t help that, if you miss the raft, you might have to wait quite a bit for it to return.

Look, the classics are classics for a reason. They work. And this IS one of the more exciting segments in the game. But, it’s kind of cheating, isn’t it? You know it’s exciting because YOU’VE ALREADY DONE IT BEFORE! There’s no twist that makes the Dracula X version stand out from previous versions of this segment. It’s just THE Castlevania raft across the water bit boiled down to its most basic core, then glossed-up with 16-bit graphics.

I could have lived with this mentality of game design if they had just said “screw it” and did for Castlevania what Super Mario All-Stars did for the Mario franchise and just remade the first three games in 16 bits. It probably would have been better received than Dracula X was. But, this is supposed to be a new game, and it just never feels like it. There’s some bits I like. There’s like a single frame of animation where you pull the whip behind you before cracking it, and it can hit things behind you, especially projectiles. Love it! Nice! But it also speaks volumes to how little original substance there is to Dracula X that this stood out.

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This leads to the second problem with Dracula X: the challenge is mostly based around gotchas that are trying to one-shot you. It’s not so much the infamous Castlevania knock-back, either. It’s an interception-based style that’s counting on hitting you out of the air and into a pit. Dracula X relies heavily on bats and a few other enemies that don’t spawn until you’re committed to a jump. Your whip really isn’t great in close quarters. Even the candles are problematic from close range, as I found multiple situations on ledges where I couldn’t find the right angle to whip the candle that, by all logic, I could have just reached up and grabbed with my free hand. But, that minor annoyance becomes a major hangup when enemy placement utilizes that on the edges of pits. Dracula X is so devoted to this style of challenge that the final battle with Dracula is based entirely on this concept of going for the mid-jump one-shot knockout. You can survive getting hit if you’re on your feet. The knock-back doesn’t send you that far back (but you also blink a lot less than previous Castlevania games). But, depending on what pillar Dracula is on, you probably have to jump to hit him, since only his head is vulnerable, and any jump puts you at risk of getting knocked back into a pit.

One of the most boring Dracula fights in the entire franchise. It’s not just the concept itself, but the fact that the arena is three or four times larger than the screen, making this a Dracula fight WITH DOWN TIME! Are you kidding me? And it gets even worse, because you only have time to maybe hit him twice per pass, and it barely does any damage when you do. Because the entire arena is constructed out of these pillars above a pit, it forces you to play conservatively. Again, this isn’t meant to be a punch-for-punch fight. He’s rope-a-doping you while looking for the one punch knockout. I really don’t think this is THAT hard a boss. I took damage multiple times and still won the fight. I mean, there’s a health refill in the room with you, not even hidden. It’s in a candle, and it takes all the stakes out of the fight. What were they thinking with this? It just drags.

The one unambiguous improvement is that most of the bosses are tougher than any previous Nintendo Castlevania release, which not only makes them feel like events, but it increases the satisfaction of victory. As much as I love Castlevania, Dracula’s Curse, and Super IV, the non-Dracula bosses in those games feel more like bonuses for making it to the end of the stage. Like, you got to the end, so you get the honor of totally pwning Frankenstein now. (Excuse me, “The Creature”) The fact that Dracula X’s bosses feel like climatic battles is a plus. Even though you have a triple shot built in, bosses are designed around the sub-weapons.

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Well, mostly. I beat the final form of Dracula in about five seconds by spamming the Boomerang item crash. It’s basically a bomb that works differently, depending on the item. While they cost a LOT more hearts (the holy water is the only sub-weapon besides the stopwatch that costs more than one heart, at three, and its crash costs 20) the boomerang and holy water crashes are so overpowered that you don’t have to even aim them. Whenever the battle between me and a boss was becoming a little too close for comfort, no problem. I just spammed the bomb. Hearts are plentiful and the only time I came close to running out was when I used the holy water, so I avoided it. I died a lot playing Dracula X, but only once against a boss. It was the Grim Reaper. Speaking of which, here’s Dracula X major problem #3: the game’s too short, and its concept of branching paths is ridiculously stupid.

That’s the key. It appears only once in the entire game, at the end of level three. If you want to fight the Grim Reaper and get the “good ending” you have to not die between the time you pick it up and the time you actually need to use it. Oh, and you need to use it twice. You also can’t swap it for a sub weapon. It IS the sub-weapon, and it looks ridiculous when you use it as such. It has no range and you literally just sort of punch things with it. It even has an immersion-breaking crash attack where you hold the key up to an enemy in a menacing way. It looks like this:

It’ll automatically swap which hand is the hand holding the key, aiming it for you.

So, that’s silly as all hell. Oh, and this also does the most damage in all of Dracula X, BY FAR, at no cost to your hearts. It’s four-and-a-half times more powerful than a whip crack. F*cking outstanding, gang. It’s like a satire of a Castlevania game at this point. Now, to get the good ending, you have to use the key on normal Castlevania doors, which only appear twice in the entire game. Both are in level four, and the first is done to unlock Maria. Oh you don’t get to play as her like you do in Rondo of Blood. She’s just there. Then, you have to unlock a second door which (checks notes) skips the 4th boss that’s literally in the next room and takes you to a different version of stage 5. Are you kidding me? Bosses are why I love playing Castlevania, and you want me to skip one?

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After this, the key vanishes from your inventory. I thought I’d done what I needed to get the Grim Reaper fight, because if you don’t do this part, you instead fight Carmilla. Except, Carmilla in this game looks like the Grim Reaper. I mean, look at it!

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Except, I’ve played Dracula X before and I remembered the Grim Reaper fight being different. Well, that’s because I followed a walk-through last time, and I missed one other step. And this is where Dracula X lost me. After getting Maria and going through the door, you also have to rescue Annet, and the way that you do it is completely arbitrary in every way, and it’s all without any clue that this is a thing you need to do. When you rescue Maria, she doesn’t provide a hint that you’re still looking for something hidden. “Annet is trapped in another place.” That’s it. That’s all you get. The location where you activate this final element to get the good ending is arbitrary. The method of getting it is arbitrary. You have to whip a water spout in the final room before the water dragon (Update: wrong Cathy! There’s one section left before the water dragon. In fact, it’s where the ghosts are hidden by the foreground from the picture earlier in this review, you dolt), after the room where the water rises. There’s nothing like this before you get to this point except free lives in walls. But, besides a platform that doesn’t need to be there, the game doesn’t provide you with a clue. I suppose TECHNICALLY you can see that there’s platforms flooded underneath you, but you were just in a room that flooded. It felt like set dressing.

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Come to think of it, wouldn’t she have drowned? That room was just underwater like a few seconds earlier. Whether she should be waterlogged or not, I would be totally down for this type of game design if the whole game was built around secrets like this. But it’s not. It’s a disjointed series of tasks that feel tacked-on as a last second thought. And ultimately, the game isn’t better for the branching paths. It sure isn’t elegantly handled, like how the branching paths in Dracula’s Curse are secretly and precisely scaled to three different difficulties, depending on the path you take. I honestly think the “good ending” bosses were easier. Right before I finished this review, I went back and took the bad ending path, where you have to fight the minotaur and a werewolf instead of nothing and a sea dragon, and I came a lot closer to dying against the werewolf in the “bad ending” level 5 than than I did against the sea dragon in the “good/best ending” level 5.

The strangest part of the “bad ending” path is the werewolf fight feels very similar to the Grim Reaper fight you wouldn’t get taking this path. Both take a lot of hits and alternate between big slashing attacks and a spinning, diving attack that makes them look like Sonic The Hedgehog.

This whole branching paths fiasco is a microcosm of Dracula X. It’s the arbitrary Castlevania. It brings nothing to the table except more of the same, only this time, it legitimately is tough. But, not tough in a fighting type of way. Its difficulty comes down to trial and error. I loved Castlevania 1 and 3 because it felt like I could react to the challenge instead of being caught off guard by it and having to memorize where the unforeseen death element is going to spawn when I’m mid-air. When Dracula X is about reactive combat, it’s fine, I guess. I mean, it’s nothing new and the same gameplay had already been done better and, dare I say, looked better in 8 bits. But when Dracula X shows you its teeth, you’re usually already dead. I’ve never liked games that are like that, and you know what? I don’t like Dracula X. If you want back-to-basics Castlevania, stick with the NES. Dracula X is competent, redundant, and boring.
Verdict: NO!

THE INDIE GAMER CHICK CASTLEVANIA REVIEW SERIES
 Castlevania (NES) Dracula’s Curse (NES) Adventure (GB) Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
Super Castlevania IV (SNES) Dracula X (SNES) Rondo of Blood (SuperCD²)
Chronicles (PSX) Circle of the Moon (GBA)  Kid Dracula (NES) Kid Dracula (GB)
ROM Hacks (NES) Konami Wai Wai World (NES) Wai Wai World 2: SOS!! Parsley Jō (NES)

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What I’m Playing Right Now #15 – with bonus Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2600 Review!

October 31, 2024 by Leave a comment

So, I really wanted a bigger game than Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge up today, and if I do manage to get Dracula X up for Halloween THE DAY and not the time frame, I’ll be cutting it close. This will be the final Castlevania game I do in 2024. It’s telling how prolific the series is that I’m not even close to running out of Castlevania games on classic platforms for future Halloweens. By the way, I’m also late when it comes to Camp Bloodbrook. Our review will be added to the Pinball M guide within the next week. We just haven’t had a chance for the whole family to sit down with it.

So, what AM I playing?

Dracula X is not well loved and, from what I can gather, is considered both a poor remake of Rondo of Blood AND a massive step backwards from Super Castlevania IV. I get the contemporary hate for it, but time has only been kind to Dracula X. No longer bound by any comparison to any other Castlevania, it really does stand tall on its own. And I also get how someone who is a big fan of previous Castlevanias could not love it. That review is NEXT at IGC, unless you count this bonus review of Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the Atari 2600! Happy Halloween!

Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Platform: Atari 2600
Year: 1983
Designed by Ed Salvo
Published by Wizard Video Games

Hell, the chainsaw looks more pornographic than the actual Atari pornographic games.

After playing the historically maligned but actually not THAT bad Halloween in The Games They Couldn’t Include – Part Two, I figured maybe history did Texas Chainsaw Massacre dirty too. It didn’t. While I ultimately didn’t give Halloween a YES!, it was clearly a cut above most Atari games and even had an eeriness to it that nobody should still have expected in the 2020s. It felt true to the movie, in a way few Atari 2600 games manage to pull off. Wait.. I am sure I wanted to give it a NO!, right? It’d be helpful to me, dear reader, if you just imagined me looking up at the ceiling in solemn contemplation right now. Are you doing it? No you’re not. I can wait all day. Okay, good. Yea, no, Michael Myers was too easy to learn to cheese and it took the guts right out of the game. BUT, the premise was solid. You can’t say that about Chainsaw. Here, you play as the villain. Why they would do this is beyond me. If you’re the killer, there’s no tension. The horror element is gone. So is basically any gameplay. You walk back and forth, avoiding anything on the screen while you chainsaw people. There’s no gore. They just turn upside-down. When you run out of gas, you lose a life. You get extra gas every 5,000 points. This barely qualifies as a game at all. It doesn’t even have novelty value. It’s like the most basic, lazy idea. The sh*t thing is, I know Ed Salvo was better than this, but this was flawed from the start.
Verdict: NO!

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What I’m Playing Right Now #14

October 31, 2024 by Leave a comment

4 to 1. I’d say it wasn’t the World Series everyone was hoping for, but as far as gentleman’s sweeps go, that was pretty f’n amazing. The first walk-off grand slam in World Series history to start it. A historic comeback to end it. A collapse so unfathomable that it’s literally never happened to that degree in any of the previous 118 World Series that came before it. Ouch. Plus, two of the three games in between were really great and the one blow-out featured two douchebags losing their Game 5 tickets to a kid with cancer who WAS going to be part of a special event earlier this year, except he became so sick he couldn’t participate. Now, because someone’s brain shut off and they tried to literally rip a potentially-still-in-play ball out of a player’s glove, that kid got prime seats at the World Series! What’s not to love? Well, besides the cancer. It’s too bad the kid wasn’t at Game Four. It sucks that a kid who was probably a HUGE Yankees fan had to witness.. that.

“START THE PARTY LOS ANGELES! YOUR DODGERS HAVE WON THE WORLD SERIES!” is a great call, though. California domination, baby! So, what AM I playing?

Sigh.

Folks, I really wanted to have Vampire Killer, the MSX version of Castlevania that’s so different and weird up today for Halloween. It’s probably not happening. It’s one of those games that’s so putrid that I really don’t want to play it. I hate that it’s as bad as it is, because this has some amazing ideas. Ideas that have legs. Ideas that I want to see someone try again. I love that the concept of doors is actually important this time around. That it’s not merely a point where you restart if you lose a life. I like that there’s hidden keys that open the doors, and the keys are ACTUALLY HIDDEN and require exploration. I quickly ditched the StrategyWiki page for this because I wanted to enjoy the exploration aspect. Also, the sub-weapons AIN’T sub-weapons this time. They’re YOUR weapon. The axe now works like a short boomerang, while the boomerang is.. well, still a boomerang, BUT it goes further (but does less damage). There’s shops and everything on this. It’s a one off, totally original style of game that uses Castlevania as the foundation for something that was never attempted afterward.

And it’s TERRIBLE.

This is the first silver key, all of which are hidden instead of just laying around. There’s other keys that open treasure chests, but they won’t open the door.

The collision detection, at least with the candles, is miserable. The enemies are all mostly pretty fast, and sometimes you can enter a room and immediately take damage. There’s also screen-wrapping, which is used in the puzzle design sometimes. There’s some truly inspired ideas here, and I’ll always be grateful to Vampire Killer for the originality. But, I don’t know if I want to keep playing it. As interesting and enticing as it is, I’m not really having any fun. It’s just not very good. Don’t get me wrong: this absolutely should be re-released as it is. But, it also really should be remade. In fact, this is the game they SHOULD have redone, instead of Haunted Castle. I suspect if they end up doing one more Castlevania collection, we might get that remake from M2. I’ll still get this review done eventually, but for now, I need a replacement game. I don’t want my Halloween 2024 series to be too Game Boy-centric so I’ll save Legends for next year. SNES sounds better.

That’ll do.

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Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge (Game Boy Review)

October 31, 2024 by 11 Comments

CV2GBCastlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
Platform: Game Boy/Game Boy Color
Released July 12, 1991. Missed my 2nd birthday by a day.
Designed by Toru Hagihara & Yukari Hayano
Developed by Konami
Included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection
Included in Konami GB Collection Vol 3 (JP) or 4 (EU)

“Are you sure about that? The sickly yellow background has me quite motivated!”

It’s not like Konami had a massive hill to climb when it comes to improving Castlevania Adventure. “Don’t be so bad you’re in the discussion for worst video game ever made.” No biggie. And Castlevania II isn’t. If anything, it might be the best Game Boy title I’ve reviewed yet. Does it feel entirely like a Castlevania game? I’m not so sure. At least you encounter a skeleton this time. I mean, as a basic enemy. There’s also a double skeleton dragon boss that feels more like a Gradius boss repurposed as a platforming boss. Otherwise, that’s really it. One skeleton. No, bats and ravens don’t count. Neither do the mermen or mudmen. “There’s Jellyfish!” 😶 Seriously? Why are those even in Castlevania at all? “They’re evil jellyfish things!” Sigh.

By the way, maybe the best looking Game Boy platformer. Stick with the black & white version, which fits, right? It was a black & white movie that made Dracula a major pop culture icon, after all. It works so well for Castlevania. Dare I say, the lack of color actually benefits the theme. I wouldn’t want this EVERY game, but it sure does a better job of setting the mood than the choice of enemies does. Speaking of choices, whoever picked the color schemes for Konami GB Classics in Europe really did a lousy job. It’s not having color, but the choice of colors, that really hurts Castlevania II more than it helps it, in my opinion.

Come on! I want to fight the undead! That’s the whole point of Castlevania, right? Spooky settings! Without that, it’s just any other action game, right? Well, I suppose ANY monsters count, but for some reason, it’s the ghouls, skeletons, and the Grim f’n Reaper that make it feel like a Castlevania, at least for me. Sadly, in terms of setting and atmosphere, this could mostly pass for any other generic action game, albeit one that happens to have a whip, candles, and a pair of sub weapons from the famous franchise Castlevania. It still has a bit of an off-brand Castlevania vibe, like the Master of Darkness people were given the rights to try making the real thing. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Master of Darkness, lame and overrated as it is, feels closer to Castlevania than this does. But, this is the better game, and that’s all I care about.

This is it. The one skeleton enemy, and it’s a wily thing that jumps from rope to rope. Yea, yea, it’s a petty thing to bitch about.

The tone really isn’t helped by the lack of grit in the first four levels. The unfathomable decision was made to make the first four levels non-linear, Mega Man style. So, this Castlevania doesn’t scale at all until the game is over halfway finished. A vastly underrated aspect of Castlevania 1 and Castlevania III is the stellar job they both do of building the challenge. Scaling, when done properly, builds the excitement. Well, that’s gone here, as the first four levels lack anything resembling a sense of progression. Mega Man gets around that by adding abilities. What Castlevania II should have done was remove item drops and have you gain a new sub weapon with every boss defeated. The knife and stopwatch aren’t in this. It would have been so easy to both add them and add sections just for them. Without something like that, being able to take the four levels in any order turns them into nothing more than a checklist. And since I’m being nit-picky, one understated side-effect of this is there’s no opening level. Castlevania games often tend to have amazing first levels. That’s gone too, and for no good reason.

Apparently the ritual that revives Dracula involves four non-Vania castles which are, I’m not joking, Crystal Castle, Rock Castle, Cloud Castle, and Plant Castle. So uh, where are these in other Castlevania games? How come nobody ever tried this ritual before. Wait.. hold on.. is that what Atari was doing with Crystal Castles? Is the bear trying to bring back Dracula? They need to make this canon. And I want to kill the bear with a Belmont. I’m dead serious, and possibly mad.

Unlike Castlevania Adventure, you have sub weapons this time. Two, in fact, and like the two non-awful NES games, they’re insanely overpowered. With them, the first four bosses are total pushovers. If you play the US version, the 5th boss is too, provided you have the axe. If you play the Japanese or Game Boy Color version included in Konami GB Classics Vol 4 (in Japan the order is different and Castlevania II is in Konami GB Classics Vol 3), the 5th boss is the first instance of Castlevania II showing its teeth, but then the 6th boss is a cinch, provided you have a boomerang. Why not just bring the axe to the fight in Japan. Because the sub-weapons are different depending on which region you’re playing. Of all the stupidly weird, unfathomable design choices, this is.. one of them. The holy water is in all versions, but only Japan and Europe got the boomerang. The United States got an axe, which can hit the 5th boss when he’s inside a wall. The boomerang is big and covers the full screen, so you don’t have to be very accurate. Until the 5th boss, it really was a wash which version got the better deal. After that? Nah. I’d rather have the axe. Except, wait, the boomerang is better for Dracula. GODDAMMIT, see, this should have been a decision players get to make IN the game, not when choosing which version to play.

This was my only death in my second playthrough. The fifth boss is an auto-scrolling segment with a dragon that jumps around to different entrances. You have a very brief window to hit it, but its body is so long that it’s hard to avoid taking damage from being auto-scrolled into it. Except, in the United States, the axe can damage the vulnerable head even when it’s not in the gap. It significantly nerfs the boss. That’s not an option in Japan or in the Game Boy Color version.

There’s really only two “tough” segments, and maybe three, in the entire game. The dragon above (and only in the JP/EU builds), the 6th boss (and only in the NA build), and the final fight with Dracula are the only parts that ever made me sweat. The rest of the game is built mostly around rope-climbing set pieces. That sounds absurd, but trust me, it’s better than it sounds. While this Castlevania still feels slow and heavy, it’s not to the point that it’s unenjoyable. It’s fine now. There’s little in the way of last-pixel jumps, and there’s no ridiculous extended escape sequence. All the new ideas work. There’s an extended sequence with ropes attached to pulleys (don’t worry, they’re evil pulleys) that’s based around precision movement and timing and it ended up being one of my favorite Castlevania set pieces EVER. It’s really good. In fact, all the rope stuff is really well done, pulley or no pulley.

Dumping the notorious Castlevania staircases was probably the wisest choice in the game. The ropes just make for a more fun game, even if it logically closes off some more complicated design options. The only thing missing is a boss that you fight while on the ropes. I think they probably should have tried it. They did a good enough job with the level design, which legitimately is about 50% rope-based, that I have faith they could have come up with a clever and intense boss battle on the ropes.

Even the spiders are awesome, which is a sentence I never imagined I would say. The spiders apparently spin rope instead of silk, because whatever they’re pooping out can support your weight. The twist is, if you kill the spiders, whatever length of rope they made is all you have, and sometimes, you really don’t want to kill them. It’s very clever. While the combat never really impressed me, all the platforming stuff is top-notch. If the first Castlevania game was really a combat-focused game that occasionally had platforming bits, this is the platforming Castlevania occasionally interrupted by combat. I found Castlevania II’s offensive game to be mostly underwhelming. Not fully, as there’s some intense moments, but it was still off. The fireball from Adventure returns here, I guess because they couldn’t do the length of the whip upgrades. They even returned a few creatures from Adventure, like the fireball spitting stumps (don’t worry, they’re evil stumps) and the Night Stalkers. Bringing them back was probably smart, since those two creatures are the only ones that ever pose a legitimate threat. Most of the action is timing-based, but like with Kid Dracula, it just works.

Killing the spiders leaves the ropes, but the jumping is still tough to judge, especially off the ropes. Speed jumping off the ropes is a big part of the level design in multiple sections.

While the bosses are still mostly push-overs, Castlevania II does a much better job of making them feel like “moments” than Castlevania Adventure did. However, there’s a few missed opportunities. Not one but TWO bosses are actually two different creatures that are fought at the same time. In both instances the dual bosses share one life bar, so killing one wins the whole battle. Weird thing to complain about, maybe, but it just feels like they’re not quite as immersive as you’d hope. Also, the final battle with Dracula is pretty ridiculous. He surrounds himself with huge spinning orbs that fly off in all directions, but in a circular way that makes them hard to dodge. It’s the only point in the game where I felt the collision wasn’t spot-on. But, in my second playthrough, I beat him on the first try. I lost to him so many times on the black & white version I had to reload my save state, and I had like eight lives going into it.

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It’s funny that Konami was on such a cold streak this year at IGC. Parodius on the MSX got a NO! Monster in my Pocket got a NO! The DOS version of Simpsons Arcade got a NO! along with the US ROM for Simpsons Arcade Game. Rollergames got a NO! twice in one review. The Lone Ranger got a NO! Even NES sacred cow Tiny Toon Adventures got a NO! In fact, before the Contra/Castlevania marathon I’m on right now started, I’d only given one Konami game a YES! in 2024. It was for the Japanese version of The Simpsons Arcade Game. This marathon reminded me that Konami was once an elite developer. I’m not a huge original-generation Game Boy fan. It’s just not for me. But Konami has absolutely proved their bonafides this week with THREE elite games, and honestly I think Castlevania II is the best of the three. Better than Operation C, easily, and I think better than Kid Dracula. It might not completely feel like a Castlevania game, but as a one-off spin-off based around ropes, it’s a LOT of fun. The ropes and the focus on timing and accuracy means you could just as easily replace the “scary” stuff with Indiana Jones and it’d work as an Indy game. Not just that, but probably the best Indiana Jones game ever. You can even keep Dracula. Hell, if Indy can fight aliens, why not The Count too?
Verdict: YES!

THE INDIE GAMER CHICK CASTLEVANIA REVIEW SERIES
 Castlevania (NES) Dracula’s Curse (NES) Adventure (GB) Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
Super Castlevania IV (SNES) Dracula X (SNES) Rondo of Blood (SuperCD²)
Chronicles (PSX) Circle of the Moon (GBA)  Kid Dracula (NES) Kid Dracula (GB)
ROM Hacks (NES) Konami Wai Wai World (NES) Wai Wai World 2: SOS!! Parsley Jō (NES)

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Kid Dracula (Game Boy Review)

October 30, 2024 by 5 Comments

Kid Dracula CoverKid Dracula
aka Akumajō Supesharu: Boku Dorakyura-kun
Platform: Game Boy
Released January 3, 1993
Designed by Yukari Hayano
Developed by Konami
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED*

*Okay, TECHNICALLY Kid Dracula did sort of get re-released once. In 2000, Kid Dracula was added to Japan’s Nintendo Power flash cartridge service. So it really should be classified as NO MODERN RELEASE.

Is it a remake, a reboot, or a sequel? “Yes.”

I just reviewed the Famicom-exclusive Kid Dracula. I almost skipped reviewing the Game Boy version after my experience playing the original for the review didn’t live up to my memories of playing it in 2019, with Castlevania Anniversary Collection. I’m happy I didn’t skip it, because it sure was an interesting game. This is the only Kid Dracula that the whole world got. But, even with the global release, this was it. The end of Kid Dracula as a franchise. Why is that? Well, I’m guessing most people never bothered trying this, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Kid Dracula suffers from what I like to call “Avenging Spirit Syndrome.” A quality Game Boy release that they put about two seconds worth of effort for the box art on, so nobody bought it. Have a look.

Are you f*cking kidding me? Go through all the effort of developing and manufacturing a game only to have the box art look like how it does on the left. Compare that to the visually striking Japanese cover art that looks like a game that actual effort was put into. We’re a shallow species, and when people see a cover that’s phoned-in, they assume the game is too. That’s not unreasonable, by the way, so do not half ass your cover art. Shameful. Absolutely shameful.

Box art has nothing to do with gameplay, of course, but it really pisses me off because I’m almost certain that cover art drove a stake in the heart of Kid Dracula as a franchise. The Game Boy version, which is part remake, part sequel, slays the NES original while also making some bonkers mistakes. Honestly, the box art tracks, because there were some infuriating decisions made when developing Kid Dracula. Like, hey, who wants post-stage mini-games with so much text that it takes forever just to get to them? Seriously, these are supposed to be the fun little side-game stuff, but the game won’t sh*t the f*ck up and just keeps going and going and going and GOD DAMMIT WHY IS THIS GAME SO F*CKING INFURIATING IN SO MANY NON-ESSENTIAL WAYS?!

If a mini-game requires this much text to explain, maybe you shouldn’t f*cking include it in a Game Boy game! This particular mini-game is basically the Game & Watch disaster “Judge.” AKA the Game & Watch I ranked 51st out of 52 possible games. After painfully explaining the rules to rock-paper-scissors a half-sentence at a time (because that’s all they could fit in the teeny tiny text box), the rules KEPT GOING. You see, it’s not enough just to have the correct throw. No, if you get the right throw, you also have to press a button to club your opponent over the head. If you throw the wrong thing, you can also block. If you hit your opponent when you lost or had a tie, you get a foul. Sometimes, the opponent blocks you, causing this trash fire to drag on even more. You have to get five hits to your opponent’s two, including fouls. This is supposed to be the fun side distraction?

I’ve never seen a platform game from this era with as much downtime as Kid Dracula on the Game Boy has. The levels aren’t that much longer than the time it takes for you to (1) see the cutscene after beating the boss (2) see the new power you earned. Steps 1 & 2 are the only ones you can skip if you want extra lives (3) go through the “welcome to the bonus round” text. At this point, you can opt out of steps 4 through 11, BUT, if you need lives (4) see the text that painfully explains to you every single time what four games could potentially happen based on which crystal ball will have which bonus game (5) the animation that shuffles the crystal balls, which takes a while but goes slow enough that you can clock it (6) you have to choose one of the four crystal balls (7) the idiot telling you what mini-game was selected (8) the introduction and rules to the mini-game (9) actually playing the mini-game, some of which are timed, and some of which can hypothetically go on forever (10) the post-game wrap-up telling you what you won or didn’t win (11) then being sent BACK to the post-stage menu where it takes two screens to say the words “what would you like (next screen) this time?” and if you have enough coins to play again, you have to repeat steps 4 through 11 (12) seeing a completely pointless and non-interactive map screen. THEN you get to actually play Kid Dracula again. Un-f*cking-real! Below is a slideshow of all the screens it takes to get through steps 3 through 7, and that’s not even close to the whole process of getting back to the game!

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The worst part about all of that is Kid Dracula is a mostly really good game. Right from the start, you can use the “change into a bat” ability, and you get the walk-on-the-ceiling power-up early too. Instead of large stages, Kid Dracula is mostly broken-up into bite-size chunks, complete with an animation when you reach the end of one. Many levels and set pieces from the original game also return. The extended “bullet train” roller coaster sequence is back. The ship is back. The vertical jumping sequence up a narrow tube is back. The speed, jumping and movement physics from the Famicom game are mostly intact. Many bosses return too. This is probably 55% – 60% remake. However, there’s enough surprises for people who already played the first game to not get bored replaying the same stages and bosses in the black & white version. Hell, the first boss had a gag that made me literally laugh out loud. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil it.

And that’s not to say the levels are a complete retread. The first stage, once again a homage to Castlevania, has this brief section with tilting platforms. Kid Dracula does just enough to remain fresh, at least when it wants to be a platform game instead of the world’s most agonizingly slow mini-game collection.

The same combat that I found to be underwhelming in the Famicom original is back and more-or-less unchanged. Enemies can sometimes be too spongy and your attacks are never as good as you wish they were. The ice attack (and in fact, the entire ice stage) is gone, and in its place is a powerful short-range attack where you make three bats fly in a circle around you that sacrifices range too much. Later in the game, it surprised me by awarding me to two new powers instead of just one when I finished a stage. In addition to the bomb, I got an umbrella that can be used to shield you from some bullets and environmental hazards. It can also instakill some smaller enemies just by walking into them, but it doesn’t destroy them. It just sort of rudely causes them to fall off the screen. This version of Kid Dracula leans much more heavily into tight squeezes, spiky floors/ceilings, and timing-based platforming than the Famicom game. But, that’s for sure a plus in a game where the combat is still pretty ho-hum. I don’t think I’d describe the original Kid Dracula as “exciting” but the Game Boy version certainly is.

Oh hey, this looks familiar.

The bomb attack from the Famicom returns, only this time, it’s also used to break through walls, and this leads to the worst part of the platforming aspect of the game. I bet anyone who has already played this knows what part I’m about to talk about. Near the end of Kid Dracula, there’s moving walls where you have to charge-up a bomb (which is done by holding the B button) and use it to ping one single block of this moving wall at a time. The catch is, when the holes you’ve made scroll off the screen, they’re gone forever. Because you have to hold the button to charge, and because the bombs only destroy a single block with no splash damage and you’re two blocks tall, you have a VERY small window from which to get through the walls before your progress is lost and you have to start over. It took me quite a while to make my way through this small section. One wall is hard enough to get through, but then you have to get through two, and then three. It took me so long that my hands were hurting from this one area alone, and then a boss fight happens that involves a similar play mechanic. This idea should have been killed on the drawing board OR the bomb should have done two blocks of damage. By the way, the initial bullet that blows up is really tiny and you’re going to need to jump too, so timing and aiming this is pretty tricky.

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Kid Dracula on the Game Boy is deeply flawed in many ways. I have no clue what they were thinking with some aspects of it. It’s often so obviously ill-suited for a handheld device. There’s no saving, either. Passwords only. Now granted, if not for the downtime, this could probably be finished in about thirty minutes to forty-five minutes for a first time player. So what? It’s Game Boy! None of that matters to me in 2024. If this gets a re-release, I’m far more likely to play it on my TV than I am as a handheld. For all its flaws, Kid Dracula is clearly one of the best original Game Boy releases. The boss fights that nearly sank the Famicom game ended up being the element that had me convinced this is the better Kid Dracula game. Don’t get me wrong. The combat is still middling, but the OOMPH that I felt was missing from the TV version is here, along with added gags that land much more frequently. The best bosses from the NES game are here. The bad ones are either improved or removed.

The new stages are easily better than the ones they replaced. The ice stage was awful on the NES. The challenge was based entirely around sliding to your death. The forest works better.

Kid Dracula for the Game Boy deserved to be a hit, warts and all. It does an even better job of telling jokes and being a satire than the NES game did. The personality is dialed-up, but it never comes across as trying too hard. The quiz boss from the Famicom is gone, which tells me they figured out that it didn’t work as they intended. I assume they were aiming for Mel Brooks “going off the rails” type of subversion, but it didn’t land because it wasn’t funny. What would have made more sense was to swap to an entirely different gameplay style. ANYTHING but a quiz. A tennis game would have been funny. Or hell, Kid Dracula slaps on a pair of ice skates and a game of Blades of Steel breaks out. That’s a joke. A quiz isn’t, because it’s not a Konami thing. Thankfully, there’s nothing remotely like that on the Game Boy. There’s so many twists that I didn’t expect, especially with how the boss fights play out, that I just shook my head in disbelief. They really did a great job of subversion of expectations. On a Game Boy game! Whoa!

This was a boss in the first game. It’s a set-piece in the second. So nice.

Sure, they had more time and a few years to reflect on the original, but still, it’s the Game Boy. I didn’t expect them to trounce the NES version to the degree this does. Kid Dracula is one of the most underrated games on the entire platform, even if the post-level mini-game crap is annoying. Nice job on the cover art, gang. Bravo. You screwed us all out of a franchise. This is one of those ideas that Konami should get an indie dev to revitalize. Parodius too. Gaming has caught up to the idea of tongue-in-cheek games. Every Mario RPG is basically Nintendo roasting itself. Konami was light-years ahead of their time, and now, they’re so far behind the times that it’s actually just kind of sad. So, I’ll leave you with thought: it only takes one game to change that. Dracula arises once a century, and hey, there hasn’t been a new Kid Dracula release in the 21st century. I’m just sayin’.
Verdict: YES!

THE INDIE GAMER CHICK CASTLEVANIA REVIEW SERIES
 Castlevania (NES) Dracula’s Curse (NES) Adventure (GB) Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
Super Castlevania IV (SNES) Dracula X (SNES) Rondo of Blood (SuperCD²)
Chronicles (PSX) Circle of the Moon (GBA)  Kid Dracula (NES) Kid Dracula (GB)
ROM Hacks (NES) Konami Wai Wai World (NES) Wai Wai World 2: SOS!! Parsley Jō (NES)

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , ,

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