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The gameplay is inscrutable, but who cares when you’ve got such banging tunes? Very start to very end, best soundtrack on the NES.
Loved this game when I was a kid. It got a lot of hate at the time, vs the first one, and the third one, and then the fourth one on the Super NES.
Simon’s Quest fans got justice when it, not the first and third games, became the basis for Symphony of the Night and, you know, the whole “Metroidvania” genre. I mean, Simon’s Quest wasn’t the first Metroidvania, that would arguably be Metroid 1, but it was the first MV in the Castlevania series. And now they’re mostly all like that, from Symphony through Bloodstained. Not to mention the GBA/DS ones, particularly the Sorrow titles.
There are still games like Castlevania 1 and 3. Ghosts & Ghouls, Double Dragon, Bad Dudes, Battletoads, Metal Slug… Some of those games are actually pretty good. I think the Terminator game Dark Fate coming out is one of those — and I want it. Mostly because I’m a T2 fan. But also because, when done right (especially Metal Slug), those games are a lot of fun. But, I always thought Castlevania was better for exploration than straight up side to side combat.
It got a lot of hate from me because the text lied. Blame bad translation or just bad game design. I had to wait until Gamefaq existed before I was able to solve the garlic puzzle.
Way I heard it, some of the characters were meant to straight up lie to you.
Vampires are known to be seductive. The Dracula in Castlevania is no exception. It makes sense that he has some agents in the various towns who feed misinformation to the Belmonts and their allies, and report back to the Count.
Back then though, I think we were supposed to consider games more trustworthy. We didn’t expect the game to lie to us. The unreliable narrator has become a lot more popular over the years. Imagine, for example, saying you hate Portal because GLaDOS lies to you. “But I was promised cake!” Same thing. Only we didn’t expect it then.
For those that don’t know, this was released a few days ago if you wanna give Simon’s Quest a try, https://archive.org/details/castlevania-2_202511
The game originally released on the NES, and has only ever been officially re-released on PC as part of the Konami Collection, the Switch in its original form, and I think there’s a collection on XBS and PS5 (maybe XB1/PS4 as well?) with the NES Castlevania games, basically a console port of the Konami Collection, only it doesn’t have the Contra games (and I think it has Castlevania IV). It was never a Super NES game. That said, I’m super curious about this ROM hack.
Found a video reviewing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYhfIs9K2HY
Edit: Game is pretty broken. Don’t press select. Doing it at the main menu will hang it, doing it while paused/in the Start menu (inventory) will hang it. Save often, I suppose — you would do so with this game on an emulator anyway due to the bullshit platforming (especially in the swamp! you know the scene!).
Oh yeah, sorry, was on my phone earlier so didn’t really do a write up, but I suppose that wasn’t as self evident as I thought.
It’s a fan port to the SNES with some polishing on the performance and translations with a few quality of life improvements that leave the vast majority of the game design and gameplay feel intact, it just smooths over some of the rougher edges that can prevent newcomers from really getting into the original NA NES entry.
All good. I’m sure there are RHs that do focus on improving the game, but also, I feel like if you took away the jank, you’d have a pretty easy game. Simon’s Quest was never hard once you knew where to go. Knowing where to go was half the challenge. The other half was the janky ass physics.
nice, thanks
Aww 😍
Now you’re playing with prower
…playing with prower
Finally! I was starting to run out of candles and battery banks…
