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Introducing Simon Belmont, Vampire Hunter

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 20, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The classic video game that brought a whole new nightmare to video games. You are Simon Belmont, vampire hunter, your quest is to go through five very challenging levels to finally kill Dracula! Armed with a whip, and other weapons like daggers, axes, boomerangs, you set out into Dracula's castle facing nightmarish monsters and mythical beasts like Medusa, Frankenstien, a pair of mummies, and the Grim Reaper. This game has some fantastic graphics for Nintendo, and even its time! The challenge is incredible, however it is rather mindless, because you only have a whip and one other weapon at a time. You must use strategy and patience to defeat the five bosses, or they will destroy you quite quickly.

One of the best video games ever made...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game impacted the gaming world in a way you'd never know. This video game started it all! This is the first of the series where you are Simon Belmont, and you are on your journey to slay Dracula. This game is creepy, this game, or should I say the whole Castlevania series has some of the best music ever compiled for a video game in history! That is saying alot seeing how games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy and D-Force all had great music. This game has average graphics(what can you say for a NES game?). The gameplay is great, you will be having fun for a long time, and get the rest of the series as well, it's worth it guaranteed...

Caslevania

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is a true classic. It can be challenging, but it is definetly worth playing. If you don't have it, I recommend buying it.

Good intro to a classic series

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: July 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Here's the 1987 debut of a now legendary series. Unfortunately, it was not without its flaws. Read on for pros and cons:

PROS:

-Excellent arcade style gameplay
-Secondary weapons add to the experience

CONS:

-Sometimes lacking variety
-Midair jump control extremely sluggish
-Some sections EXTREMELY difficult
-NO PASSWORDS! Gotta start over in every sitting

A decent game overall but not a great one. Only get it if you're a collector, or just desperate to try it. The game itself isn't great, but it's got high nostalgia value.

Best NES game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Castlevania, was by far the best game when it was released and maybe the best NES game of all time. To this day I'm amazed how great the graphics were. Each level is different, with different enemies. It was a little challenging, which is good because games from that time included approximately 7 levels of play.

I highly recommend this game.

A Classic!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game brings back so many fond memories. It was a very tough game, no saving or passwords, so you had to start over every time you wanted to play. In my opinion this game features some of the best video game music of the time. Some of the themes in this game have been redone in newer castlevania games. Titles such as "Vampire Killer" are classic and add to the creepiness of this game. The levels are challanging, and overall a highly addictive game.

Castlevania, still cool

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Castlevania is what some of us gamers call an "Addict Game" because this game always had a grip on you in some sort of way. Some it's the gameplay, others it's the difficulty factor and for some it's just that this game was a classic and no Nintendo collection was complete without it.

What got me hooked to this game was the difficulty of this game. There were no cheats and no passwords. None of that baby stuff. This game seriously took skill to win at. If you didn't have the skill to match this game's often "cheap and cheater tactics", you couldn't do it.

I will say that this game was not impossible. I did beat this game a few times so that proves it. But even after that, I hit Reset and did it all over again. To this day, I still believe that many games after this took it's concept of Strategy to Win. After all, let's say it... defeating most of the standard enemies was not all that tough but when it came to the bosses and the board itself, then you really had to think.

Again, if you have this one, you're Golden. If you don't, then you should pick this up. After all, this is a very rare title now (15 some years later) and it could be very hard to find. Get this before you regret it.

Ain't nothing rare about CV except its quality.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Rarely do we see a title like Castlevania. Only a handful of titles from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras really capture a simple idea so well.

So is it old? Most certainly, and you can find a cartridge for a few bucks. Do the graphics look terrible? No--to the contrary, they're consistently done and support the game's mood perfectly. Is the music awful? Not a bit--the first level music is considered the best composition in video gaming by scores.

Castlevania did get lucky, having the equivalent of a planetary alignment in the console gaming world. Nintendo had decided to port its Famicom Disk System games over to the U.S. with next year's launch of the NES (1987 at this point) and would give them a more reliable format with the cartridge (instead of those intentionally cheap disks--in Japan the philosophy was to make the game affordable, but here they decided to avoid major repair headaches and went cartridge only). Here as in Japan, Castlevania was the first really popular third party game for the system on disk or cart.

The fact of the matter is that Castlevania appears in no form until late in 1986, about a year after Ghosts n' Goblins hit the arcades. Even the venerable style of Makaimura (G n'G again) is too focused on silly details than Castlevania (which is saying quite a bit). Whereas Makaimura mixes up the game mechanic and throws in a lot of unpredictable and mysterious elements, Castlevania's seeming staid nature in fact borrows a lot from it. Instead of replacing the main weapon, a major headache for G n'G players, an inadvertent weapon pickup is manageable. Running to catch a flying key in G n'G is replaced in CV by the famous orb. It's a matter of taste, but many people are attracted to CV over other games simply because it seems more manageable and less intent on stealing your (phantasmic) quarters, which G n'G seems to aim for even in its handheld incarnations.

That's only half of the story--less than half, as many other titles were ported over to the system. Castlevania was developed at a time when you really had no extra space or processing power for silly, complex game mechanics or terribly immersive storylines, and is restricted even further than many later games utilizing more storage space as Castlevania is stuck to the size of the original 128K disk (64K per side, that is). Castlevania is nearly the archetype of the 2D action game with a focus on evenly timed, choreographed gameplay that emphasizes strategy and feels nothing like button mashing. Is this due to its restrictions or in spite of it? It is hard to say.

Unlike a legion of forgettable NES titles, Castlevania is truly the indispensable title.

Castlevania - NES

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Castlevania is a classic side scrolling action game in which you play a character by the name of Belmont. Armed with a whip and the occasional throwing cross, dagger or axe you set off to fight the evil minions of Dracula. Your goal is to put an end to Dracula, but to do that you must beat countless levels which will test your jumping and whipping capabilities. At the end of each level you will square off against a boss character such as Medusa, Frankenstein and Death. The graphics are not that great, but honestly it's an NES game so you can't hold that against it. What matters is the gameplay which is very simple. You can jump, duck and fire off your two weapons. You will have mastered Belmont after the first mission. What you won't master right away though is the difficulty of this game. No passwords and difficult enemies (especially bosses) are waiting for you. This can make the game frustrating at times, but once you memorize the patterns of the enemy you should do just fine. Overall, it's worth checking out this title and seeing the roots of such a great series.

The beginning of a series

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: July 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Castlevania. No true gamer alive would hate this series. I mean, seriously, who wouldn't want to go kill Dracula and play challenging platform missions? Well, if you don't like that then you're gay, pure and simple. In this first installment, we take a look at the very first game in the series---simply titled Castlevania respectively---that was released for the NES back in the late 1980s. How does it measure up?

THE GOOD
First off, let me say that these are some of the best graphics I've seen for the NES. Very good for their time in my opinion. Secondly, it's a FUN game and you can see where the roots all go back to in the series like Holy Water, the whip upgrades, etc. Practically every classic aspect about Castlevania is here! The music is classic as well and has been remixed in subsequent entries (especially the infamous "Vampire Killer" theme).

And since it's an old NES cart, what's that phrase again? YES, this game was "made back in the day when NES games were made to kick you in the [...] and make you love them." I've used this quote time and time again and this one of the few NES games I feel VERY STRONGLY about when it comes to that phrase. VERY difficult and to this day, I have not beaten it. The levels are insanely hard and Dracula's even harder once you get to him. You might think this as a "bad thing," but I love a game that's insanely hard, so this aspect of Castlevania really enthralls me.

THE BAD
I was put off by the lack of passwords, but given this is the first title in the series, I'm not going to rant on it for that. I feel that since this is the first title in the series, I won't go overcritical on it LIKE SO MANY OF YOU HAVE.

OVERALL
This is a definite must-own for your NES, ESPECIALLY if you love Castlevania. Even with the sequels, this is still one of my favorites. I think this game is overlooked because "it's raw" and/or "It's too hard!" (I'm noticing a pattern here, after my Mega Man review...) BAH! I'm a big Castlevania fan and I can honestly say that this game is still great after all these years. Long live Konami and may they bring us more adventures and vampire murdering!

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