Made of 100% Post-Consumer Vampire Parts: Lets Play... Castlevania II: Simons Quest

Greetings, one and all to this, my 13th LP 'stravaganza! Or perhaps the twelfth, if you don't count Mega Man 2, since that was mostly other peoples work. But whatever. I'm counting this one as the thirteenth as that is the SPOOOOKIEST number. The spookiness is critical as, this time, it's Castlevania II: Simons Quest.



Lets pretend (using our imaginations) that I am NOT posting this on Talking Time, and that there is a possibility that there are people reading this who are not somewhat versed in the games lore.

Castlevania II is the first NES sequel to the original Castlevania (surprisingly enough). While the original was an side-scrolling action game based on whip-wielding (and severely arthritic) hero Simon Belmont wandering through a haunted castle on a quest to kill the holy cripes out of Count Dracula, the sequel took things in a different direction; the exploration-based platformer. Or 'Metroidvania', if you prefer.

It seems that despite destroying him in the first game, Draculas Curse hasn't lifted. What exactly "Draculas Curse" entails seems to vary from game to game. Sometimes it refers to an army of undead monsters stalking the land, sometimes it prevents wounds he inflicted from healing (as is the case in this game). In the Worlds of Power novelization, it caused Simon to spontaneously change into Dracula. In any case, it's not exactly an agreeable situation to find oneself in, so Simon picks his magic whip back up and heads out to see if he can't save the day. Again.

Unfortunately, "destroy Dracula" is about the only thing a Belmont is good for, and Simons already done that once, and it didn't seem to clear up that darn curse one bit. So, true innovator that he is, Simon opts to resurrect Dracula, and then kill him harder and see if that fixes things.


Remember kids, all your problems can be solved by killing vampires at them!




Well... thats vaguely what the games plot is anyway. Its one of the rare instances of an NES game using the word "Hell" though.

In order to resurrect Drac, Simons got to track down his five bodyparts: The Rib, Heart, Eye, Claw and Ring, then track down his Castle (again), toss em all together and re-kill the King of Terror. The tricky part being that each piece is hidden in a different castle, in a different part of the countryside. And most of the castles are hidden from sight, complicating things farther. And while the inhabitants of the small towns and villages will offer clues on where to find Dracs remains and other useful items, they're not particularly helpful, thanks to a combination of a lackluster localization and the fact that roughly half the townspeople in the game are pathological liars.

This, coupled with the fact that many of the games puzzles are completely asinine, has helped insure that not many people cite this as being their favorite Castlevania. To its credit, however, the soundtrack is one of the finest you'll hear on the NES, and knowing the solution to most of the puzzles in advance makes it pretty dang awesome.

...less un-awesome.

...whatever.

But enough talk... HAVE AT YOU!





And here's the opening screen; decked out in a trendy black and red ensemble is our Vampire Killing hero Simon, facing down an orange-clad old man, the first of the games NPCs. But before we start jawin' up the fella, lets look at our inventory!

Thats right, Simons Quest has a whole inventory window that will eventually be filled to the brim with all kinds of crazy crap. But right now? Not so much. Going down from the top:

Time is not an actual measurement of your playtime, its the time it is in the game. Every twelve in-game hours it changes from day to night. At night, monsters are twice as powerful, but drop more hearts.
E stands for Experience Points! Thats right, this game has those things too! I'm not completely sure how they accumulate (it sometimes increases when you get hearts, but not always), but when you get enough, your health refills and your lifebar gets a little longer.
L is your experience level... which is directly influenced by the above
And Hearts are how many Hearts you have. You use hearts both to fuel some of your special weapons and as currency. I'm assuming that medieval Transylvania uses undead monster hearts instead of gold as the basis of their economy.

Beyond that, Simons currently rocking the L. Whip, his boring, crappy, sucky default whip. It'll get upgraded a bunch before the LP is over. The "L" stands for "Lame".

The empty bar beneath that will eventually hold items which are in effect so long as you have them equipped, and the larger empty box beneath that holds the items that require an arcane and complicated series of button presses to activate, once equipped.

Spoiler Alert: The Arcane Process is "Hold Up and press the B button"

Anyway, thats all the boring technical stuff. Lets see what the old guy has to say.



Sounds sensible enough. But lets see what the rest of Jovas (thats the name of the Town, by the by, not that the game mentions this at any point) citizenry has to say:




Okay, of the first 5 people who provide advice in Jova, one tells me to buy a White Crystal, one warns me of a man trading bums, another says that a tree is on fire, a ferry-man needs some tic-tacs and that I can get advice in Veros.

It should be noted that about half of these statements are lies. The trick being that there is NO WAY AT ALL to determine which are truthful. The general rule of thumb to remember is that every item mentioned is a useful item in the game. They may lie about where the item is or what it does, but they're always honest about the existence of items.



Besides liars, each town also has an assortment of merchants, who are more consistant with being helpful. This one offers to sell me a White Crystal for 50 Valentine Cards. Which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Especially since I started with 50 Hearts!



~You got a thiiiiiiing~

The White Crystal is helpful, if not necessary to reach three of the castles holding Draculas parts. So it's a pretty good idea to pick it up as early as possible. What with it being necessary for beating the game and all.

Anyway, thats all that can be done in Jovas at this precise moment, so off to the forest on the edge of town with us! Which, of course, leads to a question...



WHICH forest on the edge of town?

For you see, as I noted earliar, Simons Quest is one of those nutty Exploration-based Castlevanias, and the VERY FIRST town presents you with a choice of where to go. I think "Left" sounds good right about now.

Lets see whats to the left...

Left, as it should be noted, was the wrong choice. As soon as you head to the next screen you get attacked by Jebediah Izzard: The Two Headed Lizard. Jebediah runs out pretty quickly, and shoots fireballs out of one of his two heads. Thats inconvenient.

The recoil from either attack is enough to knock you clean back to Jovas (literally, you're sent back past the screen transition) and your Lame Whip can't possibly deal enough damage to them to beat both Jebediahs before one knocks you back.

This is what video game designers did back then; showed that you were heading in the wrong direction by tossing out enemies you can't possibly hope to beat. But, of course, late-80s Konami didn't count on ME doing a Lets Play of the game when they were developing it. Jokes on YOU, guys!

My point being that if you jump OVER one of the lizards and turn around, the recoil will knock you away from the Jova instead of towards it. Yes! Sequence breaking all up ons!



And... of course, Late-80s Konami prepared for this contingency. Past the Jebediahs is a toxic swamp that cannot possibly be passed. Besides being filled with Fire-Spewing Mud Men (the physiology of which are truly baffling), simply walking in the purple water causes your health to plummet until such point as you died. It IS possible to get past the swamp (and easily) with an item gotten farther in the game. But right now, the left side of Jova is a dead end.

A dead end which ends in a vast ocean of purple. Where you die.


Sequence-Breaking is a felony. Pepetrators will be destroyed

So.... to the Right, guess.



The Right side of Jova is much more appealing: Skelly-Men are the games wimpiest enemies, slowly shuffling back and forth and taking only a single hit from the LOSER Whip before falling apart and leaving a Small Valentine for your troubles. Team Jacob beside it, though, is a bit sneakier; in addition to shuffling back and worth, they also have a truly astounding vertical leap; capable of leaping clean over Simons head without so much as crouching first. Their legs are like coiled springs.



Anyway; I spent some time here walking around the forest killing the Skellys and the Jacobs until the sun went down. I'm not sure how this night is any more horrible then any other for having a curse, but whatever. The enemies in the woods are twice as tough, but they drop Half-Hearts, worth far more then the wimpy Tiny Hearts they dropped during the day. Which is pretty good, but its not quite as handy as what waits for us back in town...



In Jova, all the Townsfolk have hidden in their homes and the living undead have risen. The Zombies run forward faster then the Skellys and Jacobs, but not nearly as quickly as Jebediah Izzards. They're also about as wimpy as the Skellys, and drop Half-Hearts.

Due to their low health, large reward, and the fact that they spawn en masse, the savvy Castlevania 2 player tries to spend the games nights in towns, harvesting the zombies for their precious, precious hearts.

And I like to think I'm savvy.



After a tiring night spent slaughtering the living undead, Simons health is pretty dang low (the perils of playing the game at 200% speed) so he ducks into Jovas church. A quick confessional being one of the few ways to restore your health in the game.

As it would happen, Simons pockets were filled with enough hearts to buy one of the other items in town:



One of which being the series-staple Holy Water. Regretably, it does not function at all like it does in pretty much every other Castlevania game. It only hits once and deals pitiful damage. It doesn't even set fire to what it collides with.

"So what the devil good IS it, then?" I hear you ask.

Glad you asked.

In this game, the Holy Water is one of the only items that can shatter certain blocks, usually hiding alternate paths through areas or hidden items. Besides that, it can also pass through false blocks that you would otherwise fall through. Handy!

After another quick night spent at 200% speed, Simons wallet has another 100 Hearts, enough for the other item in town: The Thorn Whip. The Thorn Whip deals double the damage of the Lame-Ass Whip and extends a bit farther. Thats super handy and great!

Well... on the surface it is. In retrospect, its not really that great of an investment. The next town has a whip thats even better still and only costs 50 hearts more. While I just said that I like to think of myself as a savvy guy... I am also trying to show off the game. So I trade in all my valentines cards and walk out of the shop one whip richer.



As you can see: the Lumpy Whip only covers two blocks of distance, but the Thorn Whip covers a good two and a half blocks.

All right. Everyone all up to speed on the game so far? Good. Because thats all there is for the first update. Go home now!

I've been looking forward to this one. The puzzles may be ridiculous and many of the NPCs may be useless lying dickheads, but I can't help but love this game anyway. It's like the earliest template for the direction the series would take later on.

It's definitely got some problems, but that's to be expected with an 8-bit experiment like this.

YOU ALWAYS FIND A WAY

to steal my heart

and rib and eye and finger

Oh great, now I have to do it in Castlevania too!

And in Castlevania II, for that matter.

heh heh, bum deals

My Castlevania II story: I got the original Castlevania in Christmas of I believe '87, and I loved it to death. The next year, I asked for Castlevania II, but because I asked for like a half dozen games and realistically would only get a couple, I wound up not getting it. A friend did though, and eventually I borrowed it from him, hated it almost instantly, then didn't really think about it again. Fast forward another few years, and Castlevania III came out. I read all the reviews and previews and see it's supposed to be closer to the first game than the second, so I decide to ask my parents for "the new Castlevania" for Christmas. So what do my parents do? They go into my room, look through my game collection, see I have just one game called "Castlevania", and assume that means that "the new Castlevania" must be Castlevania II.

I was not a happy young boy that Christmas morning.

That said, my parents were very good about my little tantrum, and went out the next day to exchange II for III, and all was right with the world.

--

So yea, I'm in the group that really has never liked this game all that much. But Castlevania is arguably my favorite game series (probably neck-and-neck with Mega Man), so over time, I've come to appreciate this game's terrible charms in a way. And there's no better way to enjoy a game that I just described as having "terrible charms" than with an LP, so I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this one.

RING IS NOT A BODY PART

... depends on which part of the anatomy we're talking about.

Wait!? Bringing Dracula back and then killing him again is supposed to lift his curse!? This is confusing...

200% speed? You're very reckless.

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like Dracula's Nail.


The left path out of Jova really pissed me off as a kid. Finally managing to get past the lizard guys only to run into that damn swamp...

man, i love this game, and this soundtrack, and all the towns and everything. it just had one of the best vibes of any NES title. Always found the churches super creepy, too.

Castlevania II was my first Castlevania game. I didn't have much of an idea at the time of what the series was mostly like, so I just dealt with how strange the game was and kept playing. I then went back and played the original Castlevania and fell in love with it in a similar way. You can like two different things!

This game was pretty popular on the playground, with plenty of the usual dumb rumors flying around. It was however because of the playground talk that I figured out what you used the stake for in the mansions, showing Dracula's heart to the ferryman and, most important of all, the whole hitting your head on Deborah Cliff.

Most embarrassing thing to start off with: I originally thought the path to the upcoming town was a trap because of how the ground looked like it would just cause you to slip and slide to your doom. Turns out I had no idea that was just the BACKGROUND (and the same background I had been walking in forever) and that I was just a stupid child.

Looking forward to the rest of the LP! Good start!

It's a little known fact that Drac actually runs on Windows. You're essentially rebooting him in Safe Mode so you can kill him right.

... that's the most sensical thing that I've ever heard in relation to this game.

Y'see, Simon intends to use resurrection on Drac, which will revive him at a lower level. Since 'Ultimate Power Beyond Death' is his 20th level ability, he'll lose it by dropping to 19. It makes perfect sense, really.

Ah, but then he uses his points in Obfuscate to hide his castle and go level for 100 years... wait, wrong RPG system.

There's also the little fact that you're building an entire vampire out of one rib, one heart, one claw, one eye and a piece of jewellery.

...unless Draculas Castle has the rest of the pieces laying around in a big heap or something.

i always figured that simon had most of the body, and was just missing these chunks. souveniers given out to his friends? who knows?

Logic! Castlevania logic at that!

Also, we all know this is coming eventually, so I went ahead and saved the inevitable photoshopper the trouble, here ya go, boss!:

Spoony Bard, [Laugh] out Loud?

You're my favorite person now.

Hehehe, Captain N Simon Percy looks like his head's a squash. XD

Great one, you spoony bard.

If anyone is going to be in possession of a partially assembled Dracula, I guess it should be Simon Belmont.

Though according to the end of the game, it's more like a Sack o' Dracula.

The preferred term is "Sackula"

Sorry Boss, I dropped your sackula!

And THAT'S why Simon has to go on his quest to recover the missing pieces of Sackula. Dammit, Percy!

Mystery solved.

This game was more fun for me to watch then play as a wee lad. We had the NES Guide Book or something (it was awesome) that told us how to get through the game but I was never good at it. Watching my brother beat it though was amazing.

Dracula though is a big let down as far as bosses go. Really this entire game lets down in the Boss department.

Go, Go Octo!

Ah, so that's it.

Simon kept the whole thing, you see. But he was hungry for BBQ ribs one night, and the local place was closed...

The pieces you're collecting? They're not really Dracula's, per se. They belong to ordinary undead nobility that are reasonably similar to pass off as the Count's.