BLeeP
12-06-2009, 04:50 AM
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a337/Katslover/ResetButtonLogo.jpg
Volume 1; Issue 1
written by Lee 'Katslover' Pryor
As I sit here in a quiet annoyance over the recent loss of my next (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showpost.php?p=431677&postcount=33)-gen (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showpost.php?p=432263&postcount=41), a wave of nostalgia and want of better days has creeped over me. This and a lack of representation of the Cartridge Console Era (CCE) here on Colony has pushed me to start venturing into console games of days gone by.
As a child, gaming was something that my family often did together on our Nintendo Entertainment System and those moments represent some of my fondest memories. Nights playing 8 player Pin-Bot (everyone got multiple turns!) and time spent watching my mother totally decimate the Adventures of Lolo trilogy are just too grand to truly express in words, but it is important to understand how emotionally fundamental gaming is to me (and I would assume a great deal of others) as I move on and talk about our game for this issue.
It would be a common occurrence when certain new titles were released that my family would get a copy and so would my aunts and uncles (and sometimes my Grandmother) and we would all play and talk about the game and sort of compete to see who could finish it first. One particularly fantastic title ate up quite a bit of our time and I don't believe anyone finished it despite my father claiming my uncle did (upon which I call "shenanigans").
CASTLEVANIA
The first in an extremely long and great series, Castlevania is a game that I would wager everyone is familiar with. Back in 1986, this game had it all: fantastic graphics and atmosphere, tight game play, and the best soundtrack in a game for it's time (and still quite possibly so).
The game's story had you cast as a whip wielding vampire killer named Simon Belmont who must venture into Dracula's castle and obliterate everything inside of it. Honestly, as with quite a few early titles, the story is unimportant and everything you needed to know you could gather from the box art.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a337/Katslover/1621711761_3b8a5a3e4c.jpg
So there you have Conan the Barbarian with Indy's whip and he's pretty pissed about The Joker being dressed up as a vampire and he's probably going to do something about it. Completely amazing.
Castlevania starts off innocently enough. You get an intro of the hero entering the castle gates and then you are off to slowly trudge through an infinite line of ghouls that die in one hit and a plethora of flames which give you power ups. The powers up you are initially given are a dagger that can be thrown straight across the screen, hearts which are consumed when you use the dagger and, best of all, better whips. The whip you start with is extremely short, to the point that I can imagine Simon having to use it to take enemies out Hitman style.
After this walk up to the castle you are presented with one of the greatest things about the Castlevania franchise: secrets. Sure, one could simply walk into Dracula's castle, but why would you do that when you could perform a well placed jump to get past his front door and make a sack of money appear? Dracula must be the life savings under the mattress kind of guy. These secrets are peppered through the game with at least one on each of the six stages, and they are always a blast to discover. There are times where you will get knocked off of a platform by an enemy, land on a platform below, and discover that standing in that particular spot makes a treasure appear. Not only are they fun to collect, but more points means more extra lives and lives are quite important when the game ramps up the difficulty about mid-stride through the second stage.
The pacing of this difficulty ramp up is actually extremely well done. I think any seasoned gamer could beat the first three stages of the game, but would definitely notice the game increasing the punishment as they progress forward. Stage 4 starts with Simon falling down a hole and I can only imagine this is the game signifying to the player that "This shit is about to get real". This level involves quite a few flying enemies (the bane of any classically trained gamer) and moving platforms. This itself is a recipe for disaster, but then you throw in birds dropping hunchbacks on you during the stage's second part and the introduction of bone dragons that take a bazillion hits in the third part. If you manage to pass all of this, you have to fight the games second most difficult boss, Frankenstein and Igor.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a337/Katslover/frankigor.gif
Frankenstein himself is nothing at all but Igor is a hunchback that moves faster, jumps higher, AND shoots fireballs and all you can do to him is hit him and freeze him in place for a second. This is hardly worth the trouble as you could have used that second to just hit Frankenstein instead. Defeating Frank and Igor lands the player on the next to last level which isn't too difficult, has a fantastic background track, and one of the hardest bosses in gaming history. This fight has you jumping and dodging a large number of spinning scythes while trying to take care of Death himself. It might not sound as excruciating as it actually turns out to be, but it has to be said that Simon would probably lose in a dance contest consisting of Jill Valentine, the Prince of Persia and himself. Luckily, those in the know bring holy water (definitely one of the greatest items in a game ever) and use it to infinitely stun Death in his starting location until he dies. It's extremely cheap, but so is Death.
The final level consists of running straight ahead and mostly dodging the couple of enemies that show up here. One type is the boss from the first level (Phantom Bat for those trivia minded people) and the other is a hawk that swoops around annoyingly. Get past these minor challenges and you get to fight Dracula himself. He will start attacking you by teleporting around his room and shooting fireballs out of his cape. The only susceptible part of his body during this form is his head, which you have to hop a little in order to reach. This is relatively simple when compared to the rest of the game and mostly requires patience. Upon his defeat, Dracula will turn into a much bigger blue demon that hops around the room and is quite a bit harder to dodge. As usual, holy water helps out immensely here and quickly gets you to your reward of watching the castle fall apart and a list of credits claiming famous actors played all of the major roles in the game (Christopher Lee was Dracula, by the by). For the masochistic, the game loops around after you finish it and you can play it again, only harder.
Castlevania is definitely a milestone in gaming and a monument to outstanding game design. It is amazing to see a title come out this early on that is such a complete package as far as presentation and game play goes. I am still amazed with what composers could do with the sound capabilities of the NES and it's games like Castlevania and MegaMan 2 that stand as shining examples. Yes, the game has control issues, but they are easy to get used to and many will find that it adds to the suspense and strategy of the title. Mistiming a jump in Castlevania will quite often land you with one less precious life to covet, and it's lessons like that which will make you play carefully and thoughtfully.
In future installments of The Reset Button (I write assuming any single person would like to see a future installment of The Reset Button) I will try and write about things that haven't been discussed to death, but I thought for issue 1 we could get it rolling with a true classic and hopefully remind us all as to what gaming is really about.
Volume 1; Issue 1
written by Lee 'Katslover' Pryor
As I sit here in a quiet annoyance over the recent loss of my next (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showpost.php?p=431677&postcount=33)-gen (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showpost.php?p=432263&postcount=41), a wave of nostalgia and want of better days has creeped over me. This and a lack of representation of the Cartridge Console Era (CCE) here on Colony has pushed me to start venturing into console games of days gone by.
As a child, gaming was something that my family often did together on our Nintendo Entertainment System and those moments represent some of my fondest memories. Nights playing 8 player Pin-Bot (everyone got multiple turns!) and time spent watching my mother totally decimate the Adventures of Lolo trilogy are just too grand to truly express in words, but it is important to understand how emotionally fundamental gaming is to me (and I would assume a great deal of others) as I move on and talk about our game for this issue.
It would be a common occurrence when certain new titles were released that my family would get a copy and so would my aunts and uncles (and sometimes my Grandmother) and we would all play and talk about the game and sort of compete to see who could finish it first. One particularly fantastic title ate up quite a bit of our time and I don't believe anyone finished it despite my father claiming my uncle did (upon which I call "shenanigans").
CASTLEVANIA
The first in an extremely long and great series, Castlevania is a game that I would wager everyone is familiar with. Back in 1986, this game had it all: fantastic graphics and atmosphere, tight game play, and the best soundtrack in a game for it's time (and still quite possibly so).
The game's story had you cast as a whip wielding vampire killer named Simon Belmont who must venture into Dracula's castle and obliterate everything inside of it. Honestly, as with quite a few early titles, the story is unimportant and everything you needed to know you could gather from the box art.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a337/Katslover/1621711761_3b8a5a3e4c.jpg
So there you have Conan the Barbarian with Indy's whip and he's pretty pissed about The Joker being dressed up as a vampire and he's probably going to do something about it. Completely amazing.
Castlevania starts off innocently enough. You get an intro of the hero entering the castle gates and then you are off to slowly trudge through an infinite line of ghouls that die in one hit and a plethora of flames which give you power ups. The powers up you are initially given are a dagger that can be thrown straight across the screen, hearts which are consumed when you use the dagger and, best of all, better whips. The whip you start with is extremely short, to the point that I can imagine Simon having to use it to take enemies out Hitman style.
After this walk up to the castle you are presented with one of the greatest things about the Castlevania franchise: secrets. Sure, one could simply walk into Dracula's castle, but why would you do that when you could perform a well placed jump to get past his front door and make a sack of money appear? Dracula must be the life savings under the mattress kind of guy. These secrets are peppered through the game with at least one on each of the six stages, and they are always a blast to discover. There are times where you will get knocked off of a platform by an enemy, land on a platform below, and discover that standing in that particular spot makes a treasure appear. Not only are they fun to collect, but more points means more extra lives and lives are quite important when the game ramps up the difficulty about mid-stride through the second stage.
The pacing of this difficulty ramp up is actually extremely well done. I think any seasoned gamer could beat the first three stages of the game, but would definitely notice the game increasing the punishment as they progress forward. Stage 4 starts with Simon falling down a hole and I can only imagine this is the game signifying to the player that "This shit is about to get real". This level involves quite a few flying enemies (the bane of any classically trained gamer) and moving platforms. This itself is a recipe for disaster, but then you throw in birds dropping hunchbacks on you during the stage's second part and the introduction of bone dragons that take a bazillion hits in the third part. If you manage to pass all of this, you have to fight the games second most difficult boss, Frankenstein and Igor.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a337/Katslover/frankigor.gif
Frankenstein himself is nothing at all but Igor is a hunchback that moves faster, jumps higher, AND shoots fireballs and all you can do to him is hit him and freeze him in place for a second. This is hardly worth the trouble as you could have used that second to just hit Frankenstein instead. Defeating Frank and Igor lands the player on the next to last level which isn't too difficult, has a fantastic background track, and one of the hardest bosses in gaming history. This fight has you jumping and dodging a large number of spinning scythes while trying to take care of Death himself. It might not sound as excruciating as it actually turns out to be, but it has to be said that Simon would probably lose in a dance contest consisting of Jill Valentine, the Prince of Persia and himself. Luckily, those in the know bring holy water (definitely one of the greatest items in a game ever) and use it to infinitely stun Death in his starting location until he dies. It's extremely cheap, but so is Death.
The final level consists of running straight ahead and mostly dodging the couple of enemies that show up here. One type is the boss from the first level (Phantom Bat for those trivia minded people) and the other is a hawk that swoops around annoyingly. Get past these minor challenges and you get to fight Dracula himself. He will start attacking you by teleporting around his room and shooting fireballs out of his cape. The only susceptible part of his body during this form is his head, which you have to hop a little in order to reach. This is relatively simple when compared to the rest of the game and mostly requires patience. Upon his defeat, Dracula will turn into a much bigger blue demon that hops around the room and is quite a bit harder to dodge. As usual, holy water helps out immensely here and quickly gets you to your reward of watching the castle fall apart and a list of credits claiming famous actors played all of the major roles in the game (Christopher Lee was Dracula, by the by). For the masochistic, the game loops around after you finish it and you can play it again, only harder.
Castlevania is definitely a milestone in gaming and a monument to outstanding game design. It is amazing to see a title come out this early on that is such a complete package as far as presentation and game play goes. I am still amazed with what composers could do with the sound capabilities of the NES and it's games like Castlevania and MegaMan 2 that stand as shining examples. Yes, the game has control issues, but they are easy to get used to and many will find that it adds to the suspense and strategy of the title. Mistiming a jump in Castlevania will quite often land you with one less precious life to covet, and it's lessons like that which will make you play carefully and thoughtfully.
In future installments of The Reset Button (I write assuming any single person would like to see a future installment of The Reset Button) I will try and write about things that haven't been discussed to death, but I thought for issue 1 we could get it rolling with a true classic and hopefully remind us all as to what gaming is really about.