This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We'll be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006.
Day 13
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
The Castlevania series is iconic. It sits up there with iconic series like Super Mario Bros, Halo, Pokemon, and a handful of others. It hasn’t had much in the terms of recent success, but the series has found new life in a couple of excellent Netflix series.
It’s hard to consider retro horror and not think about Castlevania. I can’t say that the games were meant to scare, necessarily–but they’re definitely gothic horror themed. You take on Dracula and an army of evil minions in the first game. And as the series goes on, the Belmonts clash with not only Dracula, but other horrors through the generations. And now that Castlevania is 38 years old the series has let more than a few generations take a stab at the famous Count.
I think if I had to narrow down a single Castlevania game that caused the most fear–okay, mostly just stress– it was Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. I know this might be a controversial choice, as out of the first four games, Simon’s Quest is the only game that deviates from the first game’s formula so drastically. It’s also a game that I grew up playing, and I spent countless hours exploring and trying to make sense of its cryptic (and apparently mistranslated) clues from the townspeople.
Time mattered in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. Any game that has an overarching time pressure immediately becomes stressful–I’m looking at you Dead Rising. But the only consequence of failure in Simon’s Quest is purely narrative, and only affects the story’s end. But that also means the game has a day/night cycle, famous for introducing gamers to the phrase “it’s a terrible night to have a curse.” To be fair, what night is good for a curse, exactly, though?
Simon’s Quest also introduced RPG elements into Castlevania. And similarly to how Zelda II: Link’s Adventure alienated some fans for changing up the formula, Simon’s Quest had the same effect. The naming for this game is a little confusing, too, because the Game Boy also had another Castlevania II, this one subtitled Belmont’s Revenge.
If you’re itching to play Simon’s Quest or any of the other Castlevania games, you’re in luck: The Castlevania Anniversary Collection and the Castlevania Dominus Collection have a wide range of hard to find retro Castlevania games with the former containing the first three games in the series. These two collections are available on modern consoles or Steam.
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