25 Gaming Experiences You Must Have Before You Die - Part I: The NES Castlevania Trilogy

A wise man named Del the Funky Homosapien once said, "Video games. I got many to play, before my life expires; fulfill my desires." 

So you've come a long way on your gaming journey, but you feel like you're missing out on something crucial, or maybe you've been wearing horse-blinkers and focusing entirely too much on a single or small sampling of genres for much of your life and you're ready to broaden your horizons? Or maybe you're a hip, younger gamer, self-consciously aware of the backward-looking glance of the trending experience of retro-gaming right now and you feel like it's necessary to complete your journey as a more well-rounded gamer by looking into the paramount titles of the past.

Well, you've come to the right place. Here you will find a comprehensive list of must-have gaming experiences you should seek out at some point before you expire.

Now, before we launch into it, let me get a few caveats out of the way. First, this isn't necessarily a list of the “greatest games ever”. There are enough of those out there, and frankly, some of these games wouldn't even make it into a list of my top 25 favorite games, if I ever compiled one. Second, to establish a sense of balance across gaming history, I've chosen five games or sets of games from each of the last five hardware generations, so there'll be just as many selections from the NES era as the PS3/360/Wii era, and so forth. Third, you won't find any Mario or Zelda games on this list. Now, I'm not trying to be some hardass vigilante snob who's too good for peasant games. It's just that this list is of games I'm imploring you to play, and I don't need to implore you to play Mario and Zelda. Yes, they're some of the greatest games ever and you should most definitely play every one of them, if you haven't already. But chances are, if you're the kind of person reading an article like this, you've already had your fill of Mario and Zelda, and I'd rather use the space here to tell you about games you may not have come across than have Nintendo run a monopoly with their flagship franchises.

Now, with that out of the way, let's begin!

Castlevania (NES, 1986)

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES, 1987)

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES, 1989)

Why You Should Play It

Castlevania is one of the more crucial stepping-stones in the development of sidescrollers, and action games in general. Along with Mario and Metroid, it helped establish the vocabulary of action games in the early years of the Nintendo empire, and continued to one-up itself and stay relevant through the years on future generations of hardware. Whether it's Dracula's Curse requiring its own sound chip in Japan to play its unprecedentedly high-quality music, the incredible Mode-7 effects in Super Castlevania IV that worked almost like a tech demo for what the fledgling SNES was capable of, or Symphony of the Night completely reinventing the franchise and proving that 2D games were still capable of being blockbusters in the burgeoning age of polygons, Castlevania has always been on the cutting edge, pushing any hardware its found itself on to its limit.

Even in this primal era, the NES trilogy represents some of the most refined gaming to be had from both a technical and presentational standpoint. The games are notoriously difficult, but they ask for nothing from their players except precision and patience. When you die in a Castlevania, it's usually your fault. They are games about recognizing patterns and synchronizing with rhythms in terms of how enemies appear and act, how to gauge your resources and remembering where things are hidden throughout a particular level.

Another great thing about the NES trilogy is that each game represents an entirely unique gaming experience. Simon's Quest forgoes the traditional, linear, stage-based nature of its predecessor and opts for an open world that requires ample exploration, while Dracula's Curse goes for a more complete action game approach with branching paths, multiple characters and a continuous story. Consistent across all three games, however, are the moody atmosphere and incredible soundtracks Castlevania would become synonymous with over the years, boasting some of the most memorable tunes in video games.

You can't really understand why games became great, especially action games, without playing the NES Castlevanias. They may very well frustrate you to the utmost end of sanity, but they present three wholly worthwhile and varied experiences and few games will give you as much satisfaction in your skills as a gamer upon conquering them.

Potential Barriers

As timeless as the original Castlevania games are, they do show signs of age. The music stands up really well, especially in an age where chiptunes are having a revival of sorts, but the graphics are often ugly, even for the NES, with blocky, choppy backgrounds and limited detail. The physics are infamously stiff. Your characters move somewhat slowly and they can't change directions while they jump. Some of the platforming is brutal, with certain jumps being pixel-perfect affairs. On top of all that, the collision detection is pretty unforgiving—you need to be spot-on with your attacks or else your enemies will slip through. Gamers who came into their own during more recent generations might find these aspects impossible to bear, especially those weened on the incredibly fluid controls and somewhat pampered lifestyle offered by the “Metroidvania” games. But again, with practice and patience, any gamer can conquer Castlevania 1-3.

Current Availability

Any secondhand store that sells NES games is bound to have a few dusty, dirty Castlevania carts lying around for single-digit prices (though Castlevania III tends to be a bit more coveted). Grab them up, pull your NES out of your closet and get to work. Alternatively, the original game was re-released as part of the Classic NES lineup for GameBoy Advance, making it compatible with hardware as recent as the DS Lite. Most convenient of all as far as legal methods go, however, is the fact that all three Castlevanias are available for Wii's Virtual Console. If all else fails, NES emulation is pretty rampant and is probably possible on anything with a circuit board these days. If you're really put off by the first game and want a more comfortable segue to bridge the gap between your precious 360/PS3 and the antiquity of 8-bit gaming, Super Castlevania IV on SNES and Castlevania X68000 (available here as “Castlevania Chronicles” on PSOne and via Playstation Network) are more or less enhanced remakes of the original Castlevania, the former being a very liberal interpretation.

If You Really Dig It
If you find yourself particularly enamored with the world of oldschool Castlevania, there's no better place to have similar experiences than with the rest of the Castlevania series. Unfortunately, Castlevania is pretty labyrinthine and some of the titles fall into almost entirely different genres than the original trilogy. If you want to relive the NES trilogy experience specifically, there's a few standout titles you need to hit up.

Super Castlevania IV (SNES, 1991)

As mentioned above, Super CVIV is essentially an enhanced remake of the original Castlevania. It follows the same plot and has a lot of the same locations, but it's been rebuild entirely from the ground up. The game utilizes all the perks of the SNES's hardware to their fullest, particularly mode-7 scaling, which allows for effects such as spinning rooms, enemies that grow and shrink, etc. Sometimes these effects seem somewhat unmotivated, but they're nonetheless impressive. The soundtrack is fantastic and it has some of the most brilliant level design of the 16-bit era. Super CVIV is available on SNES and on Wii's Virtual Console.

Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge (GameBoy, 1991)

A series as popular as Castlevania would naturally make its way to handhelds. Unfortunately, Castlevania's first handheld outing was pretty atrocious. The sequel is surprisingly good, however, and does some interesting things with the Castlevania formula, like allowing you to select different stages from the outset of your adventure a la Mega Man. When it comes to classic Castlevania on-the-go, this is the one to go for.

Akumajou Dracula X68000/Castlevania Chronicles (Sharp X68000, 1993)

CVX68k is sort of a counterpart to Super CVIV, using a lot of the same ideas (it's also a remake of the original Castlevania). It's not quite as good and the difficulty leans toward the absurd sometimes, but it's a pretty solid game nonetheless. It was originally released for Sharp's X68000 computer system (hence the whacky name), but was rereleased for PSOne as "Castlevania Chronicles" very late in the console's lifespan. This release includes an enhanced version with slightly modified graphics and a techno soundtrack. Chronicles is also available on the Playstation Store in the PSOne Classics section.

Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo (PC Engine, 1993)

Dracula X is, without any doubt whatsoever, the greatest classic-style Castlevania of the entire nearly 30-year-old franchise. Utilizing the incredible power of the PC Engine's (the Japanese equivalent of the TurboGrafx 16) CD-ROM capabilities, Dracula X had insanely detailed graphics and some of the greatest synth-rock and orchestral music you could possibly hear coming from a video game of its day, all in redbook quality audio. More than its presentational aspects though, Dracula X is just an ingeniously well-made game, with some of the greatest level design and boss fights in video games, period. The game also ties directly into Symphony of the Night, a game you'll no doubt hear from again during this article series. Unfortunately, Dracula X was only released in Japan on NEC's PC Engine system. There is a similar game called "Dracula X" that was released for SNES, and while it's decent, it's little more than a dubious stand-in for this masterpiece. Your only other option besides a Turbo CD or emulation is to pick up Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles for PSP, an "enhanced" remake of this game with really shitty graphics and remixed music that misses the point. Fortunately, you can unlock the original PC Engine version of Dracula X by playing through some of the remake.

Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis, 1994)

Bloodlines is a spectacular and often overlooked entry in the Castlevania franchise. This is most likely due to the fact that, at least in America, Castlevania called Nintendo consoles home until the late 90s. The edgier, uncensored image Sega wore in the 16-bit era, however, made the Genesis the perfect home for a Castlevania game, allowing the series to have a level of blood, gore, and macabre imagery the franchise had never seen before. Beyond novelties, however, Bloodlines is just a damn good game. It boasts great, unique environments, two distinctly different characters to play as, and one of the most impressive soundtracks the often feeble Genesis sound chip has ever cranked out. As mentioned above, Bloodlines wasn't very popular and it has never seen any kind of rerelease. Your only option at the present time is Genesis.