He's So Unusual - Peculiar Sequels on the NES: Castlevania II

Castlevania II elicits divergent takes when it is brought up among the video game cognoscenti. While it is a flawed game, the level of hate it inspires can be a site to behold. Others see what Konami was attempting to do with technology that was not quite where it needed to be and applaud the developers in their attempt. I rediscovered the game after almost two decades with the NES Classic Mini and while it does have its faults, I think it is still entertaining (particularly with the save states you can utilize with an emulator or legally with the mini). I must confess, I played Castlevania II at a friend’s house before playing the original Castlevania, so I was more surprised by the original’s linear level design than by the open-world structure of the sequel. Aside from the linear/non-linear aspect, how else did Castlevania II differ?

1. Obviously I mentioned it in the intro, but the main difference in the two games is the linearity. The first game is a standard platformer where you jump and whip, fight a boss, and advance to the next stage. Castlevania II is anything but linear. You begin in a town and can either exit to the left or right to begin your journey. While you can go left, the fearsome creatures in that area will probably convince you to begin your journey by going right.

2. The original Castlevania forced you to complete the game in one sitting. You could pause the game to eat dinner or leave it on all night and try it again the next day, but a power surge, careless sibling, or other act of god would force you to replay the game from the beginning. Castlevania II introduced a password system to allow you to save your progress.

3. Hearts are more than just ammunition. In the original Castlevania, hearts determine the number of times you can use your sub-weapon (more on that later). In Castlevania II, hearts are ammunition for certain sub-weapons (some, like Holy Water do not require hearts to use), but they are also currency (you begin the game with 50 and can use them to purchase items) and experience. Speaking of experience…

4. Castlevania II has RPG elements. The original Castlevania had a scoring system, like most games of the time, that gave you an extra life when you achieved a certain number of points. In Castlevania II, when you accrue enough experience points you level-up. This gives you a larger life bar and allows you to take less damage from enemies. Speaking of the life bar…

5. It is now displayed vertically instead of horizontally and bosses do not have life bars. Speaking of bosses…

6. There are only three in Castlevania II. The first Castlevania had a boss at the end of every level. Castlevania II has five mansions you must explore, but just two of them have bosses, and it is not even required that you fight one of them. The Grim Reaper is a totally optional boss fight (you do get a nice weapon – the Golden Knife for beating him), but the battle with Carmilla is required to finish the game. Oh, and the bosses respawn after you beat them and leave the room. The other boss is of course, Dracula (spoiler alert).

7. Perhaps the most frustrating part of Castlevania II is the night/day dynamic. The game begins during the day. However, after a few minutes of game action, a message appears on the screen indicating it is now night. Enemies are stronger at night and the previously occupied towns are overrun by zombies. The original Castlevania took place at night for the entire game as evidenced by the crescent moon. The original game did have a time limit for each stage, but this did not contribute significantly to the challenge.

8. Castlevania II is also quite famous for its non-playable characters (NPCs). Most towns have people you can talk to our buy stuff from. Beware though, some of the town folk will outright lie to your face. The original Castlevania featured only Simon Belmont and no NPCs.

9. In Castlevania II, you can buy sub-weapons from salesmen in towns, find them hidden behind walls, or obtain them by completing some esoteric task you would have no idea to do unless you consulted a guide. In the original Castlevania, these sub-weapons were ‘hidden’ inside candles. The item would drop once you whipped the candle. In addition, enemies would occasionally drop sub-weapons as well. And as far as sub-weapons go…

10. The original Castlevania had five sub-weapons: Ax, Dagger, Cross/Boomerang, Holy Water, and Stopwatch. Castlevania II has a smorgasbord of sub-weapons. The Ax, Cross, and Stopwatch do not appear in the game, but three variations of the Dagger (though they are now called knives) are here and they no longer suck. The Golden Knife is particularly effective as it stun locks enemies. Holy Water returns, but its functionality is a bit different. Instead of stun locking enemies, it now provides just one hit worth of damage. However, it can be used to break some bricks to reveal hidden paths and is also useful to reveal false floors so Simon can avoid falling and repeating certain parts of the mansions. A new sub-weapon, the Sacred Flame, has taken over the role of stun locking/spamming enemies and a unique, but pretty worthless Diamond sub-weapon bounces diagonally across the screen. Simon also has Laurels that provide limited invincibility (like the Potion in Castlevania) and Garlic which reveals a few secrets and slightly damages enemies. Some sub-weapons use hearts (like the Golden Knife), while others (Holy Water) do not, and still others do not use hearts, but have their own numerical tracking system (Laurels and Garlic). Other sub-weapon differences include Simon acquiring some sort of Zelda-esque carrying system in Castlevania II as he is able to hold every sub-weapon in the game without having to discard any. In the original Castlevania if you picked up one sub-weapon, it automatically replaced the sub-weapon you were previously carrying. This was particularly problematic if a defeated enemy randomly dropped a poor sub-weapon (Ax or Dagger) near a boss that you needed Holy Water or the Cross to defeat. Not that this ever happened to me. And finally, in Castlevania II, you could spam sub-weapons without the need for the Double or Triple Shot which allowed for multiple sub-weapons to be on the screen at once in the original Castlevania.

11. Castlevania II has more whip upgrades than the original. In both games, you start with a Leather Whip. In the original Castlevania, you can obtain a Chain Whip and finally a longer Chain Whip. In Castlevania II, you can acquire a Thorn Whip, Chain Whip, Morning Star, and finally a Flame Whip. Not sure how Simon holds or whips the Flame Whip, but it looks pretty rad.

12. Castlevania II is light on the pork chops. The infamous ‘wall meat’ was hidden throughout the original Castlevania to give intrepid vampire hunters a reprieve and refill some of their health. Alas, there is no wall meat in Castlevania II. The only way to refill your health is to visit a church and talk to the priest inside (the appearance of churches is interesting since Nintendo fervently avoided having any religious symbols in their games) or ‘level up’ by achieving the next experience point threshold. 

13. The thing is you don’t really need to refill your health in Castlevania II as much as you did in the original. In the first Castlevania, Simon was given three lives to complete a level. Earning points granted you extra lives and each level had a few checkpoints where you could continue from after dying. However, once you exhausted your supply of Simons, you were forced to return to the beginning of the level. For the early levels, this was not a big deal, but dying against Frankenstein’s Monster or the Grim Reaper on your last life in the game’s later levels meant a long trek for a rematch. In Castlevania II, you are once again given three lives, but after each death you respawn in basically the same spot you were in before you died. If you lose all your lives and continue, the respawn rules are the same. The only difference is the number of hearts you collected and experience you accumulated resets to zero. This can be a problem if you need to purchase something like an Oak Stake in the mansions, but it reduces the challenge somewhat.

14. And what of the Oak Stake? No, that is not the final weapon you need to defeat Dracula. The Oak Stake is used to ‘complete’ each mansion. Each mansion houses one piece of Dracula’s body and you need the Oak Stake to break the orb that houses the body part. The orbs in Castlevania II are white (or glowing depending on how descriptive you want to be). In the original Castlevania, the bosses of each level dropped a red orb when they were defeated. Touching the red orb refilled your health and allowed you to advance to the next level. In Castlevania II, the orbs do not refill your health and you have to make it out of the mansion on your own by backtracking.

15. Castlevania itself is very short in Castlevania II. In the original Castlevania, nearly the entire game takes place in Castlevania (Dracula’s castle). The only part that does not is the short path you trod before entering the castle in the first level. The castle is sprawling with a hallway, basement, laboratory, balcony, thrown room and a multitude of other areas. In the sequel, in a nice bit of continuity I might add (it did sink into the earth at the end of the first game), the castle is reduced to rubble and is quite short with no enemies to fight.

16. In the original Castlevania, unless you are an accomplished speed runner, Dracula is a challenging final boss. He has two forms and has caused me to swear on many occasions. In Castlevania II, Dracula is a pushover if you spam him with the Sacred Flame as soon as he appears. Castlevania II’s Dracula, perhaps owing to his weakened state after his defeat in the first game, has only one form.

17. Castlevania II has multiple endings. Depending on how long it took you (day/night cycles) to complete the game, you will either receive a ‘Good’, ‘Bad’, or ‘OK’ ending.The original Castlevania has just one ending.

Did any of these changes stick in the series going forward or did the designers revert to the original Castlevania when creating sequels?

1. Linearity returned to the series for a while, albeit with a few changes thrown in. The next game on the NES, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, is a linear platformer similar to the original, but branching paths are added to mix up the gameplay. There is no genuine exploration as there is in Castlevania II, but it does add something to the standard linear gameplay. When the franchise moved to 16-bit, the developers curiously removed branching paths in both Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania: Bloodlines. The Japanese only release of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood added additional elements of exploration with hidden paths and side quests involving hidden maidens, but it was not until the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night that the game returned to the format established in Castlevania II. In the nearly ten years between Castlevania II and Symphony of the Night, the non-linear format of Castlevania was perfected. This style would be the dominant format of Castlevania games for years to come. Younger gamers who did not come of age with the NES, have seen numerous ‘Metroid-vania’ sequels on handheld devices. Even skippable titles in the series like Castlevania 64 and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness have more in common with Castlevania II than the original game. It could be argued that the original Castlevania is now the black sheep with Castlevania II serving as a primitive, beta-test version of the Castlevania games to come.

Ugly polygons and skeletons on motorcycles. Can't believe it didn't age well.

2. Passwords became a staple of the Castlevania series after Castlevania II. However, the series would move to symbols instead of letters making passwords easier to input. Of course, much later in the series, passwords would not be needed as save points would be introduced.

Differentiating between 'Os' and 0s' was the bane of my existence in elementary school.

3. Hearts returned to their original role as ammunition in the other linear games and continue to be used in that way even in the Metroid-vania style games.

4. Castlevania III and the linear games in the series that follow kept the scoring system and awarded extra lives once a certain score was achieved. The RPG elements of Castlevania would lie dormant until Symphony of the Night when they returned with a vengeance. Most of the ensuing releases in the Castlevania series kept these RPG qualities.

5. Castlevania III and the other linear Castlevanias returned the life bar to the top of the screen. Symphony of the Night and other RPG Castlevanias did away with the life bar and brought the concept of ‘Hit Points’ (HP) to the Castlevania series.

6. Thankfully later Castlevania games have more than three bosses. The series continues to cast a wide net in search of antagonists to haunt the player drawing inspiration from literature, religion, mythology, and world history.

7. The day/night dynamic was a valiant effort, but developers decided to shelve the idea for later Castlevania games. Linear games in the series kept the timer from the original, but once again, it was not significant in adding to the challenge.

8. NPCs are not heavily featured in subsequent Castlevania games. A few do exist (like the Librarian in Symphony of the Night), but since the games mostly take place on the way to or in Dracula’s castle, there are not a lot of friendly folks around to engage in idle chatter with.

9. In the linear Castlevania games, sub-weapons continue to be hidden behind candles that need to be whipped. In the RPG entries in the series, weapons, in addition to armor, spells, and other doodads can be found or purchased by the player as they progress.

10. The linear Castlevania games bring back the five sub-weapons found in the original while adding a Bible (Rondo of Blood) and super sub-weapon attack. RPG Castlevanias have a multitude of weapons too great to list here.

11. Castlevania III returns to the whip upgrade formula of the first game, but for the first time in the series, players can use standard items that are not whips. Castlevania III has three playable characters that can be unlocked throughout the game. Grant, a pirate, uses a dagger, Sypha, a wizard, uses a staff as her basic attack, and Alucard, the son of Dracula, can blast fireballs, much like his father. Super Castlevania IV does not have any additional playable characters and keeps the whip upgrades, but adds some new whip abilities. Simon Belmont can now whip in eight different directions and can even wave his whip to destroy incoming projectiles. However, the biggest innovation in Super Castlevania IV is the ability to use the whip as a Batman-like grappling hook to swing in certain spots. Castlevania Bloodlines on the Genesis allows you to play as a non-whip using character from the beginning of the game with a spear the preferred weapon of choice for Eric Lecarde. When Alucard returns in Symphony of the Night, he uses a sword as his basic attack. While the whip ushered in gamers to the world of Castlevania, the series now boasts a greater variety of standard weapons.

12. Castlevania III brings the wall meat back. This trend is continued in the other linear Castlevania games. In Symphony of the Night, Alucard is able to purchase and carry food items to use at a later time for healing.

13. The concept of three lives returns in Castlevania III and is the standard for the linear Castlevanias. Most of the linear games also have unlimited continues, though a few like Castlevania Bloodlines add to the challenge by limiting the number of continues at your disposal. The RPG Castlevania games limit players to one life, but offer numerous checkpoints for saving progress.

14. Red orbs return in Castlevania III and remain a series standard in linear Castlevania games for refilling your health and serving as a reward for completing the level. The oak stake has not been heard from since Castlevania II.

15. Depending on the game, the actual Castlevania can range from short to very long. In Castlevania III, the majority of the game is spent traversing the Transylvania countryside in an effort to arrive at the castle proper. In Super Castlevania IV, the first few levels are spent outside the castle gates, but the castle itself is still pretty expansive. In Bloodlines, players don’t even get to see Castlevania. In Symphony of the Night, Castlevania is once again spacious with the entire game taking place in the maze-like structure. Needless to say, Dracula’s fortress has varied throughout the centuries depending, I suppose, on the availability of undead contractors.

Yeah we can do a suspended balcony, but it won't come cheap.

16. In pretty much every other game outside of Castlevania II, the Prince of Darkness has multiple forms and is a challenging final boss.

Dracula's 'Cross Fit' form.

17. Castlevania III has multiple endings depending on which character accompanies Trevor, but Super Castlevania IV returned to the one ending standard. Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, as is the case with most modern games, offer you multiple endings depending on what you accomplished during the course of your play through.

Although it may have been considered a black sheep in its day, Castlevania II boldly attempted to alter the formula of the series. While it did not all work, it laid the foundation for one of the best games of the 90’s (Symphony of the Night) and is still fun to revisit more than 30 years after its release.

He's So Unusual - Peculiar Sequels on the NES: Super Mario Bros. 2

Sequels on the NES were often very different from the games that preceded them. When you think about it, this makes sense. Prior to the NES era, video games did not do a great job of story-telling. In most video games from the late 70s and early 80s, the objectives were either destroy every enemy on the screen (Galaga), by pass obstacles and advance to the end or top of the screen (Donkey Kong), or eat all the white dots (Pac-Man). The pattern continued throughout the game with the challenge ramping up. There was no screen scrolling in levels or a proper ending to the game. All levels were self-contained on one screen and you either lost all your lives or glitched the game out when you reached a certain point.

You didn't truly beat the game until a technician had to reset it.

Original games on the NES had a defined end. You even got some closure once you completed the game. So, when it was time for a sequel, there was no real precedent for how a sequel to that type of game should be made. Sure Galaga was actually a sequel to Galaxian and Donkey Kong and Pac-Man both had sequels where you control a different character (Donkey Kong Jr. and Ms. Pac-Man respectively), but the games were basically the same with minor tweaks. Nintendo often decided to go in a different direction for their sequels. In this sequence, I'll outline a few of those famous sequels, note the differences, and see if any of those changes appeared in any later titles in the series. Full disclosure, my gaming days ended in the early 2000s, so by later games in the series, I mean titles on the NES, SNES, and N64.

Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2
Most readers and video game enthusiasts already know that the American version of Super Mario Bros. 2 is a re-skinned version of a Japanese game called Doki-Doki Panic. Plenty of sites on the internet and even a printed book can give you the background into why this decision was made. Long story short: The real Super Mario Bros 2 was too hard for American gamers. And if you ever played the Lost Levels on Super Mario All-Stars you know this is true. So the US got a different Super Mario Bros. game. How exactly was it different?

1. The game does not take place in the Mushroom Kingdom. This game is technically a dream which takes place in the realm of Sub-Con.

2. There is no Bowser. The infamous Mario adversary is nowhere to be found in this game because it is really just a dream. The villain here is a large bi-pedal frog named Wart. Nintendo did stay with a cold-blooded animal as the main baddie, but switched from a reptile to an amphibian.

3. Super Mario Bros. 2 has a super jump. In Super Mario Bros. you could jump farther if you got a running start, but the height of your jump was limited. In Super Mario Bros. 2, if you squatted until your character flashed, you could jump higher than normal. The lesson of course, do your squats on leg day.

4. You can play as multiple characters with different skill sets. Technically, you could play as Luigi in Super Mario Bros., but he was really just a pallet swap your little brother or sister played as when your parents forced you to let them play too. In Super Mario Bros. 2, all the characters have a unique set of skills. Mario is the all-around player, Luigi jumps the highest, Princess Peach can hover when she jumps, and Toad picks up items and enemies the fastest. Speaking of…

5. You no longer stomp on enemies to kill them. With the exception of Bowser, Spinies, and enemies in the water, the go to method of killing bad guys in Super Mario Bros. was to stomp on them. When you first try this in Super Mario Bros. 2, you will find that you just kind of hitch a ride on the bad guys. Pushing the ‘B’ button will allow you to pick them up and toss them at other enemies.

6. There are no projectile power-ups. In Super Mario Bros., you can obtain a fire flower to shoot fireballs at enemies. In Super Mario Bros. 2, you can throw things at enemies, but you have to pull them out of the ground first. Vegetables, bombs, and turtle shells are hidden in clumps of grass. Pluck the grass and you have a temporary weapon to help you out. You will also need to master this mechanic of picking up objects to beat the bosses and mini-bosses. The bosses non-fire projectiles and any objects that just happen to be lying around can be used to defeat them.

7. Super Mario Bros. 2 has new enemies. I already mentioned there was no Bowser, but there are also no Goombas, no Koopa Troopas, and no Lakitus. Shy Guys, Birdo, and Mouser are members of your new rogues gallery.

8. There are no question blocks to punch. Jumping up to hit question blocks in Super Mario Bros. usually revealed coins, but occasionally offered other power-ups. There are no such blocks in Super Mario Bros. 2. Instead, obtaining items involves pulling grass out of the ground.

9. There are no pipes to slide down. The ubiquitous green pipes do not make an appearance in Super Mario Bros. 2. Instead several levels have bottles you can slide into to obtain a key to open a locked door or other power-ups like a one-up.

10. You can take more than two hits before you die. In Super Mario Bros., a mushroom or fire flower granted you a mulligan. Take a hit from an enemy and you didn’t die, but instead shrunk back to your original size with another hit resulting in death. In Super Mario Bros. 2, you begin with a life bar on the left-hand side of the screen. I say bar, but it really is just two red shapes. Take a hit, and you shrink in size (at least here the default is big). However, hidden throughout each stage are two mushrooms. For each mushroom you pick up (and yes you have to pick them up, not simply touch them), you gain an additional hit point. Be warned though, these mushrooms are not in the open. They are hidden in sub-space. And how do you get to sub-space? By picking up a potion from a patch of grass and throwing it on the ground to reveal a door. This door will transport you to sub-space for a limited amount of time. What else is in sub-space?

11. Coins are utilized differently. Any rube can tell you that when you collect 100 coins in Super Mario Bros., you gain an extra life. Coins are much less prevalent in Super Mario Bros. 2. In fact, the only place you can find them is sub-space. If you pick up a patch of grass in sub-space, it becomes a coin. At the end of each area, you have the opportunity to play a somewhat skill based slot machine game to add extra lives to your ledger. Now I know where my predilection for gambling comes from.

The loosest slots in Sub-Con.

And before we dispense with sub-space, here is one more thing to know.

12. Warp Zones are different. In Super Mario Bros., if you want to skip a few levels, you can. Stay on the ceiling or bust some bricks until you find a conspicuous vine and you will find a set of pipes that will take you to the game’s later levels. In Super Mario Bros. 2, the warp zones are, shall we say, more cryptic. As I mentioned earlier, there are a few bottles you can slide into. Take the potion to some of these bottles and slide into them in sub-space and you are moving on in your adventure. However, unlike in the first Super Mario Bros., you are only told where you are headed after you have already committed to sliding down.

13. There are no flag poles in Super Mario Bros. 2. Each level of Super Mario Bros. except for the battles with Bowser ends with an iconic flag pole. Mario jumps on the flag pole, receives some points based on how high jumped and potentially some fireworks and proceeds to the next stage. In Super Mario Bros 2, the player must pick up a white crystal after defeating a boss (occasionally it is just lying around). This crystal opens the mouth of bird statue which the player must enter to advance.

This is perhaps not an exhaustive list, but it is a pretty good rundown of the main differences between Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2. Which, if any of these changes, became series standards going forward?

1. Sub-Con has not been utilized as a setting in any original Mario game since.

2. Wart has not been seen since Super Mario Bros. 2. While Bowser is Mario’s arch-nemesis, he occasionally teams up with the heroes of the Mushroom Kingdom to battle a greater enemy. He also finds time to race and play other sports such as tennis and golf with his sworn enemies. Wart has only appeared in a non-Mario game (Link’s Awakening) in a cameo spot. 

The former supreme ruler of Sub-Con reduced to a choral director.

3. The squat-propelled super jump has similarly gone the way of the buffalo.

4. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World returned to the formula from Super Mario Bros. with players taking the role of Mario, and Luigi in two –player games, with no noticeable difference in how they handled. The Lost Levels or Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 did give Luigi a better jumping ability than Mario (but also less traction), but that game was actually released before Super Mario Bros. 2. Luigi and Princess Peach did keep their Super Mario Bros. 2 abilities when battling in the Super Smash Bros. series of games.

5. Once again, Nintendo returned to the original formula of stomping on non-spikey enemies. However, in Super Mario World, our hero is able to hitch a ride on a certain green dinosaur. Of course, the player and not the AI does have to control the dinosaur, but this mechanic could conceivably have spawned from Super Mario Bros. 2.

6. Projectile powers return in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. However, in Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario is able to pick up turtle shells from defeated Koopa Troopas, stunned Bob-Ombs, and ice blocks. And in Super Mario World, Mario adds P-Switches to the list of items he is able to carry. Plus, he can now toss those items vertically to take care of air-born threats or hit out of reach question blocks.

7. Most of the enemies from Super Mario Bros. 2 remained in the dream world, but a few like Shy Guys, Birdo, and Bob-Ombs became regulars in Mario games and spin-offs going forward.

8. Question blocks returned in Super Mario Bros. 3 and have been a staple of the series throughout.

9. Befitting Mario’s occupation as a plumber, pipes made a grand return in Super Mario Bros. 3 while the magic bottles have been lost to history.

10. The US release of Super Mario Bros. 3 allowed Mario to be hit up to three times before dying. After collecting a fire flower or leaf (or in rarer instances a frog, hammer bros., or tanooki suit) Mario would become big after one hit, small after a second, and then die after a third. The Japanese release made you small after one hit no matter what power-up you had. Thanks for coddling us American gamers. In Super Mario Word, the formula from the US release of Super Mario Bros. 3 remained intact with a fully powered Mario able to absorb three hits before dying. The game even allowed you to keep a power-up handy once you began a level with a simple press of the ‘Select’ button dropping the item slowly like a care package.

11. The 100 coins = one extra life formula returns in Super Mario Bros. 3 and has remained a staple since.

12. Super Mario Bros. 3 changed the Warp Zone dynamic again, hiding three Zelda-like whistles in the first two worlds which allowed the player to skip certain parts of the game. Mario would need to use the whistle once he got to the Warp Zone itself to be able to skip directly to World 8. Super Mario World introduced multiple exits to certain levels which could lead to shortcuts along the Star Road and a quick showdown with Bowser if you knew what you were doing.

13. Super Mario Bros. 3 used a suspended box of three rotating icons as its exit apparatus. Super Mario World used a vertically rising bar and for the aforementioned secret exits, a key/keyhole combination.

All the elements from Super Mario Bros. 2 did not make it into subsequent Mario games, but a few mechanics did survive and influence the series. This is perhaps even more impressive since this was not technically a ‘real’ Mario game. Super Mario Bros. 2 may seem like an oddball in the series, particularly the side-scrolling series, but for the nascent home video game industry, changing things up a little (or a lot) for the sequel was not necessarily a bad thing.