Which series' games have you beaten?I have beaten:
1986 Castlevania
1991 Super Castlevania IV
1993 Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
1994 Castlevania: Bloodlines
I have spent quality time with (but not beaten):
1989 Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (I made it up to the final stage in late 2019 then got distracted.)
1997 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (I got stumped on the upside-down castle.)
2003 Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (As a teen I used to gaze longingly at Nintendo Power ads for this one, but in the late 2010’s it just seemed like a worse version of SotN, so I lost interest.)
I’m going to flip-flop the order of the next two questions.
What was the first Castlevania you played, and how old were you?Short answer:
The first Castlevania I played was Castlevania 1. It was 2015 and I was 25 years old. Needless to say I got on board the Castlevania bandwagon very LATE. But I think this speaks volumes for the quality and enduring appeal of the series. If a total newcomer without any prior nostalgia like me can fall in love with Castlevania, then I think younger generations of people will continue to discover and appreciate it in the future, no matter how fancy or high tech video game graphics become.
Long answer:
In 2008 I got a PSP. I wanted cool new games for my PSP, so I got Castlevania Dracula X because the Video Game Critic gave it a A+ and I tended to really like games upon which he bestowed that rating. For some reason though Dracula X on PSP just didn’t do it for me. The main character’s movements felt so stiff and constrained. It seemed stupid to me that the main character took damage from seemingly harmless animals like crows.
Later in 2015 I read an article on the website boingboing.com praising Castlevania Symphony of the Night as a classic Playstation game everyone should play. I looked into options for playing it and realized I already had it on my PSP. However, I had to unlock it by playing Dracula X.
As I was suffering through Dracula X just to unlock SotN, it reoccured to me how lame it seemed that crows could inflict damage on my character. In real life an adult human would just grab the crow out of the air and strangle it. Then for some reason I thought, “Wait, this seems really stupid in a 3D polygonal PSP game, but this would have made perfect sense in a 16-bit sprite based game for Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.” Suddenly I realized I had been playing Castlevania with the wrong mindset. I needed to go farther back in time to fully appreciate it.
So I fired up an NES emulator on my PSP and started at the very beginning, with 1986’s Castlevania. During my first 2015 playthrough I wasn’t able to clear the game without using save states. But I loved every second of it. (
I later beat Castlevania on an actual NES in 2019.) After that, I beat Bloodlines, Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood, and sank a lot of time into Symphony of the Night. Every title I played in the series was excellent.
Do you prefer the classic designs or the "metroidvania" designs?I prefer the classic designs. The older I get, the more I gravitate toward pure action gaming. Wandering around and figuring out where to go next just appeals to me less and less as time passes. But I still love Symphony of the Night! Everything about its music, atmosphere, animations, and set pieces are so unforgettably amazing that I totally forgot it belongs to a genre I’ve fallen out of love with.
What are your favorite entries, and why?My top favorite entry is Castlevania 1. If I transport myself to the mindset of the NES days, the first entry just feels like the most groundbreaking one. The sequels are great, but I don’t think there’s anything quite like going from having literally no Castlevania games to suddenly having Castlevania on NES.
What are your least favorite entries, and why?My controversial opinion is that I found Castlevania IV to be the weakest of the 16-bit entries (for our purposes I’m considering PC Engine CD to be 16-bit.) I thought it was an outstanding Super NES game, but just an “okay” Castlevania game.
Are there any entries you still intend to play?I really want to play the Sharp X68000 one.
Does it bother you that there hasn't been an official new Castlevania release since 2014?No, because I don’t think they would get it “right” anymore. I would rather there be no new Castlevania games than for one to come out that doesn’t live up to the legacy of the classic ones.