The name Castlevania is enough to bring forth an instant recollection of monumental gothic strongholds towering against the backdrop of a dark, moonlit sky. It is an image of the forest gradually giving way to the entrance of the castle that is shrouded in a cold, eerie silence. The gaming series that has been around for three decades now and, as far as I’m concerned, has been bringing its A-game (it has no choice, considering the ruthless amount and style of competition among 2D side scrollers) since the very first console release on the NES came onboard the loveable pirate ship that is the area of gaming I most enjoy.
Where it all started: the roots of Castlevania
The legacy began somewhere in Castlevania, and the origins can now be talked about freely. “We can now speak openly about the secrets that the Castlevania development team has been keeping for 30 years,” IGA (Koji Igarashi, who has created some of the most iconic games for Castlevania and is now working on the new game “Bloodstained”) announces in a clip that starts off the four-episode series on Adi Shankar’s YouTube channel.
The whole thing started in 1986. That was the year Konami turned loose the world’s first Castlevania. Born on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Castlevania was the first in a long series of installments about a family of vampire hunters, the Belmonts. Their quest? is to end the reign of Count Dracula. Where else could such a quest take place but in the very castle of the evil count himself? In more recent years, Konami has introduced one innovative Belmont after another, for a total of a dozen entries in the series.
Castlevania was all about its atmosphere, and it’s a good thing it was, because that’s what stood out the most about it. It was, in a way, all about the space it created. Everything in the game was made to pull players into a dark gothic world, like the one that was always on the pages of a true gothic novel. Or at least that was how one could experience it if one’s imagination could take flight within a space of such dread and foreboding. There’s the hallway-by-hallway dance, which always came from simply navigating the castle. And it really is a castle, mostly.
One of the most long-standing elements in the series is the setting: the use of an old, large, spooky castle. The original Castlevania hit the NES in 1986 and has since seen numerous remakes, which have also varied that large, spooky castle setting. Underground, in clock towers, under bridges, and in caves, the demon hunter—originally the not-yet-a-vampire Simon Belmont, but numerous other protagonists since—make their way, laying to rest ghouls and goblins and collecting key plot devices like a holy whip and magic crystals.
Terror’s Evolution: The Impact and Influence of Castlevania
Over the last 30 years, very few series in the pantheon of video game history have remained as consistently loved as Konami’s Castlevania. Mixing a dark and gothic setting with memorable and fun-to-play action and platforming, the various entries in the franchise continue to resurface in the public eye. And yet, the franchise’s seemingly simple ’80s beginnings belie what it would eventually become throughout the ’90s and 2000s.
The ambition of the series grew along with its path. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest delivered on this promise of expansion, taking players into the non-linear world of what one might call “RPGvania.” Instead of just one path through a castle with a boss at the end of a set number of stages—the original formula—this game transformed the castle into an RPG-like world for Simon. This grew into the mechanics of the revealed-basement formula found in the next two games. I didn’t especially care for the game…
The Castlevania franchise gained massive popularity following the release of the seminal title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It came out on the Sony PlayStation in 1997 and has ever since been a classic beloved by gamers everywhere. Its quirky yet fun-to-play action/RPG combination gameplay was a big reason why it was loved by gamers. It was a game that couldn’t be found anywhere else on the then-rising Sony PlayStation. It was also quirky because of its story, which was once again centered on another Belmont, who in this game was named Alucard, much like in Castlevania III.
What made Symphony of the Night different was its stress on probe and revelation. The huge castle was chock-full of secret rooms, hidden doors, and powerful abilities waiting to be found by the truly inquisitive player. The Elbow was one of many rooms far off the main route that contained special power-ups. The Alucard Shield towered mightily in the inventory, indicating the presence of a second-Elbow-like room somewhere in the castle. There was a lot of game-beating firepower sequestered in the castle, but better yet, some of it lay in the twice-Elbow-like rooms of the world-affirming Symphony.
The Symphony of the Night’s effect on the gaming industry was huge. It gave the industry what it needed, right when it needed it. It was a sign that a studio with a lot of creative minds was thinking differently about what a game could be. It’s a game that showed off what it could do: mechanics that felt good and that made you want to explore; and a story that, at the same time, was kind of twisted and, well, seriously goofy. But it worked. It worked on all levels. It inspired us. And it’s still doing that.
Castlevania’s Modern Era: When Darkness is Embraced
How do you update a video game series that got its start in 1986? Well, if you’re smart, talented, and dedicated to making that series the best it can be, you give it a 21st-century facelift while keeping it as true as possible to the core of the original concept. That’s exactly what Iga and his team did with the modern Castlevania series, and it’s a series I’ve grown rather fond of.
The Castlevania series has seen a great deal of change, especially when it comes to gameplay, since the 1997 release of Symphony of the Night. Still, the trinity of exploration, RPG, and action that fueled the PlayStation Classic remains one of the high points of not just the whip-cracking series as a whole but of the entire medium. We’re here to take a look back at the unforgettable games that put Castlevania on the map, as well as the curious B-side experiments that have nonetheless yielded some noteworthy ideas.
An instance of this is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It came out in 2010, with MercurySteam handling the development and Konami doing the publishing. This game was meant to restart the whole franchise, and it takes you, the player, through a really dark, really twisted sort of fantasy world that you get to experience in a very controlled, cinematic kind of way. Plenty of past games have tried to do the same thing, and lots of them failed for all sorts of reasons. But this one is different. It may have truly broken hearts when it came to some aspects of the series that it shanked, but it also stuck pretty much the whole landing (rather impressively, too!) in terms of what a game can do to make players remember it by drawing them into its world.
The Castlevania series is known for many standout titles, and one that is worth noting is Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Launched on the Game Boy Advance in 2003, Aria of Sorrow is profoundly different from previous entries in both its setting and its choice of main characters. Aria of Sorrow is set in the year 2035 and tells the story of a man named Soma Cruz, who was very much an average, run-of-the-mill guy before he got his tango with destiny. That factor is working in his favor as he bluffs his way through Dracula’s castle or seeks out a fresh, young maiden.
The Undying Attraction: Why Castlevania is Still Popular.
Looking back at the influence of the Castlevania series, it’s apparent that it has had quite an impact on the video game world. What started on the NES has found a home on many of the platforms that have followed, and deservedly so. The delectably dark, exceedingly exploratory, and atmospherically accomplished 2D action platformer games of this notoriously difficult and frighteningly fun franchise rivet us in spite of ourselves.
The Castlevania series has survived on the strength of a simple premise: the thrill of venturing into the unknown and conquering it. Since the 1986 debut of the original game, players have been asked to push through the liminal space between “safe enough” and “too dangerous,” with the clear implication being that the closer you get to the series’s famous ur-boss, the more likely you are to end up in a box next to Simon’s.
However, despite its gloomy, morose world, Castlevania isn’t without its charm. Musical chords and sound effects—like doors creaking open and lances piercing the bloody heart of yet another succubus—combine into a beautiful symphony of strangely enchanting, dark allure. The world is, as I’m sure I’ve been beaten over the head with enough times, the one Vania can’t escape from. But it’s also one I find myself oddly drawn to. Especially its marvelous, intricate levels and the hellacious, half-sprited/half-metal soundtrack that, taken together, make up one of the least spooky, most excellently designed series of games I’ve ever dived head-first into.
Perhaps the genuine heritage of Castlevania lies within this fact: it carries the people who play it into a domain of dark fancy and gothic dismay, where the life lived and the unlived life are scarcely distinguishable, and where figures of direst adversity carry out a work of heroic formation. We have become hard-pressed to find a way to encapsulate this strike in the lightning of pathos inside a pocket-size frame. But by the time that eight-bit thunderclap followed the opening rainstorm that was “Bloodlines” on any old Game Boy, we, too, had been pulled into the screen.
