RETRO REBOOT | Castlevania III Dracula's Curse (Nintendo Entertainment System)

The Castlevania series is one I hold dear to my philosophy of game design; a respectable difficulty with an intentionally rigid control scheme and mechanics that made you think wisely about when to attack and what sub-weapons to carry and when to use them. Top if off with a haunting gothic setting and amazing music, it adds up to my most memorable experiences on the NES.

I had mostly grown up with the first game and Simon's Quest, so Dracula's Curse eluded me throughout my childhood. I managed to snag it in my early twenties, before retro collecting became vogue and prices skyrocketed. Suffice to say, the team went hard on this one. It's the best Vania game on the NES, and a way to send off the series for the 80's, as well as Nintendo's 8-bit system.

I think what defines Dracula’s Curse is “ambition”. Castlevania III attempted to expand its gameplay as much as possible by variety. Simon's Quest had some replay value with multiple endings. Even with a properly translated walk-through, I still had a hell of a time getting the good ending in Simon’s Quest, so I just played it over and over until I memorized the notes written in my own blood.

In Dracula's Curse, with the ability to select branching paths and playable characters, Grant, Syfa, and Alucard, each with their own unique skills and abilities. Given the aging tech of the scrappy 8 bit hardware, it was truly ambitious for Konami to push its limits as far as possible and creating a game that was ahead of its time.

The graphics in this game are pretty damn amazing. The first game had a cool color palette that looked interesting. Simon's Quest opted for a darker palette, I felt it reflected the darker tone of the game’s story; a shadowy atmosphere serving as an outward manifestation of the curse that is slowly debilitating Simon from within. Dracula’s Curse returned to the color palette of the first game and added some new flair! In the first stage, you travel upwards through this chapel with a beautiful stained glass window and its pretty breathtaking. It’s so hypnotic that you’ll have to forgive yourself for taking damage from the bats.

Dracula’s Curse got really creative with color placement and adding depth to some of its levels. One of my favorites was from stage 3-03. At first I thought that you were traversing through mist, but its actually a river in the background. Parallax scrolling on the NES? Get outta here!

It took me a while to figure that out, and that shows some awesome creativity on behalf of the staff. Probably most notable from this game are the iconic clock gears from the tower and later towards the end of the game. Surprisingly, I didn’t experience a lot of slowdown with this game, given all of the action that can take place at one time. Certain boss fights, like Dracula’s second form, got a little bit glitch, and those auto scrolling death stages lead to lots of cheap hits, like that’s new for Castlevania.

Returning to the more linear style of gameplay and the familiar control scheme, Drac’s Curse introduces the ability to play as multiple characters, whom you can acquire depending on the path you take. As I said earlier, this is a great idea to extend the game’s life and each of the three, Alucard, Syfa, and Grant. They each have different skill sets and play styles that add some cool variety to the gameplay. Syfa relies on her magic, Alucard can transform into a bat, and Grant can scale walls.

With more practice, it doesn't take long to pick up the nuances of the secondary characters. And they are quite fun to use. But I am so accustomed to playing as a Belmont and their style of combat that using another character requires getting used to a slightly different learning curve so unfamiliar with the Castlevania game engine. Fortunately, playing as them is simply an option, not a necessity. The ideas Dracula's Curse established would be greatly refined in Inti Creates and Artplay's Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.

When it comes to the audio, Castlevania has some of my favorite BGM tunes in all of video games. Drac’s Curse may be the weakest as far as memorable scores outside of Beginnings and Aquarius (Aquarius is awesome), and they don’t get stuck into my head as often. The sound effects are solid, admittedly, I miss the whip sound effect from Simon’s Quest. Now, upon defeat, some of the bosses will emit a roar, which is kind of unsettling and visceral.

For as well designed it is, Castlevania III is one of the hardest games I have ever beaten in my entire life. Initially, I rage-quit through Syfa’s stages, so I didn't get her ending. As the years went on, I've gotten quite good at navigating its perilous levels. Drac’s Curse has all the Castlevania tropes that attributes to its difficulty; knock back damage, medusa heads, enemies with psychotic patterns, water hazards, so it’s not so much anything new that keeps killing you, so much as it is all of those same challenges thrown together at the same time at various intervals. I read that there was a programming error that makes it so enemies deal more damage than the Japanese version, but that still doesn’t equate to the sheer amount of insanity that went into some of these puzzles and ways to mitigate damage you may receive.

So, yeah, this is one hell of a way to cap off the series of games for the NES. It does feel like a game that tried to do more than it’s format and engine could maintain and shows what can bolster creativity with limited resources. While the first game is still my favorite and I like Rondo of Blood better, Curse is a pretty damn good Castlevania, though the notorious difficulty makes it a little bit more frustrating than fun at times.