Super Castlevania IV!

It’s been nearly thirty years since the game came out, but I’ve finally, finally finished Super Castlevania IV.

(As an aside, I like how the game’s proper title isn’t Castlevania IV, but SUPER! Castlevania IV.)

This was a hard, hard game. I played it in the Castlevania Collection version for Switch, and I am frankly amazed anyone ever beat the game without using the Save State feature.

But I have to admit platform games really aren’t my thing. I generally prefer games that are based more on math than how fast you can press buttons. Like, if I hover my cursor over an enemy orc, and the game tells me that my pikeman unit has a 68% chance to hit the orc, that’s more my kind of game.

That said, I do like platform games that capture my imagination. (The Mario games I just like because they’re cheerful and silly.) But Castlevania definitely caught my imagination – the lone hero, armed with only his trusty whip and few secondary weapons, storming Dracula’s castle of horrors, battling Dracula’s dark legions and lieutenants, and then a final epic duel with the Count himself. Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel wishes he was as formidable as the Castlevania version of Dracula. Novel Dracula spends all his time skulking in dark basements and stalking Victorian maidens, and his chief lieutenant is an escaped mental patient who eats bugs. Castlevania Dracula can teleport and shoot fireballs, and his lieutenants include the Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, crazy wizards, and dragons.

Anyway, the Castlevania games definitely caught my imagination. (Metroid did, too, once I finally had a chance to play the Metroid games in 2019.) Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is still one of my favorite games, even though it’s a bit of a flawed gem.

So after almost thirty years, I’m pleased to have finally finished Super Castlevania IV.

Though one of the common jokes about video games is that Mario is caught in a time loop, fighting Bowser over and over again trillions of times. But maybe it’s the other way around – maybe Dracula, as punishment for his crimes, is stuck in the Castlevania games, and he gets beaten by some guy with a whip and a throwing axe over and over again…

-JM