Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the granddaddy of all horror video games, the original Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although, technically the game didn't come out on the NES until 1987, it was originally released in Japan on September 26th, 1986 for something called the Family Computer Disk System (FDS). The NES release was a port over from this release.
I can't be 100% honest here and say that I remember Castlevania totally fondly because the game was hard as hell. I've never actually managed to beat it and I remember spending hour upon frustrating hour dying over and over as a result of badly timed jumps or those damned little hunchback creatures.
Overall though, I really did love the game. For a kid whose favorite holiday is Halloween, Castlevania was like a dream come true. You got to play the brave adventurer Simon Belmonst as he made his way through a creepy gothic castle filled with ghosts, zombies, skeletons, flying medusa heads, giant vampire bats and more. Along the way you'd face some of the biggest monsters in all of horror including The Mummy, Frankenstein, Medusa and the man himself . . . Dracula!
It was the perfect game for 10 year old me. I can't even count the number of hours I spent playing that game as a kid. To this day I can still hum the game's soundtrack from memory. I'd even go so far as to say that it is very much responsible for making me even more of a fan of Halloween and monsters than I already was before.
Thank you for all the good times Castlevania! Hell, even the frustrating times were still fun deep down too. Happy Birthday!
Oh, and if you like that totally sweet art above from the original game, I've posted a bigger version of it to the Geek-tastic Flickr pool. It makes for a great desktop wallpaper.
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