Wacky Races
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developed by Atlus
First Released December 25, 1991 NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Good sprite work. Weird subject matter.
Like Yo! Noid from earlier this week, the protagonist of the NES Wacky Races is miscast. I’ve never actually seen a single episode of the show. I wouldn’t even be born until 21 years after it debuted, and they weren’t showing reruns of it when I was in my cartoon-watching prime. Or, if they were, I wasn’t really interested in old cartoons. But, even I know that Muttley is (along with Dick Dastardly) unambiguously the villain of Wacky Races. Oh, and don’t take it personally, Hanna-Barbera fans. I never watched the Flintstones, either. I also never watched the Jetsons. I was bored silly by Scooby-Doo, and I still am. The one and only Hanna-Barbera series I did enjoy was Laff-A-Lympics, but that’s NOT Muttley in that show. It’s Mumbly, a clone of Muttley created because, apparently, another company co-owned Wacky Races. Not just any company, but one that created game shows (Hollywood Squares being their most famous one). Wacky Races was created to be a game show/cartoon hybrid where children would wager on who would win each race. Then some executive came to their senses and said “we’re doing a sort of child-friendly sports gambling show?” The game show segment was dropped, but they liked all the concepts for the characters and turned it into its own cartoon that wouldn’t introduce children to the fun of sports betting. And, 23 years later, that cartoon was turned into a generic NES game. BUT, a pretty good one. At least for the younger set.
I appreciate that all the levels have different themes. They didn’t phone-in the graphics at all. Now, the level layouts? Well..
There’s ZERO racing in Wacky Racers. Strange as this sounds, the NES game is a totally pedestrian platformer. Taking the role of Muttley, you make your way through ten stages, collecting bones and gems. There’s no real twist in the formula, either. The only non-platforming stage is a swimming level that’s every bit as cinchy as the rest of the game. Wacky Races might be the most easy game of its type on the NES. I only lost one life the entire time, and it was to a cheaply placed enemy that sprang-up over an instakill pit. That enemy could have gotten me twenty-five more times and I would have still beaten Wacky Racers with plenty of lives to spare. I’ll say this about it: it would make for an ideal first platforming game for young children. Like, ages 6 to 8. Wacky Races controls great, it has some fun character designs, and it’s EASY.
I don’t know why Atlus didn’t just give you the ability to pick any of the ten levels, since the stages aren’t necessarily thematically connected. Instead, it divides the game into three.. um.. circuits? But, each level with the circuit feels like its own self-contained stage, with its own theme. Each of the ten stages ends in a boss fight as well. There’s no finale after you beat all the stages on the map. Once you’ve cleared the final level, no matter which one it is, the credits roll. Oh, and it lets you know that all of your plans were foiled and Dirk lost the race. Heh. That made me laugh. It’d be like defeating Bowser only for the game to reveal Peach had taken a restraining order out on Mario.
The power-up system is the only slightly atypical bump in the road. When the game first starts, Muttley can only do a bite move that has a limited range. He also only has three hit points and he can’t do a Racoon Mario-like floating move. To change this, you have to collect bones. Just one is enough to move the item cursor in the status bar. It looks like this:
The first item is the bomb that has a limited range and takes a while to throw. The second is a bark that travels nearly the full length of the screen. The third is the Racoon Mario-like “pump the jump button to slowly float downward” thing, and the final item is life. Both the weapons and the life are absurdly overpowered. The bones are EVERYWHERE in the stages, so it only takes about halfway through the first stage to fully charge-up Muttley with the bark, six health, and the floater. In theory, the weapons would work better if they were a limited-usage situation. 20 seconds. 30 seconds. Maybe as low as 15. Nope. Once you activate them, they’re yours until you die. And you won’t die a whole lot. This is especially true thanks to how the hearts work. You can add three hearts to your total every 4th bone you pick up. After that, every time you activate the heart, you get a FULL health refill every time you activate it. Once I picked-up on the fact that every boss chamber has a bone in it, I’d leave the meter on the third slot, then grab the bone in the boss chamber and move the meter over to the health refill. I’d essentially have eleven hits to take down the bosses. If the heart refilled one point at a time, Wacky Races would certainly be one of the best and most balanced platformers on the NES. Instead, it’s like baby’s first platformer, and it has NO tension or stakes.
I only used the bombs once, and that’s when I died on this level. They suck. Stick with the bark.
But, as a leisurely, completely forgettable jaunt through average-but-quality platforming stages and tropes, Atlus could have done a lot worse. The levels are basic, but occasionally the developers got weird. My old arch nemesis, slippery ice levels, makes an appearance. But, after you get past the first section of that stage, the ice vanishes and suddenly the level is made entirely of clouds that act like trampolines. So, you spend an extended section of Wacky Races bouncing off everything like Muttley both did an entire mountain of cocaine and drank about fifty Red Bulls. Sadly, that’s the only section of the game that really goes off the beaten-path of platforming cliches. Hell, even the clouds are pretty cliche-y.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The hypothetical other hook for Wacky Races would be the ten boss battles against the other stars of the TV show. They’re all here, along with their vehicles. But, none of them have their own unique personalities. In fact, they all feel kind of samey. They’re generic bosses that follow predictable attack patterns as they hop around their chambers spitting nearly identical projectiles at you. Besides some of them being in the correct settings, there’s no connection at all to the TV show, in attitude or behavior. For example: on the TV show, one of the characters has a car that transforms into anything that moves. That doesn’t happen in the game. It doesn’t transform at all, in fact. There’s no haunted house trope for the spooky Gruesome Twosome, and the army guys aren’t in an army-themed level. Really, these could have been any characters from any game. There is literally nothing about Wacky Racers that makes it feel connected to the show besides how the sprites are drawn. Again though, besides the fact that all the bosses are spongy as all hell (and one of them is fought on quicksand, which was REALLY annoying), they’re fun battles! I guess!
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
This game could have been any property and it’d make as much sense. The more I learned about the TV show, the more I became convinced that Atlus had already created a ten level template for a generic licensed game, and Wacky Races just happened to be the property they were able to get. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but actually, it’s a pretty decent little NES game. It’s not AMAZING or anything, but the controls are damn near perfect, the level design is alright, and the whole thing only takes about an hour to finish. At the same time, there’s absolutely nothing memorable about it besides the fact that it’s underrated. I first played it back in June of 2020 and I literally remembered NOTHING about it except that I wondered why it wasn’t a more popular game. As I replayed it, what made me shake my head in disbelief most was the fact that, generic as it is, nothing about Wacky Races was phoned-in. The sheer variety of set pieces and enemies is gobsmacking for this type of game from this era on this console. Look at all the different facades they created:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
And it ultimately won me over. Given the complete lack of connection to the TV series, Wacky Races for the NES should come across as really cynical, and it doesn’t. It’s damn charming. Yea, it’s too easy, but I’m of the opinion that it’s always preferable for a game to be too easy than too hard, because at least everyone can experience it that way. Wacky Races is ACHING for adjustable difficulty. It wouldn’t be hard to turn this into one of the best games on the NES. It just needs the item system readjusted. Or, alternatively, just reduce the amount of bones and 1ups (which are literally just laying around levels) in the stages. Oh, it would still be totally generic and completely unrelated to the cartoon series, but it would also be among the best platform games on a console defined by platform games. Wacky Races might not be the most shiny hidden gem, but it sparkles nonetheless. Verdict: YES!
Yo! Noid
aka Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru
Developed by Now Production
Published by Capcom (US) Namco (JP)
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
First Released March 16, 1990 (JP) November 22, 1990 (US) NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I miss real pizza. I can’t eat it anymore thanks to a Celiac diagnosis. I hadn’t really liked Pizza Hut since I was a little kid, but I’d seriously consider chewing off my own pinky toe if I thought it’d let me eat Pizza Hut again. Never really liked Domino’s, though, and I completely missed the Noid’s time frame. By the time my memories started forming, it had already been phased out as their mascot. It became one of those Simpsons’ gags that grown-ups had to explain to me. I’d seen a few gaming magazines of my era make fun of the concept of a Noid video game. It is absurd. It also makes no sense to have the Noid as a hero. The whole point of The Noid is it was supposed to mess with their guaranteed 30 minute-or-less delivery. The character is antagonistic towards the consumption of Domino’s Pizza. It would be like making the Allstate Mayhem character the protagonist of a game today where it stops catastrophes from happening. I don’t think you understand what the character represents, dummies. Even worse is having your mascot in a game where things are constantly going tits-up. Like this section in the first f’n level.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The first level has rising and lowering platforms throughout it. It’s a bold choice for an opening stage. But, when those platforms are safe to step on doesn’t logically match the graphics. Clearly visible, non-hydrated platforms are still instakills unless you let them get a lot more clearance than anyone’s rational common sense would dictate. If you can see the thing you’re walking on, why would water that doesn’t even come up to your ankles be fatal? It’s pretty remarkable how quickly Yo! Noid completely squanders having a non-conventional introduction, and an ominous sign of things to come. Collision is an issue throughout Yo! Noid, but in fairness, it works both ways. You have a yo-yo for a weapon, and coming close enough to enemies works towards damaging them. Of course, most enemies take TONS of hits to actually slay. This will become especially annoying once you start the second level, which is your typical NES slippery ice level. Excuse me, please. I need to go scream.
I might as well mention the Famicom original here. It’s mostly the same game with the same layout, only the graphics and enemies look different. Also, instead of throwing a yo-yo at enemies, you sic what looks like a pigeon on them. As much as I love using a yo-yo, throwing a live animal at baddies is so much more spiteful that I prefer it.
Do you know what’s especially insane about Yo! Noid? Once you get past the first two levels, it almost becomes a good game. It’s like all their will to experiment was used up in the first three stages. In the third level, you ride around on a skateboard, and the game becomes a sort of fast paced hop-and-bop game where you jump on enemies. BUT, just jumping on top of them won’t work, and often will leave you dead. You have to sort of hit them at an angle with the underside of the board, but it’s really fickle about it. I found aiming with the back wheels worked best. It’s a one-hit death game, so you don’t want combat to ever feel inconsistent, but in the skateboarding and flying stages, you don’t get your yo-yo/pigeon. Every time Yo! Noid felt like it was close to becoming a good game, something would always draw it backwards into mediocrity.
I’ll say this about the US version: it’s so bonkers with the character designs that I figured they must be hold-overs from the Japanese version. But, in fact, that wasn’t the case. Like, in the ice level, a guy throws a curling stone at you. That’s NOT in the Japanese version.
There’s a couple levels where you fly through the sky, and one where you stomp around on a pogo stick that’s apparently called a “pizza crusher” according to the box art. But the problem is, the level layouts are never really clever, and too often rely on last-pixel-jumping. Those are NEVER fun, and I struggle to imagine what goes through a developer’s head with them. Do they think it’s more exciting? Because it ain’t. It’s just cheap, and if your collision detection is even a little problematic, it turns the platforming into random guesswork. While Yo! Noid has decent enough graphics and genuinely charming sprite work, it’s the levels that ruin the experience. It’s the strangest thing, because the game gets all the original, memorable aspects out of the way right off the bat and the rest of the game is as generic as it gets. The only other really memorable set-piece is a couple flying stages where you die one second into the level if you don’t start mashing the jump button. Because of course they’d design it that way.
The green boxes that spit-up enemies are lethal to the touch, even when they’re not shooting baddies out. They also take roughly twenty trillion hits to defeat, give or take. This is where you’ll want to have a screen-clearing super item, which is what that meter next to the score is for. Hey, SCORE IS FOR! That rhymes!
And then there’s what I thought were fun mini-games, but actually, they’re supposed to be the game’s boss fights. You have to challenge other Noids to pizza eating contests every other level. You and the boss each have a series of cards that have various amounts of pizza on them. The boss ALWAYS goes first and picks at random. You then get to select any card you want. If it’s the same amount, nothing happens. If one is higher than the other, the person with the highest amount eats the leftover amount of pizzas. So, if the boss picks a 1 and I pick a 3, I eat two pizzas. Each of you has a set amount of pizzas they need to eat to win, with you needing much less than the boss does at first, but with every new contest you encounter, the amount goes up, and so do the numbers on the boss’s cards.
The boss usually has several high-value cards, while you have more 1s and 2s.
Now, there’s a catch. Scattered throughout the levels are items you use in these duels that can double or even triple the amount of pizzas you play on them, along with hot sauce that subtracts 5 points from the boss’s total AFTER they’ve scored a round victory, OR a pepper shaker that simply blocks the card from working before they score. The problem is the valuable items that double/triple your totals or negate the Boss Noid’s cards are often hidden in completely abstract areas on the map. Like this:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
So what WOULD be a good idea instead turns the entire experience into the player hopping around, throwing their weapon non-stop while they look for the items that could be literally anywhere, with no rhyme or reason to their locations. And you’ll NEED those items too, because at the end of the game, the bosses have cards that have values as high as 6 while you’re stuck with the highest value being 4.
Your numbers are 1 – 4. So yea, you’ll want as many items as you can find.
And by the way, that there? That’s the last boss. I didn’t even realize that until I won the battle and got the game’s ending. I admit, I enjoyed the card game encounters, but not in the same way I enjoy a typical boss fight. I really thought these were fun mini-games, not the crux of the entire experience. I never lost any of the duels, either. The closest I came was finding myself in a situation where it was impossible for me to eat all the pizzas on my meter, so all I could do was hope for a draw. On what I thought would be the final turn, I failed at that. The opponent took the lead by a single pizza and I thought the game was over. But then something happened: because the opponent Noid was out of cards, even though they were winning, I won the match. Most of the battles I was able to prevent the boss from scoring a single point, but now that I think about it: the bosses require so many pizzas to eat (they ALWAYS need a full 18 point meter, but you don’t) that you could probably easily run them out of cards with no effort no matter how lucky/unlucky they are. It was one final “meh” to cap off what is peak NES licensed mediocrity. Credit where it’s due: this IS a Domino’s game! Verdict: NO!
I could have said “avoid the Noid!” too but it was too easy.
Super Castlevania IV aka Akumajō Dracula Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Developed by Konami First Released October 31, 1991 Included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection
“Alright, I’ll knock this f*cking thing down.. AGAIN.. but YOU peasants have to build a strip mall on the foundation when I finish! Next time Dracula comes back, he’ll have to deal with a Kinko’s in his courtyard!” “HAH, JOKE’S ON YOU, SIMON! KINKO’S NO LONGER EXISTS! IT’S FED-EX OFFICE NOW!” “Fed-Ex? Shit.. that’s pretty evil. YOU WIN THIS ROUND, DRACULA!”
Maybe it’s just me, but when I play Super Castlevania IV, I never can shake the “this is just a glorified tech demo” feeling. This was made by an entirely different team from the developers responsible for the NES series, and you can tell. Castlevania IV’s team was apparently chosen specifically to squeeze the most potential out of the brand new Super NES. Frankly, it’s a miracle it’s as good as it is. I actually played it before I played Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, and once I had played both, I originally held Super Castlevania IV in higher esteem. These days, it’s no contest: Dracula’s Curse is the one and old linear Castlevania that can stake a claim as the best Castlevania game, even when compared to the Metroidvanias. Meanwhile, Super Castlevania IV’s tech demo nature stands out more and more every time I play it. That, and it’s kind of easy, and Castlevania games should NEVER be easy.
Given that Konami did the Goonies games, it’s entirely possible Mikey is fighting the Blues Brothers a few miles to the left of Simon here.
Why’s it so easy? Well, I have a theory, and I might as well get that out of the way first. Okay, here’s my bonkers conspiracy theory: I think Super Castlevania IV didn’t originally have eight-way whipping until after they finished the level layouts and enemy placement. I’ve scoured the interwebs looking for verification on this, and the only details I could find is that they wanted the whip to do things on the Super NES it couldn’t do on the NES. Eight-way whipping, and presumably the whip-flicking, was originally something the development team wanted for Castlevania 1, but the NES couldn’t handle it. In an interview with Retro Gamer, director Masahiro Ueno notes that developed started while Castlevania III was still being worked on, and that frequent tinkering and reworking was done. That really ought to shoot down my theory, since they could fix any issues eight-way would cause. However, if you look at the enemy placement, it sure seems like it’s optimized specifically for the old way. The “you can only whip straight ahead of you” way. From the placement of staircases to the distance between you and the enemies, it feels like the nerfy “any direction” method was something that was added with very little consideration for the difficulty.
And you thought the sub-weapons nerfed the game before. Here, I’m literally draping a motionless chain over an enemy and defeating it. It would be like being able to stop the forces of evil from entering your house by hanging a dog’s leash over the door.
Now, while I’m sure philosophers will tell you the most heroic thing a hero can do is avoid confrontation, this is a video game, and the first 16-bit entry in a franchise renowned for its high difficulty. If not for the ghosts and undead minions, Castlevania IV would be almost kiddie. It’s not as if you can only avoid directly facing enemies once in a while. It happens constantly, and it’s even worse because of the introduction of the wrist-flick. With it, needing to expertly time whipping the projectiles enemies spit out is gone. Just hold the magic whip out and it acts as a shield. Weaker enemies don’t require you to crack them with precision. Just hold out the magic whip and let them fly into it. If an enemy is below you, just drape the magic whip over them from a higher platform. It does less damage, so it’ll take longer than normal attacks, but they’ll die just the same. It’s one of those “sounds good on paper, not as good in practice” situations, and I think it and the eight-way was a last-second addition. My ultimate proof: every single boss seems to have been based around being able to attack them straight-ahead, not from an angle. There’s even platforms tailored around it and their weak points. I think I’m onto something.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I have no issue with the concept of Simon being able to attack in all directions. In fact, I rather like it. It feels great, too! It’s very intuitive and easy to get the hang of. But, you need to build the game around it, and Castlevania IV rarely feels like the levels were optimized for the eight-way attacks. Especially the vertical usage. By that, I mean where it feels like they specifically created a situation where you’re reacting to something above you. In fact, after a stretch in the first level, it almost never happens. If you’re going to include eight directions to attack, you need to incentivize it by including eight directions of immediate danger. They didn’t do that nearly enough. The eight-way whip is mostly useful as a preemptive assault against enemies who currently pose no direct threat to you. And, thanks to your limitless 8-way attack, they never will.
This is the section I’m talking about. These enemies drop on you from above. There’s not a lot of this in the game.
This creates what I call the CV4 Paradox. The CV4 Paradox states that, if your basic attack can reach in all directions, the more complex the level design is, the less exciting the game could be. It’s counterintuitive, but think about it: it’s only when Super Castlevania IV reverts to back-to-basics Castlevania 1-style straight corridors that you really have to directly confront a large portion of the enemies. So, when the level is laid out like these screens:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
As basic and bland as they are, you’re in immediate danger. It has to be dealt with right now, or else. That’s the whole point of being an action game. Those are the exciting parts! But, anything more complicated than a straight corridor, and you can circumvent the action, and thus eliminate the excitement. So, in a game with all-directional attacks such as Super Castlevania IV, if you layout your levels like this:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Well, then you, the game designer, have to do other things with the enemies to make them a threat now and not later. Give them projectiles, or some kind of shield. SOMETHING! Otherwise, you’ve basically given the player a free pass. Castlevania IV is missing that extra step. Too many enemies are reduced to being nothing more than cannon fodder. While you can defeat out-of-reach enemies with the right weapon in other Castlevania games, it costs you something. There’s limitations to it. There’s essentially no limitations to your whip in Castlevania IV. You are at an incredible advantage over the baddies. Frankly, it’s only by virtue of the established Castlevania weapon, the whip, being so damn satisfying to use that Castlevania IV doesn’t become dull. That, and the set pieces are (mostly) good enough to carry the load.
Despite Mode 7 and other famous SNES effects being old hat by the time I came of age, I can still be impressed by the graphics of Super Nintendo games. But, I don’t think what Castlevania IV did worked so much for me. The big technical showpieces really haven’t aged very well. I’m sure this chandelier was breathtaking once upon a time. But thirty-two years later? Not so much. The weird spinning tunnel thing also did nothing for me. The only room that really works is the rotating room where you hang by your whip, and it barely lasts a minute.
It speaks to how dazzling the tour through Dracula’s crib is that Super Castlevania IV isn’t boring. Canonically, it’s a pseudo-remake of the original game, but it feels more like a re-imagining where everything has been scaled-up. Simon’s sprite is bigger. Enemies are bigger. The levels are bigger. The bosses are bigger. The world is much more alive. There’s entire new set-pieces and boss concepts too. Given how much easier the game is, it almost feels like a guided tour through a haunted house attraction, complete with dancing ghosts that you have to battle against. There’s a spooky library with pictures that follow you. There’s a creepy dungeon with pools of blood (well, it’s blood in the Japanese version). One stage even takes place in Dracula’s vault, and to complete the immersion, you collect TONS of treasure bags in it.
The treasure chests even chime when you step off them. I love how they had to animate transparent ghosts to float over the action. It’s a haunted vault. Otherwise, you might feel like you’re playing Duck Tales.
It’s not entirely the fault of the eight-way whip that Castlevania IV is easier. It controls like a dream. Stairs? No problem. Cracking the whip every which way? Easy peasy. When Castlevania IV introduces the ability to use the whip to swing across platforms, it’s incredible how instantly intuitive it is. In fact, all of the movement in the game is, including the fixed-jumping. The only time Castlevania IV really finds its teeth is at the very tail-end of the adventure. Right before you reach the final four bosses (yes, FOUR bosses end the game, back-to-back-to-back-to-back), there’s a section with fast moving platforms and GOTCHA-style instakill spiked ceilings. There’s nothing quite like it in the game up to this point, so it’s a bit of a dick move.
I suppose it does try to do “on the fly education” of players by having the platforms sort of zig-zag and exit stage-right off the screen, but the instakill finale still rubbed me the wrong way.
I suspect that the game had a lot more content that didn’t make it past the drawing board. It’s so strange that it ends with four consecutive, unrelated boss fights. I don’t mean four different forms, either. Oh no. You fight a naked version of the dinosaur skeleton knight you fought a few levels earlier. Then you walk a little bit and fight a gargoyle. Then you walk a little bit and fight the Grim Reaper, and then you climb a staircase and fight Dracula, with no basic enemies in-between. It’s a strange way to cap off the game. Also, the underwhelming battle with Dracula only has one form. When he’s down to his final few ticks of health, his face does become skeletal, but the fight continues on as it had before, with you having to smack him in the head as he teleports, attacks, then teleports again. When the action pauses for Drac to power-up and “lose his face” he doesn’t even get his health back, and you’re only a few hits away from total victory. Compared to the dramatic changes he underwent in Castlevania I and III, it’s such a letdown.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Okay, so Super Castlevania IV is too easy and it ends with a whimper instead of a bang. But, I’ve gone back to it a few times since first picking it up on my Wii’s Virtual Console in 2006, and I never get bored with it. With the exception of one level (the caves, which I just never liked that setting in games), I know I’ll always have fun with SCV4 whenever I turn it on. I like the haunted house comparison, because I enjoy the journey for the sights and the sounds in the same way I enjoy walking through a well done haunted house. Of course, that means I’m admitting it’s something more than raw gameplay keeping it afloat. It’s nearly a perfect marriage of set pieces and gameplay, but despite all the ingredients being there, it falls well short of perfection.
It’s so nice of Castlevania, and by that I mean the physical castle itself, to wait for Simon to make his way to a scenic vista before crumbling. Downright courteous of it.
Unlike Castlevania III, I do find myself saying “I could swear I used to like this more” every single time I play through it. It’s one of those games where the basic action is done so well that it’s always enjoyable. But, while you can’t help but like it, you’ll always wish it did more. It’s not really that scary, either. The creature sprites just aren’t as creepy as they were on the NES. It’s that rare game I like where I have to concede that something is horribly off about it. The most telling thing about Castlevania IV is that it’s in the running for having the distinction of being “the weird one” among the games on Nintendo consoles. Mind you, that’s a series that includes Simon’s Quest. Of course, Simon’s Quest still has the basic core Castlevania action as it always was. Super Castlevania IV is like playing the NES games in God Mode. Hey, God Mode can be fun, but it’s empty calories gaming. Eventually, you’ll want something juicier you can sink your teeth into. Verdict: YES!
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
aka Akumajō Densetsu
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developed by Konami
First Released December 22, 1989 Included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection
So much for basic, straight-line corridors.
While I hold the original Castlevania near and dear to my heart, there’s no doubt about it that Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse is the superior game. Even Netflix seems to agree. The animated series is (loosely) based on it. While I still prefer my Vanias to have the Metroid prefix attached to them, among the linear Castlevania games, this is my favorite. I first played it on the Wii when I was 20, and to say I was blown away would be an understatement. After the abomination that was Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, this feels like the ultimate make-good. The formula Konami used was simple: take the original game, remove the conservative level design, add three playable characters and annoying branching paths and you’ve got yourself the best game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. One that is radically different between regions. They went a little overboard there. Like, I get that they had to remove the boobs from Medusa and the statues, because children might be traumatized or something, but they literally removed the.. I dunno what this is supposed to be. The holy presence of Jesus?
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The changes aren’t just cosmetic. Few video games have as significant regional differences as Castlevania III does. From the amount of channels the music features to the way damage is handled to how effective characters are to the overall difficulty, the alterations between the original 1989 Famicom release and the 1990 international release are.. well, game changing. The Cutting Room Floor, one of my favorite gaming reference sites and a place you absolutely should bookmark, needed to dedicate an entire page just to Castlevania III’s regional differences. The change that has the biggest impact is in Grant Danasty, the first character you can get to join your party. He’s a speedy little bastard who can jump really high and stick to walls. He can even crawl across ceilings. It’s like playing Castlevania with Spider-Man. In the United States version, Grant’s biggest drawback is his weapon. It’s a little flimsy knife that isn’t very satisfactory to use, and you can also only get two subweapons: throwing knives and axes. In Japan, that’s not the case. Grant’s main weapon IS the throwing knife, and it doesn’t even cost hearts to use it.
While Grant and Alucard can both circumvent large sections of the game, you have to turn into a bat with Alucard to do it, and that costs hearts. It’s free with Grant. In this picture, keeping Grant instead of swapping him for Sypha is rewarded with the ability to skip two rooms and go straight to the boss on the haunted ship level. I actually really admire that they went all-out with adding shortcuts, ledges, and free-lives in all subsequent levels specifically tailored for his abilities.
I seem to be one of the few people who enjoys the more difficult American version, but it’s not by a very big margin. Actually, the best possible version of Castlevania III doesn’t exist, and instead is somewhere between the two versions. In the US, the amount of damage you take depends on what level you’re on. The Japanese version is more nuanced. Each enemy has its own unique damage, and even their projectiles have unique damage values. In the US, you’ll take two ticks of damage in the first level when anything hits you. For the same level in the Famicom port, you’ll take three damage from direct contact with a skeleton and two damage from the bones it throws at you. Baddies gain a point of damage once you reach the final three levels, and I like that way better. It’s more immersive. I could be cool and say “not that Dracula’s Curse needs help with immersion with how excellent the graphics and gameplay are!” but actually, I think games should take every step they can towards immersion. Especially if there’s no drawback to it, and there’s really no reason they should have changed it.
One of the most memorable changes is the removal of the “GOTCHA BAT” in the home stretch before you reach the final battle with Dracula. It’s one of the cheapest enemy placements in the entire Castlevania franchise, but that was actually added excursively for us Americans.
On the other hand, in the American release, some boss arenas were altered to be tougher, typically by removing “space spots.” Bosses in the NES Castlevania games being the cheesable little kittens they are, I like that. Additionally, some bosses were beefed up in other ways. The Leviathans spit two small fireballs in Japan, but three large ones in the US. The twin dragons can aim their fire up and down. I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds with different editions, but Castlevania III is the rare 8-bit game with profound differences that’s actually good enough to immediately replay through just to enjoy the sight-seeing. It’s like the NES version of a spot-the-difference puzzle.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
When you play a complete cycle of Castlevania III, you’ll travel through ten levels. But, the game actually contains fifteen total levels. You’re ultimately given three potential pathways to take. Though not labeled as such, each path is tailored to be a specific difficulty. The “easy-medium-hard” road, if you will. The path for Sypha is the “easy way” while Grant path is the “medium way” and the path where you go to fetch Alucard is the “hard way.” No matter which path you take, you’re in for a treat. No NES game does settings better. No NES game gives the impression you’re actually traversing a vast, vibrant world better. The graphics are absolutely gobsmacking at times, and this was still in the era where Castlevania was meant to be.. you know.. scary! I should note here that I used a ROM hack that removes the branching paths and gives you a complete 15 level quest. You can get Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse – Linear Edition right here. It also speeds up the swapping between characters, which is a flow-breaking in either region. Without the hack, switching characters is so slow that sometimes I’d not switch to a more optimized character just because I didn’t want to break-up the action for a few seconds.
Alucard can jump higher than Trevor and turn into a bat, which absolutely drains hearts like crazy in the US version. On the Famicom, it doesn’t drain quite as quickly. Still, Alucard is easily my least favorite character. His attack is weak as hell.
My biggest knock on Castlevania 1 is the ultra-conservative level design. There’s nothing conservative about Castlevania III’s level design. While the graphics are dazzling and the set pieces are memorable, it’s the layouts that shine brightest. The ideal marriage of platforming hijinks and intense action. Mostly. There’s some truly putrid sections to Castlevania III that I want to skewer. Castlevania III is a white-knuckle gothic horror action game, and yet multiple times it wants players to just stand around waiting for something to happen. You’re not even doing anything fun, like fighting bad guys. You’re just waiting, and depending on who your partner is, sometimes the wait is agonizing. Like in this room:
Or this room:
Or this room:
Or, worst of all, THIS room:
That last one is especially annoying. Dodging blocks that rain from the ceiling really isn’t exactly exciting, and it’s not like the door is RIGHT THERE above you. It’s quite a ways up. Now, if you have Grant, you can reach the exit faster. If you have Alucard, you can turn into a bat and fly up to the stairway, but if you get hit by a block, you’re probably going to be dead. See, once you scroll upward, the previous area ceases to exist, because VIDEO GAME LOGIC! I found out the hard way that this means the blocks that rain and form the pillars you need to reach the exit no longer have anything to rain onto. If you scroll the stacks too high, you can’t finish the level. Like this:
The exit is on the far left side of the screen. I’m dead here.
Let me be clear: I like that they experimented with level design. I said that Castlevania’s level design wasn’t bold. And it wasn’t, but it was perfect. Of course it was. They knew they’d nailed one thing and one thing only: the combat. So, they focused the majority of their efforts on optimizing the levels towards fighting bad guys, limiting the platforming and environmental shenanigans to a few brief sections. Well, they couldn’t do that again. Perfection was off the table, because they absolutely had to get creative with what the engine could do. Some of their choices just didn’t work. The melting blocks are a great example. In that level, they divided the stage in half, with an upper and lower path. In theory, players who wait for the blocks to open up the lower path should be rewarded with an easier route. Instead, both routes are pretty pedestrian the first time.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
And the paths merge soon after anyway. It’s such an underwhelming difference between the upper and lower portions that I feel like the whole thing was just a massive waste of time. Wouldn’t it have been much cooler if it branched off into two completely different areas? If you’re going to make players wait as long as they have to for the bottom pathway to open up, you have to make it worth the wait. Castlevania III didn’t.
See what I mean? After waiting for the blocks to melt the path to the lower door, the two pathways converge almost immediately anyway. What you can’t see is that I killed the same enemy that’s seen below, too. Given how incredible the level design typically is, I know they’re better than this.
You know what? Given how exemplary the rest of the game is, I’m going to say that the developers were entitled to the occasional level design brain fart. Less excusable is how the stairs are harder to use in this edition of Castlevania than any other one. Being able to “bind yourself” to the stairs has an unresponsiveness to it. I’ve reached the phase of my gaming existence where I can beat the original Castlevania without losing a single life. I’m a long ways away from that in Castlevania III. I thought I’d had a one-death run on it, but I now realize I probably did rewind the occasional “just walk off a ledge when I was trying to take the stairs” moment that. Even after years of playing this, I still do nearly every single session.
As far as I can tell, this is the only “last pixel” jump in the entire game, and it’s not even that as long as you’re using Grant. However, without Grant, it’s a pain in the ass to judge.
Stairway from hell issues not withstanding, most of Castlevania III’s experimenting succeeds. It starts right off the bat with a climb up through a church. Curse wastes no time in letting players know things will be different. There’s going to be vertical levels and lots of jumps. It’s not inconceivable that you could die from an errant bat knocking you back. That’s literally right as the game starts, too. Branching paths and multiple characters aren’t the only concept introduced. Auto-scrolling makes its Castlevania debut, though every instance of it is a vertical section. A couple are smooth scrolling, and you die from both being too far up on the screen (as in you’re above where your life bar is), but also from falling to where a ground hasn’t appeared yet. VIDEO GAME LOGIC! I’ve never been a big fan of auto-scrolling in general. I mean, what is the malevolent entity that is causing you to die when the screen automatically scrolls? At least in Castlevania, you can imagine it’s something awful. Especially when the game introduces what I’ve termed “slam-scrolling.” It looks like this:
I’ve never seen auto-scrolling like that before, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t an absolute thrill. It’s great! Sure, the Castlevania tropes are all here. Even a souped-up version of the original first level from Castlevania 1, complete with music, shows up late in the game. The optional second level sees you climb up a gigantic clock tower, THEN after you rescue Grant Danasty, you have to climb back down it, and it’s such a thrill. So are the collapsing floors, clock pendulums, tilting platforms, and gigantic gears. The one set piece that doesn’t work.. well, it really doesn’t work. Like the original Castlevania, the spiked presses have badly done collision detection, but this is historically bad.
It took me quite a while to find the max distance your sprite can be from the spiked presses. This is the exact moment I died. Look at how far my head is from the press. I like to use the “against instinct” rule for determining how bad collision detection is. I understand that some wiggle room is required for these older games, but if the collision detection stretches beyond what your instinct would tell you is safe, you have a problem. That is WELL past what anyone would instinctively believe is a safe distance based on your sprite size. If this is the best they could do, then the presses should have been removed from the game. And, unlike Castlevania 1, they show up multiple times. On the plus side, you can stand on them this time.
That’s the thing about Castlevania III: whereas the first game was nearly perfect in what it could do, this one is so far removed from perfection that it couldn’t see perfection with a pair of binoculars. The wall clinging controls with Grant are so unintuitive that using them is actually kind of dangerous if you’re hanging over a pit. Alucard’s bat form handles so poorly that I almost never used it. And then there’s Sypha, who’s magic balls are so insanely overpowered that, if not for the sloppy stair controls, they might as well run the credits when you pick them up. I’m kidding. Actually, this is a pretty difficult game. Among other things, the bosses aren’t all cheesable this time around. While a triple-shot holy water can take the first and second bosses down in a single second, others require a little more finesse. The final battle against Dracula is probably one of the better ones in the entire franchise, and this time around, there’s three forms instead of two. Overall, if you replay the game with every path (or you play the Linear ROM hack) there’s 27 bosses. Well, if you count multiple forms and the constant repeats that occur. Some of the battles are pretty intense, too.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Besides those annoying melty rooms and falling block sections, the action is non-stop. And really, it’s only cheesable on the basis of experience. Anyone who has somehow not played this yet won’t be able to just waltz through it. There’s a massive variety of enemies that take a while to get a feel for. Mastering the four player characters takes time, and some of the sections are absolutely brutal. The vertical stages are some of the toughest I’ve ever experienced, based around both enemies who fly in curves and towers that shoot projectiles. And, since you spend most of the time on stairs, the towers aren’t that easy to kill. Well, depending on your load-out. Sypha with her magic balls kind of nerfs them. Even nerfed, if one shot gets you and you’re on the edge of a platform, you’re probably going to die from the knock-back.
Yea, I won’t be acing this game any time soon.
For all of its shortcomings, Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse is my favorite NES game. I’ve played through it around a dozen times now, including three in a row for this review, and I still never get bored with it. It nails the look and feel of a lot of my favorite gaming tropes. I absolutely love the fact that the game feels like an actual tour through a cursed countryside on your way to the castle occupied by embodiment of all that is evil. And basic Castlevania action is almost always satisfying on its own. The “Vampire Killer” whip has to be one of the greatest weapons in gaming history. It’s just so dang fun to snap endless undead baddies with it. Oddly enough, what’s scariest of all about Castlevania III is that it doesn’t even come close to being flawless. The places where it can be improved-upon are self-evident. Oh, and I wish you could have more than one extra character. I think that’s why I enjoyed Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon so much: because it’s a game that built upon the groundwork laid here. Yet, I can’t help but wonder if the greatest 2D action game that will ever be made isn’t buried in the original Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, waiting to come out. Maybe one of these days, it’ll happen. Verdict: YES!
Castlevania
aka Akumajō Dracula
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developed by Konami
First Released September 26, 1986 Included in Castlevania Anniversary Collection
“EXCUSE ME! If you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about our lord and savior, Jesus Christ! Hello? Anyone there? I’ll just leave this pamphlet here and come back tomorrow!”
My history with the original NES Castlevania is a personal one. I first experienced it in the mid-2000s, in the form of the Game Boy Advance NES classics re-release that I fished out of a sales bin. By that point, I’d played Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow. All games I absolutely loved, that I would have easily called some of my favorite games. Then, a few months after Aria released, I was critically injured in a life-altering car accident. The epilepsy I would develop at 16 stems from the head trauma sustained on that day. I’m lucky to be alive, frankly, but the injuries were pretty bad. It would be months before I could even hold silverware. The accident happened in November, 2003, but I didn’t really start gaming again until early 2005, after making my first genuine attempt late in the Summer of 2004 and finding that, while my right hand was healing nicely, my left hand just didn’t want to cooperate. The biggest problem was just holding the controller. My left hand was so badly damaged that its pinky has a permanent crook in it that still causes me controller-holding issues to this day, along with constant numbness in my fingertips. Early-on, action games were out of the question. When I finally started going again, my hands would cramp and/or fatigue really easily. Physical therapy helped, but I kind of figured video games were the physical therapy.
The most underrated aspect of Castlevania, IMO, is that it’s a milestone in settings and set-pieces. Like right here, where the location of the final battle with Dracula can be seen off in the distance. Even better is this comes at roughly the halfway point of the game. Video games didn’t typically do one-time backgrounds just for the sake of world building in 1986. Ultimately, a game designer is trying to create the illusion of an entire world out of a series of 1s and 0s. Castlevania’s world is more real than just about any franchise that got its start on the NES, including Super Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. It’s head-and-shoulders above them, in fact.
And then I got that original generation Castlevania, and Cathy got her groove back. By time I slew Dracula, a couple days had passed, and it felt like I’d gotten gaming back pretty much as I had it before. It was the perfect game for that, because it has some of the most pure, refined action on the NES. Nothing too advanced. No insurmountable odds. With two or three very rough exceptions, the OG Castlevania is action-platforming boiled down to its most base components. Castlevania isn’t as bold as you would think, mostly utilizing basic level design mentality. It’s mostly made up of straight corridors where enemy placement is 98% of the challenge. It’s why brief sections where the environment poses a threat stand out. Like the section pictured here:
The flying Medusa heads only happen when you beat the game. And this is rough spot #1, because the collision on these is piss poor. Given how polished the rest of the game is, it’s kind of stunning how badly done it is. EVEN WORSE is that they didn’t improve it all that much in Castlevania 3 years later. Anyway..
Those three spiked presses are an iconic section of the game (granted, for all the wrong reasons) and they last, oh, maybe five seconds? And then they never show up again! Those are the only three instakill presses in the entire game. It’s kind of astonishing how restrained Castlevania is, but thank god for it, given how bad the collision for this section is. Later, a section underground where you have to hop across moving platforms to avoid falling down an instakill moat? Again, it lasts a few seconds, and then nothing like that shows up again, but that section is also pretty rough. It’s almost as if they realized the polish wasn’t coming along, so they stuck to the basics that they knew they were getting correct. You can see this when you compare those brief moments to the extended sections where the level design is just a straight line with maybe a couple blocks of debris or a split-level with staircases, and the gameplay is genuinely perfect. Honestly, it also kind of helps to make Castlevania feel like an actual castle, doesn’t it? Like, how many spiked presses does one Count need to own? Three feels more practical and ergonomic.
Castlevania is loaded with these hidden point secrets. Even though points are worthless without online leaderboards, I have to admit that every new time I’ve found one, I’ve squealed with delight. Is there a platform somewhere for no reason? There’s a good chance it’s to reveal one of these hidden treasures. Though not all of them are available in the first quest. The Gradius-based Moai statue can only be found after beating the game.
Castlevania’s levels are divided into “stages” marked by doors. The stages really mark the respawn points if you die, so I’m going off the overall levels. If there was an “Opening Level Hall of Fame” Castlevania would make it on the first ballot. An absolute masterclass in easing players into the game’s universe that never overwhelms but also never condescends. Whip the candles. Whip enemies. Climb stairs. Throw your sub-weapons. Basic stuff the instruction book covers, and with enemies that have generally basic attack patterns. The most common enemy, the ghouls, charge straight ahead. The bats fly at you in a slight wave pattern, and the panthers lounge before dashing at you. The most challenging of the first level’s basic enemies are the fishmen, who launch out of the water, but even then, they’re slow to react and allow players time to defeat them before they spit projectiles at you.
You’ll also notice their placement is spot-on. There’s no cheap shots in the first level. Having this small section in the water prepares you for a later, more dangerous encounter over a large section of water.
The choice and location of the enemies in Level 1 makes for a good confidence builder, but it also helps you to figure out the key to survival in Castlevania. There’s hidden stuff in the walls. How will players figure this out? In the very first instance of the health-restoring food hidden in the walls, the game has you encounter a bat that you can’t avoid. When you inevitably whip at it, you’re going to bust through the wall and reveal the food. By the way, this was one of the very few Angry Video Game Nerd lines that actually made me laugh. I chortled when he said the food must be “dirty.” Yea, food found randomly in a crumbling wall in a centuries-old castle owned by the embodiment of all that is evil having dirt on it would be my chief concern too.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
It’s notable that the first level only has TWO jumps over pits, in the cellar with the fishmen. While later Castlevanias would balance jumping with combat, the original game very much is focused on fighting baddies. I counted out the jumps in the first five levels. There’s approximately two dozen where there’s a risk of dying directly due to the jumps, some of which are optional. And really, that’s through four levels, because the fifth level has NONE. Not a single jump over a pit. Wow! So, really, the first stage gets you where you really need: ready to whip a whole lot of enemies. Yet, as basic as it is, the setting is especially spooky. Tattered curtains and holes in walls. It’s creepy. Then, you see a giant bat hanging from the ceiling. Is it the Count already? Nope, but it is a pretty good first boss and the perfect cap to the perfect level. Yep, perfect. This is right up there with 1-1 in Super Mario Bros., the fight against Glass Joe in Punch-Out!!, and yes, even Green Hill Act 1 in Sonic The Hedgehog. First levels don’t get better, folks.
If you have the axe, this fight is a cinch. Especially with the first double shot in the game hidden right there. But, if you use the whip, it’s a much more intense and satisfying battle. You know, I don’t think I ever tried fighting Castlevania’s bosses without sub-weapons. You can tell they weren’t really made to be fought with the whip. Depending on where it lingers, you might have to wait for it to dive down and attack you to get your licks in.
Besides the spike presses, I don’t think there’s a single moment that Castlevania doesn’t prepare you for. Well, except maybe the Medusa heads. They fly in a giant sine wave pattern and are among the most annoying enemies in gaming history. If you think they’re bad now, try playing the second quest after you beat the game. “How do we make this harder? F*ck it! Just add Medusa heads!” This is also the introduction to one of Castlevania’s most quirky features: the ability to use being damaged to circumvent large sections of the stage. You see, Castlevania’s most notorious feature is the violent knock-back that happens when you take any damage. Well, at least when you’re not walking on the stairs. It can turn a flesh wound into an instakill down a pit. BUT, if you time it right, you can use it to do the world’s most masochist double jump, and in certain areas of the stage, it allows you to circumvent areas of the game. It’s rarely useful, at least in Castlevania I, but there’s a spot or two it works on. I imagine speed runners must love the Castlevania games. Hell, I’m not a speed runner and I was giddy when I pulled this move off for the first time, especially since there’s a health refill in the very next room.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The second level is also the introduction to the “any monsters will do” mismatch of cultures that makes Castlevania, well, Castlevania! The second boss is Medusa, who has absolutely nothing to do with vampire mythos, Transylvania, or gothic horror. It’s a Greek myth about a woman who had sex with a God, pissing off another God who decided to punish her for the nerve of having a little cuddle. Eventually mummies, the Grim Reaper, and even f’n Frankenstein show up. Why would Frankenstein be in a game set in 1691? Frankenstein takes place in the 1700s! And why the hell would he fight for Dracula? He wouldn’t be swearing his hatred for humanity for a few decades at the very least. Castlevania is like Monster Squad, only theoretically loonier, yet done without the satire or 80s stereotypes. It’s played with absolute sincerity, and it’s kind of scary.
I kind of like that she’s just a disembodied head. So this is post-Perseus Medusa. On the downside, she doesn’t even turn you to stone.. at least in this version.
In terms of gameplay, my biggest question is simple: are the sub-weapons overpowered? Actually, I think they are. With the right load-out, many enemies are reduced to little more than cannon fodder. The solution is simple: either the sub-weapons should cost more hearts or the game should give you less hearts. Only the stopwatch costs more than one heart to use, at a whopping five for five seconds worth of freezing enemies. Meanwhile, the easy-to-use boomerang, holy water, and axe cost you 1 heart each and they shred enemies and bosses, especially if you have the double/triple shot. The opening giant f’n bat? Four seconds with the axe. Medusa? I once took her down in three seconds with a triple boomerang (though I wonder now if I had it set to easy mode, because jeez, that looked pretty quick). And look at how you can fight the mummies with the holy water!
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
But, even if you don’t have a safe spot, you don’t need it. The holy water burns and stun-locks every boss, except Dracula’s first form, which is only vulnerable on its head. If you can pick-up holy water, you don’t need to spam it, like you do with the axe or boomerang. You need only to learn how to time it right. Now, granted, you have to actually not die, and you have to avoid grabbing any other weapon by accident. Assuming you do die, you’re still not totally screwed. If you’re not in the final stretch before the boss and you have the time to build up hearts, you can quickly get the double shot/triple shot back. There’s a trick to it that doesn’t require you to find these items in the walls. Every ten kills (including projectiles) with a sub weapon nets you the double shot/triple shot. If your aim is true, that means you only need ten hearts to net you the double shot and twenty to earn you the triple. With the exception of the final level, you should be able to do it quickly. Here I am with the triple shot knife right in the first section of the first stage, though I should note the double/triple shot dropped from candles, not baddies.
Granted, I had to grind-up hearts, but I’ll be damned.. it works!
Despite its reputation, Castlevania isn’t that difficult, at least through the first five stages. I never feel like the odds are overwhelming against you, and the enemies, even the Medusa heads and hunchbacks, have easy-to-grasp patterns and predictable placement. Castlevania 1 is a very clockable game. Maybe it’s hard the first time, but it’s easy to learn and satisfying to master. NOT difficult to master, but satisfying. For this review, I ran through the game three times. In my run on the Japanese version, I played terribly in the fourth stage, with only two ticks of health left going into Frankenstein’s Monster. Having two ticks of health left is basically saying “one more hit and you’re dead.” But Frankie and the hunchback that sat on his shoulder didn’t even get a chance to move thanks to my triple-shot holy water. That was around the time I realized “um.. I haven’t died yet.” And that brings me back to the whole “personal journey” Castlevania has been a part of.
“Oh well, it beats being played by Robert De Niro.”
In 2005, a full six years before I started Indie Gamer Chick, I didn’t know Castlevania was the perfect action game to help me build my timing and my confidence back. I thought I was just going to play it for an hour or two and put it back in my case. I’m lucky, really. Retro gaming wouldn’t be on my radar for well over a decade after I picked it up. If it hadn’t been on clearance, I don’t think I’d have bought it. My curiosity as to what it would be like could best be described as mild. I never imagined it would be such a milestone game for me that I end up going back to it from time to time. Replaying Castlevania as an adult really started four years ago, with Castlevania Anniversary Collection. I still enjoyed it just fine, but by that point, I’d played the superior Castlevania III, which I not only liked more, but I considered to be the best NES game ever made. And Super Castlevania IV, nerfed as it is, is a damn good time. Both those were, you know, IN THAT COLLECTION! Castlevania 1? A slightly-overrated game with only six levels that’s mostly straight corridors? Why, that one is downright fuddy duddy.
I used to quake in my booties over the stairs. Not so much anymore, though I imagine that’ll change for Castlevania III.
It wasn’t until I replayed the game when they added Japanese ROMs to Anniversary Collection that I came to admire the fact that Castlevania 1 laid out the perfect foundation for a game franchise in a measly six levels of action. By this point, I found myself replaying it pretty frequently, usually as an excuse to review other things Castlevania-related. I reviewed a series of ROM hacks based on it (read that HERE). Or, hey, I got a TurboGrafx 16 mini and it has Rondo of Blood? Well hell, I might as well bust-out Castlevania 1 again! Along the way, I noticed something: I was getting pretty dang good at it. Slowly but surely, I phased out using save states and rewinding, and the next thing I know, I’m beating the game without cheating every single time. I’d only done that once before, back when I was 15 years old and recovering from that f’n accident, but this was different. Because not only had I beat it without cheating, but the first time I did it in my modern IGC existence, I only died once!
Why would the Grim Reaper work for Dracula? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Yea, I’m sure this is “explained” and then retconned and explained in another way but, yea, no. It’s the goddamned Grim Reaper! Dracula should be working for it. OR, maybe he does. Maybe Drac got Simon Belmont’s post-it note. Now there’s an obscure reference.
The idea that I could beat Castlevania without losing even one life seemed far-fetched back when I first played the game in 2005. It’s got a reputation, and even at my best, I was never that good. After I had another single-death run last year, it didn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Part of it is memorization. I know which candles NOT to whip mid-air that would take away my weapon. I know that the triple holy water and not the triple boomerang is the key to making the game absurdly cheesable. I know where the enemies are going to be coming from and can avoid being knocked backwards into a pit. My second one-death run’s one fatality was in the dumbest possible spot. This one:
See that little hole between me and the stairs and the skeleton? Yea, well, I didn’t.
On the plus side, I would never forget that hole was there ever again. Really, as long as you practice with the holy water, don’t take any candles that are a risk of death by falling, memorize where the enemies are going to be during the pits (which there aren’t as many pits as you’d think) you can do it too! Getting deep without dying in Castlevania isn’t that hard. Sacrilege, I know, but I’m NOT a professional gamer. Not even close. But, I realized a couple years ago that acing Castlevania didn’t feel as unfathomably out of reach like it would for my other favorite NES games such as Life Force or Contra. I knew I could do it. Long before I was making single-death runs in Castlevania, I was so proud of myself for not taking any damage in the “Infamous Hallway” that leads to the Grim Reaper on my first time playing it on Anniversary Collection. Now, I can do that every single time. It’s not that tough, actually. My mistake was relying on the boomerangs. My logic seemed sound: they travel nearly the full length of the screen AND then come back, dealing double the damage. But, the knights can shield the boomerangs, and bosses aren’t permanently stun-locked by them. They have no defense against the holy water. These days, I have that hallway down to a science. It’s easy once you figure out how to rush and manipulate the enemies.
It’s not until the final level that Castlevania truly becomes a monster. Few NES games build up to a perfect crescendo quite like it. The funny thing is, it’s BY FAR the shortest level. It’s not even close, actually. But, the challenge is incredible. The giant f’n bat that’s the first boss? The final level starts with a broken bridge that has five of them! And it’s not like they nerfed them for this section. They take as many hits as before, and you don’t have the hearts to just spam them with sub-weapons. That’s why I did the most heroic thing I could do: I legged it.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Then, after a brief encounter with some bone-throwing skeletons, you move onto a section that features the hawks dropping hunchbacks on you. The game fed you these before as you navigated a literal straight line with no jumps. This time around, it’s easily the most difficult section of the entire game. That includes all the bosses. This brief section contains huge staircases, tight jumps, close quarters, all made significantly harder by the fact that the walls are designed to allow the hunchbacks to jump up from below you, with no means to stop them. This is the final stretch before Dracula, and it’s brutal.
I had a rough guesstimate on how many hearts I’d need to beat Dracula, and I knew how many hearts were available in his arena. Once I knew I had enough, I botled the exit.
It was when I managed to make it through that section with full life that I realized “holy crap! I’M GOING TO DO IT! I’M GOING TO ACE THE GAME!” Then I almost blew it against Dracula, who has two forms, the first of which is only vulnerable in the head and can’t be stun-locked by the holy water. After starting out hot, I blew three consecutive attacks from him. I was down to one final hit when I took his head off. At which point, like so many other bosses, his final form I could stun lock by timing my tossing of the holy water. Not too fast. Not too slow. A nice steady pace and he was toast, and I’d done it. And it feels so good.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
I can’t imagine what Castlevania must have been like for first-time players in the mid-to-late 80s. It had to have been mind blowing how immersive it is. It looks better than any NES game released up to this point. It sounds better. It controls better. As far as games with fixed-jumping goes, it’s very intuitive. Dare I say, the best fixed-jumping on the NES. It’s a charmer, too. The fact that it’s got Dracula, Frankenstein, mummies, Medusa, skeletons, etc, yet it plays them completely sincerely, tongue never in cheek? I mean, come on. It’ll charm the socks right off you! That uniqueness is lost in 2023. Hell, some of their Frankenstein designs in the years since have been embarrassing, and the series took a hard turn into the cheesy territory when Dracula started to monologue on what exactly a man is. I think part of why the original Castlevania holds up pretty dang well is because it has such sincerity. There’s nothing pandering or cynical about it. Well, at least until those end credits. Golly, those were an ominous sign. But, otherwise, Castlevania holds up to the test of time.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
But, what truly makes it timeless, at least for me, is the fact that it’s a “hard” game that’s easy to commit to memory, learn the patterns for, and ultimately overcome and triumph in ways I never thought possible. It’s not even the best Castlevania on the NES, but it is the closest to actual gaming perfection. I think if I put in the type of time and effort I have for games like Dead Cells or Cuphead, I really think I could eventually do a no-hit run on it. What once felt impossibly out of reach now feels like it’s doable. It’s not as if I had to practice at Castlevania for years to get good enough to run through it in a single life. I’ve played it sporadically-at-best since 2019, and ultimately, it was just knowing what item to use (triple holy water, not triple boomerang) and memorizing which candles NOT to whip that put me over the top. Taking no hits will require more time and patience, and there’s sections I’ve never played perfectly. I’m worried about the Grim Reaper. I’m worried about that final stretch before Dracula. I’m worried about Dracula himself. But, impossible? I don’t think so. Do you know what the best thing I can say about Castlevania is? It’s a game that was released a little less than three years before I was born, and I’m sitting here legitimately contemplating whether I could play it perfectly or not, and there’s only one thing I know for sure: I wouldn’t be bored trying. Verdict: YES!
Jaws
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developed by Westone (then known as Escape)
Published by LJN
First Released November, 1987 NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
We actually don’t need a bigger boat. This boat is perfectly adequate. No notes.
Jaws is historically maligned, in large part because it was an early release by notorious NES publisher LJN. It’s also not exactly a thrilling game, and it was released around the time the really bad Jaws sequels had largely eroded the franchise’s potency. But, what if I told you that Jaws for the NES actually ain’t that bad. Or, even bad at all? It’s not amazing or anything. I originally had typed out the words “diamond in the rough” but quickly deleted them. Diamond is obviously too kind. It’s.. a half-dollar in the rough. You’re pleased as punch to find it lying around. Like, this isn’t a penny someone dropped and determined it wasn’t worth the effort of bending over to pick up. It’s.. a half-dollar! Whoa! Then, about ten seconds later you realize, wait, that’s really only fifty pennies, and you’ve probably passed by that many pennies and not bothered bending over to pick them up. You’re still oddly satisfied, yet bummed that it’s not as good as it seemed like ten seconds ago. That was rambling, but trust me,what I just described is the Jaws NES experience in a nutshell.
Jaws’ gets its first rectal exam.
Jaws is the rare NES game that feels like it still utilizes the type of abstract game design theory that ended with the Atari 2600. A short, very limited, very narrow-scope set of repetitive tasks that combines a couple different gameplay types loosely tied to the game’s theme. In the case of Jaws, the object of the game is to build up your attack power to be strong enough to overcome the humongous and initially ultra-spongy life bar of Jaws. You have an overhead map that has two ports. You have to sail back and forth between them, and as you do, RPG-like random encounters happen. Only, instead of turn-based combat, you play a very rudimentary shooter that lasts 30 to 60 seconds. There’s only four enemies in these encounters: stingrays, jellyfish, baby sharks, and Jaws itself. When you start the game, you basically cause no damage to Jaws at all, and any damage you do cause will heal itself four bars per random encounter. To build up your attack power, you have to rely on randomly-dropped seashells that you then cash in at the two ports for a progressively more costly +1 to your attack power. The only truly wise decision the developers made was forbidding players from going back to the same port twice in a row. You have to alternate between the two, and there’s no doubling-up. You can only collect one additional attack power point at a time.
During random encounters not involving Jaws, the entire battle takes place as the diver (or the sub). BUT, if you hit Jaws on the map, the encounter starts on the boat, where you can lob cannonballs at it. You absolutely cannot avoid Jaws, but it’s like getting free shots in, since once it touches the boat, you become the SCUBA diver and are invincible for a few moments.
So yea, Jaws is a game about grinding, but you don’t need to clear your schedule if you want to try it out. I beat it without any cheating (unless auto-fire counts as cheating) three times this morning, each time in well under an hour, and the third time only required thirty minutes. Thankfully, what little sea combat it has was decently done. It’s not a bad little shooting game at all, but like I said before, it’s basic. Four enemies. Four whole god danged enemies. Really, only two that you frequently encounter. To the game’s very limited credit, they get progressively more aggressive as the game goes along, but come on. It’s so creatively dead. As the SCUBA diver, you only get one single form of attack, and while the Jellyfish eventually do become a genuine nuisance (they got me a couple times), there’s no variety. Also, your power doesn’t affect anything BUT Jaws. Even the baby sharks take the same amount of hits to kill regardless of whether you’re a 1 or a 9. Once you’ve encountered Jaws for the first time, you’ve seen 95% of the game.
The random encounters I think must be based on a predetermined amount of “steps” taken. I noticed that if I rewound the game and changed direction, I’d have a random encounter regardless after the same amount of spots moved. However, I had one span where I crossed from one port to the other without a single encounter. Actually, I came VERY close to making two full passes. Also, it’s worth noting that if Jaws was close by (as pictured above) when a different random encounter happens, it’ll probably show up anyway.
The two ports aren’t even that far apart from each-other, either. That’s especially odd considering how big the map is. It’s not like you have to search to find the other port the first time, either. The game starts on the left port, and once you pull out of the harbor, a straight line to the right will bring you there. If you don’t suffer a random encounter, it takes under 10 seconds to get there. While it’s not a massive map, I get the distinct impression that they originally had bigger plans. Perhaps randomly placing the ports would have helped a lot. The only incentive to search is a randomly-placed submarine that, when you find it, provides you with more maneuverability and a second underwater weapon to use. I didn’t really like using the sub, though, and found its lob-style cannonball weapon to be kind of worthless. I didn’t really want to bother going out of my way for it, either. The task at hand was to build my power, which meant staying in that narrow space between the two ports, grinding out random encounters and hoping for seashell drops. Enemies also drop crabs (which make you go faster) and stars (worth points, which are worth getting since 30,000 points nets you an extra life). Oh, and don’t kill enemies too close to the screen, because your character can’t go all the way to the edge, and you might miss collecting their drops.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
You’re not entirely at the mercy of randomness. When you kill Baby Jaws, it’ll ALWAYS drop a seashell, and killing three or four of them will earn you a visit to a terrible bonus game where you drop cannonballs on jellyfish that are dancing in formation. You earn a seashell for every three jellyfish you hit. As you progress in the game, more baby sharks will spawn. Eventually, it won’t be rare for you to have random encounters made up entirely of baby sharks. The crappy thing, there’s a very fun game buried in this mess. I like the idea of the finishing line not being set in stone, but rather based on when you’re strong enough to take down one single enemy that you keep encountering again and again. Jaws is the only enemy in the game that you can see on the map. After visiting the port for the first time, you get a receiver that warns you when Jaws is nearby. You want to avoid it at first, since it’s impossible to beat it. With each power level, it takes a little less hits to take a single bar off its life. You won’t be able to put any lasting damage into it because its health restores by four bars every random encounter, whether Jaws is part of it or not. It won’t be until around level 5 you can put damage into it. If you’ve got auto-fire turned on, you should be strong enough to beat it on level 7.
By far the most challenging levels in Jaws are those in the shallow waters. Random encounters close to a coastline will happen here. The jellyfish become VERY problematic, especially when they rise out of the bottom of the screen with no warning and start curving through the water. When you die, you lose a power level and your speed is reset to 0. Jaws is a one-hit-death game, which is really the REAL reason you’d want to get the submarine. It acts as an extra hit point that you lose if you touch an enemy. I strongly advise you to not hang out at the bottom of the screen.
When you’ve depleted all of Jaws’ health, the game enters a third-person mode where Jaws comes at you, bruh, but maybe not DIRECTLY at you. It’ll swim progressively closer to the boat, and it’s just a matter of following it and waiting for the right moment. You’re given three signal flares that you can use to make Jaws pop and spin out of the water. There’s a series of lines that acts as a grid of sorts. When Jaws is ON the final line, not between it or in front of it, but touching it, AND it’s lined up with the front of the boat, you use the flare to pop Jaws out of the water, then you spear it with the boat. One shot and it’s dead, and you’ve beaten the game.
My description above might not be 100% accurate. Honestly, this is a pretty haphazardly done finale. Sometimes it feels like Jaws is aligned perfectly, and I still don’t score the kill. If you run out of flares, you have to go get more from the shops. After reaching level 9 in power, each visit to a port will net you an additional signal flare.
Once the baby sharks start appearing more frequently, the bonus stages interrupt the game too often. Sure, they’re 5 to 7 free seashells, depending on how accurately you shoot, but they interrupt the flow of the game and feel completely out of place. I also think a perfect score is impossible.
So, that’s Jaws. History has largely vilified it, but honest to god, folks, it’s not THAT bad. It just doesn’t come remotely close to having enough content. Variety is the spice of life, but Jaws is limited to four enemies, two battle arenas, a really bad bonus game, and a fairly poorly done mini-game finale. But, the concept of the game is enticing, what little gameplay is here is decent enough, and it’s over so quickly that you don’t really have time to get bored. The NES and especially LJN are responsible for some downright travesties of licensed video game shovelware, but Jaws isn’t among them. Given how shoddy most of LJN’s published library is, Jaws might be their finest movie tie-in. Golly, how sad is that fact? But, let it be said, the developers of Wonder Boy worked a miracle here. Do you know what the closest cousin of Jaws is? Sinistar, the arcade classic from Williams. Both are shooters based around building up the ability to kill one omnipresent big bad. It’s a genre that hasn’t really been explored all that much since Jaws, and I really wish someone would. In fact, I genuinely believe that everything presented in the existing game could serve as the framework for an all-time classic. If Westone had added more enemies, items, arenas, and locations on the map (and probably beef-up Jaws to accommodate all this new content) I can’t help but wonder if Jaws would be a celebrated classic. Someone at LJN should have looked at this and said “we’re going to need a bigger game!”
See that? I did a Jaws thing there. You got it. Verdict: YES!
South Park: Butters Very Own Pinball Game
Platform: Pinball FX
Set: South Park Pinball ($9.99)
Included in Pinball Pass
Designed by Szucs “ndever” David
Originally Released October 14, 2014
This is a reminder that Butters made multiple earnest attempts at destroying the world, by drowning everyone and by destroying the o-zone layer. Oh sure, it was adorable how ill-conceived and childlike his attempts were, but they were good faith efforts at human extermination. He’s not THAT wholesome.
It’s probably best that pinball fans look at the Butters table as a throw-in bonus for South Park: Super-Sweet Pinball, where $10 nets you one really well done PG-rated South Park pin and one middle-of-the-road, mundane and average pin. Which isn’t to say that you should ignore Butters’ Very Own Pinball Game. I really did think it was completely decent. It’s just impossible to build-up any momentum thanks to Zen’s typically violent slingshots and over-indulgent modes. In this case, I think the slings are easily the worst part. Seriously, holy crap, those slingshots should be in a holding cell, staring at a clock as it inches closer to midnight with a priest reading them their last rites while a pair of three-drug cocktails, a gurney, and IVs await in the next room over. They’re silverball serial killers that, all by themselves, drop Butters from maybe as high as a GREAT table to barelyGOOD. Well, actually the horrendous mini-field with physics so weirdly inconsistent that it’s practically broken doesn’t help, either.
Oof. Terrible.
While they don’t look the part, the flippers for the Professor Chaos mini-table feel nubby. The physics for the mode are completely different than a normal table. The Vices all agree that the slope feels non-standard, but we disagree as to whether it’s too shallow or too steep. It kind of feels like it alternates between both, depending on where the ball is. Regardless of whether it’s too steep or shallow, flips on the mini-field have this weird shuffle-pass sensation. It’s as if you’re playing pinball with an air hockey puck that has fluctuating weight. As if that’s not bad enough, the four targets are boring AND that you have to shoot them twice each. Combine that with the fact that there’s no ball save, and thus rounds of this catastrophe could end in literally a second or two, and it quickly became my least favorite of the table’s modes. This might be the worst mini-field Zen has ever done. It really put a damper on the whole Butters experience, because I really don’t think their physics have ever been worse.
You absolutely MUST play the ball out of the saucer or risk a quick drain. While it’s not a 100% certainty, the drop from the saucer hangs right over the drain. If you’re not attempting to shoot the cellar or spin disc, what you can do safely is hold the bat flipper out, which should give you a gentle drop down to the primary flippers to gain control of the ball.
The rest of Butters is all about basic, nearly bare-bones light-shooting. Modes are started by putting the ball in the saucer in the center of the playfield, then converting the follow-up shot with the bat flipper into the spin disk. The disk is surrounded by several targets, and by total chance, you have to score 50 hits on the targets. It sounds like a lot, but you shouldn’t need more than two successful shots in the spin disc. Between the three members of my family, ONE TIME in an entire week of playing this table did one of us need three shots, whereas completing all 50 in a single shot wasn’t rare at all. In extremely rare cases, the ball gets launched out of the spin disk, though it should be playable even if this happens. After lighting the mode start, you’re given five options. The worst is Chaos vs Coon & Friends, which is entirely the mini-table I whined about above. By far the easiest mode is Marjorine, and the scoring is completely screwed-up on this one. You only need to complete three shots and return the ball to the mode start VUK. Each of the first three shots gives you two options. Besides the third shot, all four of the shots score in the millions of points. It’s a cinch.
I’ve heard of shooting bricks, but this is ridiculous.
Last of the Meheecans is indicative of everything Zen Studios does wrong pinball modes. The previous mode I talked about was four shots, all simple angles, and only one of which is an optional high-risk shot. This one is seven shots, all of them with much higher difficulty, all of them much more risky, and all but one of them score much less points. In this mode, you have to shoot five orbits, but the entrances to those orbits have rising-and-lowering walls. Once you clear four of the five orbits, the final one must be shot three times, and it’s only now you’re putting up million point scores. And you’re on a timer, on a table with long return times. Because hitting each shot once just plain wasn’t enough, I guess. How come Marjorine is four shots for more points and this is seven shots for less? It makes no sense.
Butters relies heavily on the bumpers for the AWESOM-O mini-mode and for the high-yielding dress-up Butters score. As long as I wasn’t on AWESOM-O the ball would bounce around like crazy in the bumpers. But, as sure as the sun will rise, whenever I was on the AWESOM-O mode, the ball would bounce out after a single goddamned bump. Two bumps at most. It was so uncanny that I’m convinced it’s rigged.
The other modes are under-paying and just totally average. Turn butters into a vampire by shooting three orbits and then the saucer three times. Put on a Hawaiian shirt and shoot fifteen orbits with a multiball. There’s also a couple side-quest multiball modes as well that are the same basic modes with fewer targets and an add-a-ball mapped to the generous vari-target. I normally hate vari-targets (they’re my least favorite pinball targets) but this one is clockable and relatively safe off a brick. Sadly, most of the mini-modes are quite dull. The only one we all universally enjoyed was the Ninjas side-mode. There’s four ninja targets and you have 60 seconds to shoot them for 150,000 points a hit. They respawn five seconds after being struck down, but if you can complete all four within five seconds, you score ten million points. Again, I can’t stress enough: none of us HATED Butters. We just hated that no amount of skill can overcome the slingshots, and the complete lack of balance. But, let it be said that the Williams-like layout and simple angles makes for a nice bonus to go along with the unforgettable Super-Sweet. Now then in the spirit of Butters, GO TO YOUR ROOM, ZEN! YOU’RE GROUNDED FOR THOSE SLINGSHOTS! Cathy: GOOD (3/5) Angela: GOOD(3/5) Oscar: GREAT(4/5) Jordi: GOOD(3/5) Dash: BAD(2/5) Dave: GOOD(3/5)
South Park: Super-Sweet Pinball
Platform: Pinball FX
Set: South Park Pinball ($9.99)
Included with Pinball Pass
Designed by Peter “Deep” Grafl
Originally Released October 14 2014 Awarded a Certificate of Excellence by The Pinball Chick Team
Keep in mind that our team’s fandom of South Park as a show is all over the place. Dad (Oscar) and Dash are 100% complete lifetime non-fans. Myself and Jordi are lapsed fans, while Dave is somewhere between the two groups. Only Angela is a modern “never misses an episode” fan of the show and even has viewing parties with friends. Some of us factored in the theme, others focused on the table. One odd note is that Zen is just weeks away from releasing Pinball M, their M-rated Pinball FX spin-off (oh.. hey, I get the name now), but this South Park is rated E 10+ by the ESRB. There’s not even bleeped cussing in here. Weird.
South Park’s tables being returned to Pinball FX after a six year absence is proof positive that all bets are off with Zen Studios. As if getting the World Cup and Indiana Jones licenses didn’t already prove that, now they’re bringing back their long-lost Pinball FX2 pins as well. South Park: Super-Sweet Pinball is probably their most famous pre-PinballFX3 pin (it’s either it or Plants v Zombies). It’s back, and it plays well with the new Pinball FX engine. Super-Sweet pinball is a smooth-flowing finesse table only somewhat held back by a brutal difficulty combined with modes that demand too much perfection in what is an imperfect art form.
The Vices (that would be myself, Angela, and Oscar for those keeping track at home) have put 30+ hours into Super Sweet Pinball. For all the whining you’re about to endure, we all really enjoyed it. However, some of the angles are too impossibly risky. Chef’s door is a whole other level of “WHY DID YOU STICK THAT THERE?” mind-f*ckery. Unlike Dash and Angela, I never considered moving off my GREATrating. The risk/reward balance is too screwed-up for that.
Super-Sweet isn’t entirely an original table by Zen. Hold a mirror to the layout and it’s a close approximation to Stern’s Simpsons Pinball Party. I don’t know if that was meant to be a “Simpsons Already Did It” joke or not, but given that Ant-Man is a mirrored version of Theatre of Magic, probably not. The similarities are mostly superficial in nature, though South Park does take after Simpsons with multiple highly stackable modes. Unlike Simpsons, you can’t go into the settings to adjust the hurry-up times. The biggest problem with South Park is how damn unforgiving it is. It’s not enough to activate the modes. The modes have to be finished to achieve the S-O-U-T-H-P-A-R-K lights that are the ultimate object. That’s nine modes, with three additional modes (one of which is a grindy multiball). Finishing four of them lights an extra ball, but even on our third day, it wasn’t all that rare for each of us to finish games with only one light (typically it was the Kenny light, which is a lay-up). And, we really don’t suck at pinball. Hell, I’m the reigning Arcade mode world champion on this table at the time I’m writing this, and I finished that game barely halfway there. They’re a LOT of work just to get started, THEN you have to.. you know.. beat them!
The Stan and Kyle scoops are deceptively hard shots. For Kyle, if you have a gentle roll on the right flipper, a backhand is a relatively safe option. Stan? Not so much. If there’s a low risk angle for it, we haven’t found it. Annoyingly, despite being a very high-risk shot, Stan’s hurry-up is too short and very undervalued relative to its difficulty. Really, the only value it has is it gives you the S light. Lighting four of the S-O-U-T-H-P-A-R-K lights will light the extra ball target. My suggested order is Kenny, Sarcastaball (which has an additional extra ball attached to it), School Bus Multiball, and Manbearpig. You can sub Stan’s Hurry-Up (annoying as it is, once it starts, it’s one shot to complete) for any of those. The Vices NEVER successfully completed Kyle’s mode (Mr. Hankey Multiball) or Chef’s mode. Not once.
Let me pick an almost random example: the School Bus Multiball. To get it, you must shoot the school bus ramp NINE times. You must then lock four more balls shooting the same ramp. THEN, you must complete the shots for all four of the boys AND sink the balls back in the bus ramp you had to grind nine shots out of to begin with. I’m fairly sure that you need to only lock one of the balls to get the “R” letter, but either way, this is massive grindy time investment. I can’t stress enough: the most successful pinball tables of all time kept their “doors” lit whether or not you were successful in the mode or not. That’s the kind of pinball that generated the biggest success the medium has ever had BY FAR, so why wouldn’t you do that, Zen? You have 110+ tables on Pinball FX, and you expect HOW BIG a time commitment towards “git’n gud” at them? Kyle’s requires you to get the K-Y-L-E lights, then 3 locks on the sarcastaball-ramp, THEN you have to get a super jackpot in multiball. AND IT’S ONLY WORTH A MILLION POINTS for that super jackpot.
The super skill shot is quite risky. I had a lot of shots go straight down the drain off it. You should have the ball save lit, but still, it’s a bitch. When this target isn’t standing, it’s replaced by a TV target that requires you to hit it.. I’m not making this up.. 247 times just to light an extra ball. Come on, Zen. Now you’re just straight-up trolling. It’s worth noting the “episodes” you get from hitting this add to your end-of-all bonus as well. If I shoot a target 247 times, I expect the table to gain sentience and eat me. Though actually, at one point, I had an EB light that I couldn’t figure out where it came from. It’s entirely possible it was from this.
Compare the relatively low scores of the other modes to the T-I-M-M-Y mode, which is NOT for one of the letters but yields the highest scores. By far! Timmy’s easy-to-get lights are along the flipper lanes. After lighting them, you have thirty seconds to go nuts on a single shot next to the Kenny loop. Use the left flipper and a cherry-bomb shot, and you’re gold, OR, you can use the bat flipper. Yep, the best target in the game can be shot from both the left primary and the bat flipper, and boy, does it score points. You only need to hit it once and you’ve got a cool million points, and it adds another million every time you repeat it. Do the TIMMY shot twice, and you’re made three million points. Three times? Six million. Four times? Ten million. And so forth. And so forth. You can grind that one shot, 30 seconds at a time, and still score hundreds of millions of points. You can use this as an excuse to light the C-A-R-T-M-A-N lights, since that shot feeds you a softball for the bat flipper to shoot the TIMMY shot. Oh, and if you miss it off the bat flipper? You’re either hitting the Kenny Loop, Randy Ramp, or if you’re way off, you’re hitting the J-I-M-M-Y lights for the kickbacks! It’s so badly balanced. My arcade world record right now is probably 40% to 50% made of that one shot. That’s not balanced. I should note my father disagreed with me all weekend about how low-risk it was, since the Timmy target is a cherry bomb shot straight over the drain. I almost never lost a ball from it. He’s just plain wrong.
Will someone in charge at Zen Studios tell their table designers to tone it the f*ck back, already? Because the tables aren’t better for demanding this much commitment out of them. The tables aren’t ever more fun because of the repetitive grinding. They’re less fun. Nobody is going to devote six months towards one table to get good enough to get the wizard mode. Look at how few people are posting wizard-level scores on Zen Originals versus Williams pins (that don’t require endless grinding with no forgiveness for failure) and ask yourselves which tables people are having more fun with? I know I’ve been whining about this a lot lately, but it’s an issue. People aren’t finishing these tables. GOOD PLAYERS aren’t. That’s not a virtue.
This screenshot alone is PACKED with incredible shots. Dad coined the Kenny loop a “shoelace loop” or “The Ritchie Shoelace” which is a close cousin of “The Ritchie” as seen in tables like Black Knight, High Speed, etc. Oh, and Kenny is probably the easiest letter on the entire table. Or, you can shoot the Randy loop, which is a bit tougher and activates the super-grindy Bat-Dad mode. Or, one shot on the Randy Loop also lowers the blimp to activate Sarcastaball and grant access to the mini-table (where an extra ball can be nabbed). OR, you can get the T-I-M-M-Y lights and then shoot the Timmy vertical target, which is potentially the most valuable shot on the table. Finally, the J-I-M-M-Y lights that activate the valuable kickbacks are just under the Randy shot, though it’s nearly a blind-angle off the bat flipper.
Now, with that whining out of the way, I should probably note that we all loved the layout for South Park. Of all the “super difficult” Zen originals, South Park is probably neck-and-neck with Clone Wars for having the best transitional flow. While South Park is absolutely packed with modes and mini-modes, the transitions from shot-to-shot are smooth regardless of what modes you’re aiming at. And, unlike Whirlwind, we could use post transfers to great effect this time. You’ll need passing for this one, as the key modes are timed. Cartman’s Anal Probe requires thirty spins of the spinner in sixty seconds (approximately four flush shots), and at that point, you’re only halfway there. You then have hit three UFOs in thirty seconds. Manbearpig is ten shots, then a straight-shot up the middle, THEN collect six piles of gold, THEN one final cherry bomb up the center. Bat-Dad is the hardest by far. You have to shoot a high risk cardboard target to “throw a jab” which ticks off a little bit of his health. To “throw a haymaker” and do extra damage, after hitting the cardboard target, you have to very quickly connect on a follow-up flashing light shot. I have no idea how many times you have to do this. We never came close to finishing it. We never finished the Chef’s mode. They were too high risk, and it made more sense to shoot the TIMMY lights for maximum yield.
The Terrance & Phillip themed bumpers are incredibly violent and, when their mode is charged-up, high-yielding. Angela at one point banked nearly ten million points off them in a single shot based solely on pure blind luck of getting the ball jammed between them. There’s also a Lawlor Path between them that acts as Stan’s Hurry-Up shot, as well as additional Canadian Multiball and Manbearpig shots. However, it’s a very high risk shot, and the bumpers, fun and profitable as they can be, may also murder your ball via the right outlane or even a drain plunge. I held my breath every time.. which feels oddly fitting for fart-themed bumpers.
The big question is “can non-fans enjoy South Park?” I actually think it might be true of both non-show fans and non-pinball fans. Don’t mistake my usage of “super difficult” for being “impossibly difficult.” It’s not that bad. Actually, South Park: Super-Sweet Pinball is an incredibly fun table. Strangely generous too. Take the Cheesy Poof bag, for example. It’s the score multiplier and it’s right next to two necessary shots: the left Manbearpig/Canada/Cartman orbit and the school bus ramp. If you brick either of those shots, you get rewarded with the Cheesy Poof bag, which is fairly low-risk to hit. In fact, the entire left side of the table is so tame and workable that it’s practically gentle. You’d never imagine that South Park is a steel ball serial killer. Oh, it is, and it can be maddening in how many different shots can kill you. But, while I still firmly protest how much work Zen expects people to do to earn wizard modes, all credit where it’s due: it never gets boring, at least with this table.
Cathy’s, who took the crown from Angela, who took it from Cathy.
Cathy: GREAT (4/5) Angela: GREAT (4/5) Oscar: MASTERPIECE (5/5) Jordi: GREAT (4/5) Dash: GREAT (4/5) Dave: MASTERPIECE (5/5) CERTIFIED EXCELLENT BY THE PINBALL CHICK TEAM
A New Hope
aka Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Set: Star Wars Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99)
Designed by Peter “Deep” Grafl
Originally Released April 29, 2014 Included in Arcade1Up’s Star Wars Table Awarded a Clean Scorecard by The Pinball Chick Team
You have to wonder if they knew a decade ago they would some day make a My Little Pony table if they would have saved a horseshoe shaped table for that.
Our family nickname for A New Hope keeps getting more and more elaborate. It started as the “Big Horseshoe” then it became the “Great Horseshoe” and now it’s at “The Great and Powerful Horseshoe.” This is probably how religions get started up. By 2025 it’ll be “The Almighty Galactic Horseshoe of Divine Holiness” and we’ll still be unanimously stuck on rating it GOOD. It’s the definitive middle of the road Zen original that both delights us and breaks our hearts with its squandered potential. Still, there’s no doubt that A New Hope holds up in 2023, nearly a decade after its release. But, a decade later, all the warts that were inherent to it all along are more and more glaring. Despite the playfield being made almost entirely of orbital shots, you have incredible freedom in A New Hope. Each of the orbits is tied to a bonus mode, and the T-U-S-K-E-N orbit is also the mode start. Getting into a groove building combos is incredibly rewarding, especially since they were spot-on valuing combo shooting.
A New Hope jerks off with its animation too much. I’ve had multiple instances where I nail the Hidden Skillshot dead-on, only instead of, you know, GETTING POINTS, the ball explodes because the table is STILL loading the playfield because there’s so many useless animations. Sometimes modes take FOREVER to get going or to end because it takes forever for a stormtrooper or Obi-Wan to waddle their fat asses off the table. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS, ZEN? Everything should be already in place, but Zen crammed so many masturbatory animations into this pin that sometimes the speeder is still positioning itself and the ball bounces off it, or sometimes a stormtrooper literally scratches their head looking around. I often have to hold a trap for 15 or more seconds waiting for everything to reset after a mode ends. That’s beyond ridiculous.
A New Hope’s biggest annoyance is a magnetic playfield in the dead-center of the playfield that randomly throws your ball, potentially down the already deadly outlanes. That magnet is such a weird decision. I guess it’s supposed to be the force field of the Death Star, but my question is: why does it fling? Just have the ball bounce off it like a wall. Also, several of the main modes (especially scene 6) and the hurry-up bonus mode require you to shoot ball onto a temporary mini-field in the center of the screen to fight enemies, but sometimes the physics and the ball don’t cooperate and the ball just plain explodes for a soft reset. The modes are NOT generous with their time, and since it takes too long for the ball to reset, it only really serves to create frustration. There’s also just too much reliance on luck in the bonus modes. It’s not really possible to guess (or react quickly enough) to the Tusken Raider, and the video mode (along with its ultra-valuable extra ball) is totally random.
Oscar on Mode Balance: Ideally, side modes in pinball, once you factor in the work to activate them and the risks of shooting them, have full parity. A New Hope’s side mode balance is completely out of whack. Both the Cantina shooting gallery and A New Hope’s Video Mode have the ability to light the valuable extra ball lamp within them. Lighting the video mode, where scoring and rewards are 100% luck-based, requires you to to light the letters A-L-L-I-A-N-C-E on the non-dominant left side of the table. A relatively higher risk shot for an unknown reward. Comparatively, the easier to play shooting gallery requires one fewer letter (C-A-N-T-I-N-A) across what is arguably the table’s primary orbit. Both orbits feed the R-E-B-E-L lights that drive the modes, but you’re incentivized to shoot A New Hope left-to-right due to the left outlane being much easier to defend against. It’s a tiny lack of risk/reward parity that throws the balance of A New Hope into the garbage disposal.
There’s lots of other annoyances. A New Hope has some of the most pathetic kick-backs ever. They sort of lightly volley the ball up and onto the playfield, but the gentle arc created often throws the ball right between the flippers. I’ve had multiple instances where a kickback sends the ball straight down the drain. Like, straight down it, and man alive, does it piss me off every time. I don’t know what Zen’s fetish is with this kind of weird “could only happen in video pinball” invisible force field kickbacks that don’t really help players and instead, just as often, are worse than trying to manually defend against the outlanes. I have to go back to what I’ve asked of them a million times: do you want to make good pinball tables or do you want to be a complete f*cking assholes and troll your customers? Because you can’t do both at the same time. A New Hope is a potentially great table that they took a sledge hammer to, and I don’t get it. Why would you do these things the way you did them when it doesn’t add challenge so much as it just trolls the players? I want to note that my sister is calling me a “cry baby” right now, as she likes the way this handles the kickbacks. She’s adopted, and I’m the reigning arcade mode World Champion of Star Wars: A New Hope as of this writing, so my word counts and her’s don’t. Thems the rules!
Then again, the Death Star modes are all pretty dang good. I can’t imagine it’s possible to better mimic the most iconic battle scene in sci-fi better than A New Hope does. It saves the table!
What frustrates me most of all is that A New Hope could be one of THE elite Star Wars tables with some modifications. Shortening-up the modes would be a good start. We’ve been playing these tables for four years now, and A New Hope is one of the tables we’ve played the most of any Zen table. It’s arguably THE signature table of Zen’s Star Wars pins. Yet I’ve personally never started the Wizard Mode, and Dad and Angela each only have reached the wizard once apiece. Ever. Going off the leaderboards, it would seem 99.99% of players never get that far. There’s just too much work getting there. The hurry-ups don’t offer enough time, especially on a table that wants to look good more than it wants to play good (this is known as Russell Westbrook Syndrome, or at least it should be) and thus it could take FOREVER to get the ball back to the flippers. I will never understand how Zen can see themselves get more attention for classic Williams announcements, but then go so overboard on creating their modes. You don’t need a mode to be a multi-tiered, almost no room-for-mistakes marathon. The most popular pins of all-time didn’t do that. What are you trying to compensate for, Zen?
I’ve had these blaster shots roll up the lane and down the outlane. Made shots should never have potential to die. Ever.
Most of our records are set by Angela these days, but I am the reigning Star Wars A New Hope Arcade Mode World Champion at the time of publication. Also, my father is A New Hope’s One Ball Challenge World Champion and Angela is the Distance Challenge World Champion and a former Flips Challenge record holder. VICE FAMILY DOMINATION!
For all my whining, there’s a reason why we keep coming back to A New Hope, and not just because it’s the first table alphabetically. Long as the modes are, they never feel like a grind, like some Zens get saddled with. It’s a good case study on how fun a Zen table can be even when they screw up so many things. The layout is iconic. It should feel gimmicky, right? It’s f’n giant horseshoe right in the middle of the table. That’s ALL it is. But it works. The multiballs are all exciting AND challenging. The rails are brutal, BUT, you’re giving enough nudge warnings to defend against them. Angela, our best player, credits A New Hope with learning how to defend the outlanes with Zen’s physics. We all agree the biggest problem isn’t the magnet or the long modes: it’s the lack of focus. A New Hope doesn’t do any one thing spectacularly. It tries to be all-encompassing of the video pinball experience. That’s the thing about being a jack of all trades: they’re masters of nothing. Apparently, that includes The Force too. Cathy: GOOD (3/5) Angela: GOOD (3/5) Oscar: GOOD(3/5) Jordi: GOOD (3/5) **CLEAN SCORECARD**
Whirlwind
Platform: Pinball FX
Stand Alone Release ($5.49)
Included with Pinball Pass
Designed by Pat Lawlor
Conversion by Zoltan Pataki
Released to Pinball FX June 8, 2023 Awarded a Clean Scorecard by The Pinball Chick Team
Real tables of Whirlwind are infamous for popping bricked ramp shots. Each of the Vices had MULTIPLE instances of triggering fly-overs in this digital pin, only instead of going into the chute, the fly-overs would get “captured” by the right habitrail, which almost always led to a drain. The ball returning to the playfield was nearly impossible to defend against when it happened. It would have no speed or momentum and limply fall straight between the flippers. At one point, it cost me a world record in the arcade mode. Well, you know.. missing the shot ALSO cost me it, if you want to be technical, BUT THE FLY-OVER DIDN’T HELP, and it’s made worse by the fact that Angela took that same world record the very next game.
Whirlwind feels like the last Pat Lawlor table that came out of his mad scientist laboratory that didn’t completely make logical sense, before whatever epiphany he had where he suddenly could do no wrong for a six year stretch. Funhouse? Now THERE’S a table that makes sense. Whirlwind has a roughness to it that makes you raise a skeptical eyebrow, as if to say “you thought this was going to be a lot better, didn’t you?” I think Lawlor thought this would be his magnum opus, and it’s not even close. In fact, it might actually be Lawlor’s least elegant table that doesn’t rhyme with “Chafe Whacker.” The three spin discs just don’t add as much anarchy as you’d assume they would. I feared the slingshots a LOT more than the discs. Thankfully, on the default settings, even an average player should be able to grind out an extra ball in a couple seconds just by shooting the right ramp a few times followed by one wide-open drop target. If you were an arcade patron in the late 80s/early 90s, I imagine Whirlwind seemed like an astonishingly generous pin, a rarity for this era. Of course, that’s lost in translation on the journey home, along with the famous fan topper that spins when the discs on the table do. You could do what I did and hold a portable fan to your father and sister’s face when the discs start spinning, but I don’t recommend it UNLESS you’re 100% certain your family’s threats to murder you in your sleep are empty.
Since Pinball FX’s physics seem to be tailored to block not-so-advanced advanced moves like post transfers, we were forced to use the cellars for right-to-left passing. I suppose it helps drill the shot into muscle memory, but it also brings into focus the problem with Pinball FX: it REALLY doesn’t want you to pass the damn ball from flipper to flipper. You know, like you can in real pinball. This is a table that NEEDS passing to work perfectly to maximize its playability.
Still, one has to cheer for the absolutely bonkers design. Two clusters of jet bumpers, each with its own “mode” attached to it (for lack of a better term). Three spin discs. One of the finest uses of a raising/lowering ramp. This is a really visually striking pin. Of course, the biggest issue with Whirlwind’s design is that it only requires you to drill three shots into muscle memory: the upper cellar, the ramp, and the bat flipper’s left ramp shot. Those three shots alone score all the jackpots, light all the “modes” and allow you to play around the spin discs, which were never really that big a risk in the first place. Well, provided you don’t hit the right slingshot. It’s a serial killer, that one. You can shoot the compass lights if you want, but completing the left ramp checks off those lights too. Not only that, but it relights the cellar lamp, which is the table’s driver that activates the modes. While the left ramp is a difficult shot, it’s also not as risky as some of those compass lights are. This was why my father refuses to go above GOOD for Whirlwind: it’s an overvalued shot that throws Whirlwind’s risk/reward balance off a cliff, and that’s even when it’s not the jackpot shot for multiball. It offers more bang for your buck to shoot it instead of touring the board, giving you the cellar light AND inching you closer to multiball. Remarkably, it never feels like a grind, though. Even if you only take those three shots, they offer enough variation and challenge to make this a fun experience.
Jordi on Table Effects: With Whirlwind, Zen did a great job of capturing the concept of getting caught in a storm. As the three disks spin, the effects get better and, crucially, they never block the view of the ball. This is how the special effects SHOULD work on all tables. Indiana Jones, I’m looking at your airplanes.
There’s been a recent patch that seems to have eliminated the ability to shoot the left ramp, aka the most difficult shot on the table, using the plunger. I was baffled when that was a thing before, because if that’s something you can do on a real Whirlwind, I must have never played on a properly maintained table. Well, that’s gone, and that’s a positive step. What isn’t good is Pinball FX’s physics, ever since the BIG physics update that Pinball FX3 did after I started covering digital pinball, seems to be tailored to prevent advanced pinball moves. Whirlwind is a table that absolutely requires being able to cleanly and efficiently do a post transfer. This is like the most fundamental “advanced” pinball move, so much so that my father had taught me how to do them by the time I was 5 years old. NONE OF US can do them consistently on Pinball FX. The ball gets too much weird, undefined spin. Where is that spin coming from? It makes no sense.
We nicknamed the right slingshot “Murder Inc.” This is arcade accurate, by the way. As big a problem as Zen has with overly-sensitive and violent slingshots in their original works, real Whirlwinds absolutely murderlize balls with the slings.
That’s what I think the most notable thing about Whirlwind is: it highlights why the current Pinball FX physics are even further apart from being lifelike than Pinball FX3’s were when I started covering pinball. Post transfers? Free catches? Alley transfers? Really basic “advanced” moves? SIGNIFICANTLY harder to do, if not impossible, and it seems to be tied to the ball’s rotation since it appears to have backspin and completely loses its momentum on a dime. This happens CONSTANTLY in Pinball FX and prevents even fundamental moves from being viable. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that it was done to beef-up the difficulty for professionals by taking away their “cheats” or something. Take that, Tarek Oberdieck! How else do you explain why, in 2023, Zen Studios keeps putting out tables with worse and worse physics when the technology running the simulations is getting better? Maybe they cut off their nose to spite their face (and pros) because someone saw the same handful of players on top of the leaderboards and panicked. Even if I’m wrong as to WHY they did it, they did it, and some tables suffer for it. Whirlwind certainly does, along with every Williams pin. But hey, I wish I could pass the ball in their recent Mandalorian table too, so even their original works suffer.
If you think the physics are murderous in Whirlwind, hoooo boy, just wait until we finish THIS review.
Meanwhile, they never updated the Star Wars Pinball collection on Switch, where I can literally feel the difference. I can pull off the same type of moves I do on a real table on there, despite the fact NONE OF THOSE WERE EVER REAL TABLES! It’s much more life-like! I switched back over to Pinball FX, tried fundamental passes, and the ball would just stop halfway and fall lifelessly down the drain. Another sign that they’ve tweaked the physics can be found in their Jurassic World build for Pinball FX, where the mode start sinkhole just lifelessly drops the ball literally right at the drain. I’m not talking about bad luck. I mean the mode start just sort of lets go of the ball AIMED directly between the flippers. It didn’t used to do this. Angela played three games of Jurassic World this week where, including ball saves, the mode start VUK threw an unplayable EVEN WITH NUDGE (and nobody seems to like Pinball FX’s nudge but they stubbornly refuse to improve it) in 75% of the times she hit it. This is what it looks like (sorry, we play in table mode).
Now, to be clear, Jurassic World is the only Pinball FX3 table that is so busted by the translation to Pinball FX that The Pinball Chick Team has no choice but to rate the table BROKEN. But, I still wish Zen Studios would completely overhaul their physics. We’ve all reached the point where we prefer Zaccaria, because we can actually pull-off the moves that you can really do in pinball. It’s 2023. Why is this not better? Why is Pinball FX’s physics REGRESSING towards feeling more like video pinball and less like a video pinball simulation. Is it to make it compatible with the (100% optional if you’re on a Williams table) enhanced graphics? Because in today’s Pinball FX, you can’t pass the ball. You can’t do live catches. Three physics modes and none of them feel right. That’d be impressive if not for the fact that it’s not as good as tiny upstart Magic Pixel’s physics? In fact, it’s not even really close anymore. Can I do a transfer pass? No? Then it’s not pinball. It’s video pinball. If Zen’s fine with that, cool. It’s not a deal breaker for us, obviously. The angles off the flippers and the ball speed MOSTLY are accurate. It’s just hugely disappointing given they were on the right track years ago, then the train went completely off the tracks. The ball behavior never feels right, and it used to. If their goal was to stop Tarek, fail. He still dominates the leaderboards for the Williams pins. He’s a good shooter, and that’s really the only aspect of pinball that Pinball FX is #1 with: shooting angles. My muscle memory from real tables works on Pinball FX. That’s 80% of the struggle in making realistic video pinball. But finesse? Do you know what the key to playing Whirlwind is? Passing. And what is ten times harder to do on Pinball FX today than the Pinball FX3 that I started playing video pinball with? Passing. You can do better physics, Zen, and I know you can BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE! Cathy: GOOD (3/5) Angela: GREAT (4/5) Oscar: GOOD (3/5) Jordi: GREAT (4/5)
Wacky Races
Yo! Noid
Super Castlevania IV
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
Castlevania
Jaws
South Park: Butters Very Own Pinball Game
South Park: Super-Sweet Pinball
A New Hope
Whirlwind
Indie Gamer Chick 
You must be logged in to post a comment.