Castlevania: The Adventure

THE BAD:
Frustrating in a bad way at first
Cheap deaths
Slowdowns
Controls feel a bit stiffer than normal, especially the jumping
Controls are slightly delayed, though this is kind of rare
Precision jumping sucks

SUMMARY:
Castlevania: The Adventure is nothing short of an above average game made for the Game Boy. Its jump from console to handheld was received with mixed replies

The year is 1576 and you're Christopher Belmont (from here on out, he will be referred to as Chris). Dracula is terrorizing Transylvania and it's up to Chris to slay Dracula, just like Simon and Trevor do in the original NES games. It's like Castlevania 1 and 3's stories, there isn't much but hey, its 8-bit, so... moving on...

You'll be constantly whipping your way through 4 levels of monsters, among some platforming Konami decided to put into the game. The former should feel familiar to seasoned Castlevania players (and even newer Castlevania players, kind of like me), and... I guess the latter too, but for all the wrong reasons.

The game plays like a sidescrolling adventure game with some action here and there.. While walking along Transylvania, enemies will attack you. This whip is your only form of self-defense... I am not kidding, the whip will be your only defense against the undead and Dracula. Unlike the 3 NES Castlevanias, there are NO sub-weapons. That means no holy water, no cross boomerangs, no axes, no knives, no nothing, you just have the whip. Your whip is also fairly weak. However, you can make it stronger. Whip one of the candles you find, hope an orb comes, pick it up and there you go! Just don't get hit or your whip is weak again.

One thing that grates at me is that Chris doesn't control as well as Simon/Trevor do in the 3 NES titles. He is slower and a bad jumper. If you want specifics, it takes about a second for Simon/Trevor to do 1 and a 1/2 steps, while Chris does 7/8 of a step in a second, so it'd naturally take longer for Chris to move through the levels.

As for jumping specifics, Chris jumps like Simon and Trevor, in the sense that as soon as you press A, you can't control your jump from there on. Before jumping, make sure you know how fast you're going, what direction you're jumping in and where you're jumping from. This will be the leading cause of death in this game, because it is so easy to overshoot or undershoot a jump (you undershoot way more than overshoot, though overshooting a jump is possible too), especially on the near microscopic Game Boy screen, because you have to be at the VERY edge of platforms or you'll miss the platform, which either forces you to repeat the platform jumping again or kills you. The jumping will get on your nerves, but if you truly want to enjoy the game, you might want to persevere.

Each level surprisingly varies themselves from one another. The main objective of every level is to get from point A to point B and defeat the boss, although it's the little things that separate each level from one another. The levels themselves are fairly different from one another. The first is a simple sidescroller with a jumping part at the end. The second is basically a test of platforming but also tries to incoporate a maze towards the end. The third is a true test as you have to be on your toes, otherwise you get impaled by spikes. The final level is basically killing tougher enemies while scrolling and jumping.

There is a decent variety of enemies, and they range from monsters taking a midnight stroll to monsters who are so annoying that you'll rip your pubes out in frustration. The spitters are a great example of annoying. Although not much is needed to kill them, the fireballs they spit out (which is why they're called spitters) move at a fast pace and bounce around walls. You can destroy them in one hit even with the weak whip, but actually hitting them without getting hit yourself is easier said than done. You then have nightstalkers that move slow, but can take a lot of hits, plus they throw hooks at a decently fast pace, and they either go under at release and over when coming back, or the other way around, but either way, it's unpredictable and it will bloody hurt you. I'd say that the spitters are more annoying, but the nightstalkers will piss you off.

As fearsome as the enemies sound, your biggest enemy are pits. They have no physical form. They are what you fall in when you miss a few precise jumps because the jumping physics in this game sucks. Falling down a pit results in instant death.

Bosses are fairly cool, though. They are tough fights at first, but once you learn their patterns, it's only a matter of time until they fall. Whether its an armored knight, a gang of moles, a batty night or Dracula himself, they are fearsome and decently tough, though they're easy once you get the hang of it. As much as I like the boss selection, I can't help but say that this needs more Death. Death has been in so many sidescrolling Castlevania games (mostly older ones, but whatever) that it's crazy not to include him. That is my, honest to god, biggest gripe with the boss selection. Death would've been kick ass to fight! Oh well, what we got was good too. At least Dracula turned up, though I can't help but think...shouldn't it be the other way around? It'd make more sense to fight the bat, then the human. Oh well. The fact that Dracula can basically kill you until you lose millions of continues until you finally memorize Dracula's attack patterns and attacks in generals makes up for the form disorder.

Now dying isn't as bad here as it gets in other games. If you die, you restart either at a check point in the level, or at the beginning of the level, and if you lose all of your lives, you can continue and you just start at the beginning of the level. There seems to be infinity continues, so don't fret too much if you lose a continue. Also, this is much better than in games like Ninja Gaiden 3 (NES) where there ARE continues for a HARD AS NAILS GAME (I'd say much harder than this game).

So how does this game hold up graphically when compared to its NES counterparts? Well, as a whole, the visuals hold up well for 1989 and an early Game Boy game. Chris's character model is equally as impressive as Simon's and Trevor's (considering they look very, very similar but some just have color changes), which were quite impressive and makes them stand out from everything else. The foregrounds look pretty sweet, as they're quite detailed, but they're faded away so that A) We don't get distracted much by them and B) Some sense of perspective. Overall, it holds up very well visually.

Is this game worth bashing, buying or what? Well, give this a read:

Gameplay: 4
Aside from frustrating parts and the occasional cheap death that comes your way, this game is actually kind of fun to play. Whipping enemies and slaying Dracula, as well as being able to increase in difficulty every time you finish the game and see the credits roll really sounds like a fun game that everyone should be playing, not bashing. Though I think there should be less precision jumping moments that got really annoying. I know it's technically 4 levels long, but Jesus H. tapdancing Christ...

Control: 2
'Stiff' is the best way to describe the controls here. The game forces you to do some precision jumping, which will annoy the hell out of you considering the jump controls are among some of the worst known to mankind. It's too easy to overshoot or undershoot jumps here considering, as soon as you jump, you keep going in the direction at the speed you're going at. They're also slightly delayed at times, but that's not too often so that shouldn't annoy you too much. Control scheme is easy to remember and is essentially the same as the NES Castlevanias'.

Story: 4
Christopher Belmont has to find and slay Dracula. Incredibly simple, but it works very well. The problem is that you have to actually look in the instruction manual or on the internet to find out stuff about the story, as nothing is explained. Who cares, though, it's a damn Game Boy game from 1989, what do you expect?

Graphics: 4
I think it looks quite impressive, but the goddamn slowdowns that occur throughout really let this part down. Sometimes, they're not too annoying, but other times, they're annoying as all hell. The backgrounds are quite detailed, though it does get repetitive looking at them until you finish the level. Foreground stuff and character models aren't too bad either.

Sound: 4
The soundtrack is quite catchy, and I think a few songs in the entire soundtrack isn't too bad. I mean, Super Mario Brothers has a few songs to its soundtrack, and people think of it as the equivalent of Jesus running on water. Let this one slide. Sound effects are usual 8-bit affair, can't exactly criticize them. Just plops, blips, bwuops and the like, nothing too much to hate or love.

Lifespan: 3
The game lasts about an hour to finish it the first time. However, once the credits finish rolling (if you don't turn off the Game Boy at that point), there will be a "Stage 5" (which is Stage 1 but much harder), and you're basically repeating the game on a harder difficulty. If you found the game too hard and frustrating the first time, you'd be put off by the increased difficulty. If you didn't, well, more power to you. Go knock yourself out. There's also some secret rooms which give you many items to help you on your way, but actually getting to them is a real pain in the ass to get to.

Funfactor: 3
FRUSTRATION...HO! If you though the 3 NES Castlevanias were frustrating, you'll be finding it hard not to be hugely frustrated by this game. It's not as hard as them, but it's more frustrating because of all the precision jumping that needs to be done and all the cheap deaths that will come your way. Controls aside, you may feel that you can have fun with this game.


Bottom line:
Castlevania: The Adventure is a game that shouldn't be pointlessly bashed or overlooked, but it isn't a classic game either, and I wouldn't exactly recommend buying it... I guess borrow/rent before you buy it. It's a very frustrating game to play, and if you're easy to anger, this wouldn't really be the game for you. If you consider yourself a collector of Castlevania games but don't have this, you owe it to yourself to buy this, add it to your collection and play it.

I give this game a 3.5 out of 5.