From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - Finding Dracula's Second Part
Did my search yield a vital fragment, or was I cursed to endure an endless series of horrible nights?

My early experiences with Castlevania had left me beaten and scarred. Never before had a game defeated me so thoroughly and left me feeling so dispirited. My sense was that I'd never be able to beat such a game.

The cause of my pain was the Frankenstein & Igor battle, which had proven to be an insurmountable obstacle. There had been multiple instances in which I performed well against them and drained their health bar down to four bars or fewer, yes, but in each one, they (and by "they" I of course mean "Igor") found a way to make a big comeback and hand me a crushing loss. After suffering such a defeat for, oh, the 100th time, I gave up. Seconds after the fatal fireball crashed into my face, I angrily lunged toward the NES and switched it off; subsequently I yanked out the game's cartridge, convulsively jammed it into its sleeve, and then violently jammed it back into its slot in my game case. And I'm sure that made a few idle threats in following ("I'm bookin' a flight to Japan right now! You hear me, Konami?!").

"I never want to see that game again!" I shouted as I stormed out of my room. "Let it rot in the game case!"

From then on, I happily avoided Castlevania. And in the following weeks, as I became completely immersed in all of the new games that were coming into my life, I summarily forgot all about Konami's spirit-destroying action-platformer.

Choosing to shun it was the appropriate response, I thought. I mean, what reason was there for me to ever want to revisit a game that had caused me so much pain and suffering?

Well, I found two reasons.

The first was that a completely unexpected development helped to renew my interest in the game (I'll talk about this in a bit). The other was my fascination with Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, which made the strongest of first impressions with me and continued to stick in my mind long after the day in which I was introduced to it.

Up until that day, I remained only vaguely aware of Simon's Quest's existence. My exposure to it was limited to the viewing of two or three small, blurry screenshots of its stage environments. That was it. I'd never seen it in action, and I was completely ignorant as to the type of game it was. This was the case because I didn't want to see it in action or learn anything about it. I was so angry with the original Castlevania that I was militantly against having anything to do with either it or its "dumb-looking" sequel. "There's no way that I'm ever again going to give precious attention to something with 'Castlevania' in its title!" I'd tell myself whenever I'd see the name "Castlevania II" in print.

It turned out, though, that fate had other ideas.

So one day I was at my uncle house's in New Jersey for one of my family's annual late-year visits. While I was talking with my cousins, they remembered that I had recently come to own Castlevania, and, mistakenly believing that I was a fan of the game, they excitedly offered to introduce me to its recently released sequel. I had no real interest in seeing it, of course, but I decided to take them up on the offer anyway because even engaging with the most unappealing of games was still far more interesting than listening to adults talk about money problems, family issues, and other boring nonsense. So they took me up to their room and proceeded to pop Simon's Quest into their NES.

What happened next surprised me: As I was watching them play through the game's earliest segments, I found that I was actually intrigued by what I was seeing--highly so, I would say. Simon's Quest, despite its sharing some mechanical similarities with Castlevania (Simon still moved about stiffly and clunkily), just looked so different from its predecessor--so visually distinct and thus so mysteriously attractive. And it gave off such a unique vibe--one that was so powerful that it managed to keep me in a state of complete enchantment. I couldn't look away from TV; the only thing I desired to do was meticulously examine the imagery that was being displayed on its screen.

In the months that followed, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd experienced that day. What I saw amounted to only a few minutes of gameplay, sure, but what Simon's Quest had exhibited in that short period of time was so wonderfully intriguing that it made me want to know everything about the game. Putting together a mental image of its world was fun exercise, sure, but it wasn't enough; I needed some added texture.

So I decided to read up on the game.

The only thing I could find was a preview. Unfortunately, though, it was so vague in its description that I came away with no sense of what Simon's Quest was actually about ("Dracula's back, so now you have to hunt him!" was about all I learned). There was nothing in there about a "day-to-night system," "RPG elements," or the little fact that it changed to a whole different genre. And because I lacked that information, all I could do was guess as to its nature. "Is it simply a Metroid-like version of Castlevania or something'?" I wondered.

I didn't know what to think.

Still, I remained deeply fascinated with the world I'd seen. For months and months, I continued to recall images of Simon Belmont urgently rushing his way across dilapidated bridges and other mysteriously wondrous locations, the majority of which were eerily shadowed by oppressive mountainscapes and long stretches of grim-looking woodland. Those were the kind of settings that I loved.

The problem, though, was that I still didn't feel compelled to actually own Simon's Quest--even then, when I was in the midst of my "copycat phase," during which I desired to own any game that I'd seen or played at my friends and cousins' houses. It felt too much like a risk. For all I knew, Simon's Quest might have shared the wrong kind of commonality with Castlevania; it might have contained the same type of punishing, hatefully designed gameplay. I just couldn't take the chance.

The Castlevania series and I just weren't meant to be together, it seemed.

For about a year, I had no further exposure to the series. But then, suddenly, something big happened: On one fateful day, during the winter months of 1990, my brother, James, and his friends decided to head over to one of the local electronics store and buy themselves some games. Before leaving, James came upstairs, walked on over to the den, and asked me, "Are there any games you want me to pick up for you while I'm at the store?" Having nothing in mind but desperate for a new game, I decided to leave it to chance; I handed him $40 and passively told him to "just get anything," trusting his judgment in light of the numerous previous instances in which he had acquainted me with games that I would up loving.

It so happened that he came home with Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.

"Oh great," I thought, annoyedly, "a sequel to a game I despise!"

Though, because I had nothing better to do, I decided that I might as well give it a quick look. I mean, even dispassionately sampling a video game was better than watching news, which was about all that was on during those hours of the day. I figured I'd spend an hour or two with the game and then toss it aside; then I could start thinking about my next purchase.

Of course, events didn't play out like I thought they would.

The long and short of it is that I wound up loving Dracula's Curse. It clicked with me big time. I couldn't stop playing it. Quickly it became one of my all-time-favorite NES games. And as the best games were usually apt to do, it left me wanting more--something else in addition. For that, there was only one place I could turn. There was only one game to which I could look for more of that same brand of action.

So almost two years after I'd last laid a finger on it, I pulled Castlevania's cartridge out from my game rack and popped it into the NES, determined to show it what I had learned and subsequently conquer it.

And that's how it went down. I returned to Castlevania, put my much-improved gaming skills to use, and completed what I once perceived as a game that was too difficult for someone like me (in those days, I had a tendency to think of myself as someone who had a low skill ceiling).

My conquering of Castlevania was more than just a landmark occurrence in my gaming history. It also served as an important lesson; the experience taught me that there was true value in (a) working hard to improve your skills and (b) using both those and your newfound confidence to overcome seemingly-insurmountable obstacles. "If I put in the effort to learn and thus improve my gaming skills, I'll actually be able to beat these ridiculously hard games!" I began to believe.

Also, the thrill of victory served to wash away all of those negative feelings and leave me in a state of catharsis. Consequently it helped to unlock my true, repressed feelings for Castlevania, for which, I had to admit, I had a great deal of appreciation. I could no longer deny that my criticisms were coming from a place of bitterness--that I was, in reality, angry at myself for my having displayed a rotten "I can't be expected to improve, so the game must conform to me!" attitude and blaming the game for my own failures. Castlevania, I was now happy to say, was a well-designed game whose challenge-level was just right.

In the weeks and months that followed, I played through Castlevania again and again, and in that stretch of time, it managed to progress its way to the top portion of my favorite-games list. Also, I was continuing to derive great enjoyment from Dracula's Curse, which had since come to occupy the list's top spot. And the two games' capturing of my heart served to elevate the Castlevania series as a whole into my gaming pantheon, where it joined with a collective that included the likes of the Mega Man and Super Mario Bros. series.

Still, there was something missing.

Now, I'm not sure why it took so long in following for me to consider picking up Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (maybe I was short on money?), but I remember that my lacking access to it--and thus the complete trilogy--continued to gnaw at me (I was, after all, a collector). It was only after I'd spent an additional year learning to passionately love Castlevania and Dracula's Curse--my adoration for them having hit its crescendo--that I finally felt motivated enough to go out and grab myself a copy of Simon's Quest. And I was very excited about the prospect. I couldn't wait to revisit the intriguing world of Transylvania and its wonderfully eerie towns, bridges and forests--images of which had been stuck in memory for over a year and a half--and finally play through them myself.

But there was a big problem: It was currently somewhere between late 1990 and early 1991, and the game, by that point, had been out of print for two years, so it was now extremely rare. I became painfully aware of that fact when I went looking for it. No store had it in stock--not any the local outlets or big chains like Toys "R" Us, Electronics Boutique and Radio Shack. I spent what felt like weeks searching through every store that had even the slightest connection to electronics, and I continued to come up empty.

I even dragged my poor mother into the effort. I begged her to drive me around Brooklyn and thus provide me the opportunity to cover more ground. That way, I could survey block after block of passenger-side store displays. I was looking for anything that resembled a rectangular silver game box.

Sadly, every such expedition ended the same way: with me coming away emptyhanded.

"This is ridiculous," I said to myself, completely exasperated. "Why the hell is it impossible to find a copy of this game?!"

It was as if Simon's Quest had ceased to exist.

It seemed, also, that I was doomed to having a permanent hole in my gaming library.

So I had no reason to believe that our last-gasp trip to the Caesar's Bay Bazaar shopping center would produce anything other than more disappointment.

Not surprisingly, none of the stores on the mall's first floor had the game in their bins, and the vendors at the game-centric booths continued to act as though I was requesting photos of the Loch Ness Monster. Same ol' deal.

I combed the entire floor and once again came up emptyhanded. And at that point, I sighed and thought to myself, "Maybe I should forget it. I mean, I'm never going to find this game."

I resigned myself to that reality and decided that it was time to end the search. With nothing left to do, I dejectedly followed my mother around as she browsed through the stores looking for whatever it was she was interested in but had no intention of buying. The worst part was that she also wanted to browse through all of the stores on the mall's second floor! "Oh joy!" I thought to myself in the most annoyed manner. "Now I get to spend another hour lifelessly wandering around this stupid place!"

That's when a miracle occurred.

I was following my mother around the building's second floor--all the while lagging behind and moping about--when suddenly I spotted it: the item I so desired! There, on display in a dimly lit mom-and-pop store (run by an elderly couple who didn't seem to be the type who cared about video games) that was buried deep in the far-right corner, was a single copy of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest!

When I said on my Castlevania site that "The box, with its silvery glow, called to me as if it were a chalice awaiting its holder," I was exaggerating, yes, but it's not far off from how I was feeling in the moment. It was as if I'd completed a great quest that began many years before, and I was finally finding reward for an effort that had come to entail a whole lot of adversity and disappointment. And when I took that shiny box into my hands, I was overcome with an unbelievable feeling of ecstasy.

At long last, I was now the owner of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest!

I couldn't wait to get home and start tearing into it.

And, well, Simon's Quest certainly turned out to be much different from the other two entries. It was only after I'd read its manual and moved about its first couple of screens that I began to get a sense of what it was. As I suspected, it played a lot like Metroid; it was not, like Castlevania and Dracula's Curse, a stage-by-stage action game but instead an action-adventure game that provided a large open world that could be freely explored. I was excited to learn as much because I'd since become a huge fan of Metroid, and consequently I'd grown to love the exploration-based action-adventure genre. So Simon's Quest was like a combination of two of my favorite things: Castlevania and Metroid!

"What can be better than that?!" I thought.

What also made me happy was that Simon's Quest, despite its having changed genres, was able to retain most of the series' core elements: Simon still had that same clunky walking animation and that same stiff, inflexible jump. You could still obtain sub-weapons (and, in addition, store multiple sub-weapons in your inventory and freely switch between them!) and use one by simultaneously pressing up on the d-pad and the attack button. And you could still collect hearts and use them to power said sub-weapons. These elements made me feel right at home in the game's unfamiliar world.

Immediately I likened Simon's Quest to Super Mario Bros. 2 and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, both of which, similarly, changed their respective series' directions but made certain to maintain a strong connection by preserving the mechanics and gameplay elements that defined what the series were. I loved that Simon's Quest was able to do that. I loved that it was able to establish itself as something wholly unique and at the same time still play like Castlevania.

Though, I wasn't surprised to find that Simon's Quest's world had a wonderfully unique, highly alluring atmosphere to it, no. That was something I already knew; it was, as I said, the game aspect I couldn't stop thinking about in the weeks and months following my first viewing of the game. It didn't feel like the other series games; it environments had such a distinctive air to them--the kind I didn't have the words to describe (words like haunting and mysterious seemed to undersell it). All I wanted to do was absorb it.

In the early going, that's exactly what I focused on doing. Since I wasn't yet sure where the game wanted me to go--how I was supposed to go about finding its "five mansions"--it made sense to instead aimlessly explore and take in the sights. I fondly recall how I uneasily roamed about the deteriorated, uninviting-looking towns and conversed with their shady, often-hostile citizens. How I traversed my way through the seemingly endless woodland and intently examined its assemblages of spooky-looking trees, whose between-spaces--the small open patches that managed to poke their way through the trees' tangled branches--gave view to a bleakly colored, foreboding sky. And how I frequently stopped to observe the enchantingly eerie mountainscapes and let them do what they desired to do: stir my imagination and invite me to think about the types of places that might be resting beyond them. And I had a lot of fun doing this.

The soundtrack contained only a limited number of tunes, disappointingly, but the ones it had stood among the best I'd ever heard in an NES game. They were finely composed and high in quality, and moreover, they did an amazing job of establishing tone and mood. Each one did excellently to provide its setting an air of desperation. And each one had the power to make me feel as though the situation was dire--that I had to act with urgency lest I'd be beset by misfortune. Simon's Quest's music had me convinced that it was never safe to remain idle--even in towns during the daytime. "Any of these buildings can be hiding an unseen danger that's just waiting to pop out from a door and get me," I kept thinking.

Though it could sometimes hurt the game's flow, the day-to-night system was, I felt, an important feature because it allowed for the game to emotionally manipulate me in its own unique way. It kept me bouncing between two separate emotional states: palpably tense and temporarily relieved. As much as I liked Monster Dance (an outstanding piece of 8-bit music), I was fearful of what it represented: the anxiety-inducing nighttime scene! I'd always be hoping that I wouldn't have to listen to it much longer--that it would soon fade out and give way to daytime music, which made me feel much less nervous.

So yeah--I was very much enamored with the game's settings and music and the wonderfully eerie, hauntingly grim-feeling atmosphere they worked together to create. It was those aspects, more than any others, that drew me to Simon's Quest.

Oh, but I was still a pretty big fan of some of the game's other aspects. I liked, for instance, the enemy cast and the way in which its members communicated the inherent dangers of their respective habitats. I remember how the presence of the fast, deadly Two-Headed Creatures, which I first encountered in the woods found west of Jova, served as a stern warning that I didn't belong in place (not yet, at least). And there were a whole bunch of other new, interesting creatures whose presence likewise caused me to give pause and tentatively assess the situation ("I'm not sure that I should be here," I'd think upon seeing them for the first time. Among their type were the creepy claw-handed freddie (which was obviously inspired by the horror-movie villain Freddy Kruger); the weird, threatening-looking fire man (who, scarily, was much more nimble than his Dracula's Curse counterpart); and the odd-looking slimy barsinister, whose presence made trudging through marsh even more of a nightmare.

It was unique villains like them that helped Simon's Quest to establish its distinctive character--its contrasting "outside-the-castle vibe," as I thought of it. To me, their very presence was a distinguishing feature. "These are the guys who hang out outside the castle," I'd think to myself whenever I'd see one of them. "They're much different than the types of foes that regularly inhabit Dracula's haunt."

Also, I was quite fond of the game's mansions, which were inhospitable, certainly, but had a curiously "investigative" air to them. They weren't amazingly labyrinthine, no, but still I liked to thoroughly explore them and do so with the belief that there were unspoken-of treasures hiding behind their walls. And all the while, their enemies--all of those armed skeletons and knights--and their beguiling, often-maddening theme would work to establish a disquieting tone--a feeling that you might get trapped in one of these places forever and ultimately join the ranks of Dracula's dark army. What really helped to set that mood were the recurring images of hanging skeletons--long-deceased lynching victims who, I theorized, wound up in that state because they entered the mansions looking for treasure, became hopelessly lost, and were inevitably discovered and slain by patrolling guardians!

Those small details, man.

Though, there was one little problem: Suddenly I couldn't figure out how to progress any further. After I finished the first mansion, that is, I ran out of land to explore. In the following hour or so, I re-explored the entire map several times but was unable to find a second mansion or, well, any new location (and I never once suspected that the Ferryman could be gatekeeping anything as important as, oh, the final two-thirds of the game). There was absolutely nowhere else to go, it seemed. I was completely stuck.

Hitting a wall like that was extremely frustrating.

"What the hell am I missing?" I continued to wonder as I circled the map for the 9th or 10th time.

I was so thoroughly stumped--so lacking for hunches or ideas--that I had no choice but to seek hints. So I resorted to using strategy guides. First I turned to a book that I'd recently purchased at my school's book sale: Jeff Rovin's How to Win at Nintendo Games #3, which just happened to cover Simon's Quest. It was by reading this book that I learned about such things as (a) making lakes "rise" by kneeling in front of them while having a crystal equipped and (b) influencing the Ferryman with Dracula's heart. And I learned from Nintendo Power (the Counselor's Corner section, I think) that, most ridiculously, you could make a transportation-capable tornado appear by kneeling on Deborah's Cliff ("Are you friggin' serious?!" was all I could think after reading that).

Now, I was used to these kinds of games being somewhat arcane or cryptic, sure, but that bit about the tornado was just nuts. We're talkin' about a whole next level of obscurity--the type that causes you think, "How in the world would anyone ever figure this out?! You could play this game for a million years and never think to do something like that!"

I mean, yeah--one of the villagers might have mentioned something about a cliff and engaging in some type of action while standing near it, but there was no reason to believe that what he or she said wasn't complete gibberish--just poorly translated nonsense--like, you know, pretty much everything else said by villagers.

At the rate I was going, I probably would have had an easier time finding the actual Death Star.

What the hell were the designers thinking?

Right--"Let's make this game as obscure as possible so that idiot kids have to buy our expensive strategy guide in order to finish it!"

Honestly, though, I wasn't angry about having to consult those game guides, and having some of the answers spoiled didn't dampen the experience for me in any way. No--I was having a great time with Simon's Quest regardless. I was deeply engrossed in its world; I loved looking at it, thinking about it, and exploring its every location. So what if I couldn't decipher the villagers' "clues" or find any hidden books; or if I wasn't aware that Dracula's body parts had special properties and that the game had a leveling system? The only thing that mattered was that I was happy to be playing Simon's Quest.

Now, I couldn't ignore that Simon's Quest had a couple of unfortunate design flaws, no. Its localization was terrible (though, it did have me convinced that "prossess" was a real word--perhaps, I thought, a high-English variation of the word possess). Most of its sub-weapons were useless. Some of its puzzles, as mentioned, had incredibly arcane solutions. It was very light on bosses (there were only two in total), and the battles against them were disappointing because they were essentially nothing more than giant minor enemies (the Grim Reaper was merely a large, HP-rich tracker-type enemy) who were designed as such because the game's engine was apparently inflexible. And, yeah, it was a little on the easy side, which, I thought, was kinda odd for a game with "Castlevania" in its title (I was expecting to be seriously challenged, but sadly the combat's difficulty-level never raised beyond "mild").

But, really, I wasn't bothered by any of that. None of it detracted from the fun. None of it was able to break my immersion or change how I felt about the game's world, which was as engrossing as any.

I just liked being there, man.

That's the thing: People are always having arguments about "graphics versus gameplay," both of which are important aspects, certainly, but what they usually fail to consider, I think, is the value of a game's ability to connect with you emotionally and make you feel as though you're part of its world. And Simon's Quest, much like Metroid and Rygar, did an amazing job of doing that.

I remember the night I beat Simon's Quest--the way in which it all went down: Finally, after many hours of exploring, I located and gained entry into Castlevania, whose main hall, I was surprised to learn, was completely abandoned (because it displayed a tattered look and a contrastingly ashen color-scheme, I didn't realize that its background visuals were almost identical to those seen in Castlevania's main hall). The absence of enemies and the disturbingly eerie musical theme worked to fill me with a feeling of unease. "Something, somewhere, has to be waiting to jump out and pounce on me," I thought.

At that moment, though, I had to pause the game because my father had just gotten home from work, and he brought me a treat: a hamburger on a toasted English muffin. I recall spending the next 5-10 minutes eating the burger while pacing back and forth across the upstairs hallway (which was right outside my room) and excitedly wondering about who or what was waiting for me in the spaces beyond the main hall. I'm not sure which dining establishment the burger was from, but I remember that it tasted great and that I never again had anything like it.

Soon after, I solved the riddle of Castlevania's ruins and then proceeded to resurrect and defeat the curiously ghostly Count Dracula (with the help of a few laurels, of course). And with that victory, I'd finally beaten all three games in the NES trilogy!

That was a good night, I tell you.

Twenty-three years have passed since that day, and, well, nothing about my relationship with Simon's Quest has changed. I still think about it the same way: It's a uniquely crafted action-adventure game whose visuals and music combine to create a highly alluring, amazingly distinct atmosphere, and I like to play it once every few years if not just to have fun immersing myself in its world. I don't care to rate it using a traditional rating scale because such a system isn't designed to account for game aspects that don't fit neatly into any of its standardized categories ("graphics," "sound," "controls" and such)--for game aspects that are probably way more important to me than to the average enthusiast: how a game connects with you, how it makes you feel, and how it causes you to wonder. Simon's Quest excels in these areas, and that's why it means a lot to me.

Now, no--it's not by any means one of the series' best entries. It's mechanically sloppy in a lot of ways, it has some questionable design choices (arcane puzzles, overuse of invisible blocks, AI-deficient bosses, and endings whose respective contents don't at all reflect the nature of your victory), and it's simply too easy to beat (outside of the loss of hearts, there's no real penalty for dying). Still, it manages to be a very solid action-game that's far better than it's given credit for. It is, I contend, a lot of fun to play.

I understand that Simon's Quest is polarizing for a variety of reasons, yes, and I'm comfortable with it being thought of as much. I understand why its critics think the way they do, and I acknowledge that their complaints are valid. The game certainly has its issues. Though, what pisses me off is that modern/popular opinion of the game is shaped not by people who have discovered and played it for themselves but instead by the Angry Video Game Nerd and his followers, the majority of whom are too dumb to realize that the man is playing a highly facetious character. And now, thanks to an army of unthinking dinks, Simon's Quest has been branded with the unshakable label of "terrible video game," and if you scroll down to the comments section of any Simon's Quest-related Youtube video, you're likely to see the same moronic, ill-formed "opinion" repeated over and over again: "This game sucks, maaaan! I know this because AVGN said so!"

To those people I say, "Way to go, jackasses. Now how 'bout trying something new, like, you know, thinking for yourselves?"

Hopefully Simon's Quest, like its divergent brethren (Super Mario Bros. 2 and Zelda II), will one day get the credit it deserves, and people will see that its bravely shaking things up did two very important things for the series and its fans: (1) It provided us one of the series' most uniquely designed, most-wonderfully-distinct-feeling game, and (2) it opened up the door for the awesome Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and thus gave the series an additional (and very viable) avenue to explore.

At the very least, Simon's Quest should be acknowledged for the contributions it made to the action-adventure genre and how it helped to popularize games of its type.

Its finally being recognized for these accomplishments would be the ending it truly deserves.

And that ending would be the only one that makes any sense.