From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Super Castlevania IV - A-twistin' and A-turnin'
How Konami literally turned my world upside-down and cemented my faith in the SNES.

The months leading up to the SNES' release were a confusing time for me. I simply didn't know how to feel about the console's arrival. Whenever I'd think about the subject, I'd become filled with conflicting feelings of excitement and trepidation.

On the one hand, I couldn't help but get caught up in the hype that Nintendo Power's glowing coverage was creating. Each month, I'd excitedly pore over the previews of impressive-looking games like Super Mario World, Zelda III, Actraiser, Gradius III and Pilotwings, and I'd intently examine and drool over all of the accompanying images and screenshots. And over the course of that month, I'd re-read each piece a countless number of times and all the while wonder about what it would be like to see all of these advanced 16-bit games up close and experience their next-level action.

I was highly intrigued by the SNES and what I was being told about it.

Yet, still, the emotion that would ultimately prevail whenever I thought about the SNES was anger. At the time, I was really unhappy about what the console's arrival meant. I believed that this newfangled next-generation machine was going to storm its way onto the market and do so with the intention of instantly supplanting the NES. And I didn't want that to happen because I loved the NES and felt strongly that the 8-bit wonder still had a whole lot of life left to live.

So I believed that it was appropriate for me to feel resentment for the SNES and tell myself that feeling any excitement for it was tantamount to betraying an old friend.

And that's where I was emotionally. I had misguidedly framed the SNES not as a respectful successor to the NES but rather as a destructor of everything I'd come to cherish about consoles. And it took the combined power of Nintendo and Capcom's awesome launch games to convince me that my fears were irrational and that the SNES wasn't designed to destroy console games as I knew them. The SNES' true aim, those games showed me, was to build upon the NES' values and consequently evolve them. And when that fact became clear to me, I began to embrace he console.

But I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't talk about the monumental impact of a certain Konami game. It was one that I'd been keeping close tabs on since its first appearance in Nintendo Power Volume 27. It was an amazing-looking action game that was promising to take one of my favorite NES series to the next level.

Its name was Super Castlevania IV, and it was scheduled to be released during the upcoming holiday season.

And it was arriving at the perfect point in my history. It was coming at a time when I was at the height of my Castlevania fandom--at a time when (a) the incredible Dracula III: Dracula's Curse was still rocking my world and (b) I was rediscovering and learning to love Castlevania and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.

At that moment in time, Castlevania was my entire world. I couldn't get enough of the series, and I was constantly craving more of the type of action that its games offered. That's why I was so ecstatic about about Super Castlevania IV's upcoming release.

I was so excited, in fact, that I would spend hours a day dreaming and writing up potential storyline scenarios and wondering about how Konami was planning to top Dracula's Curse. And Future Nintendo Power previews further stirred my imagination with intriguing bits of information like the hero having the ability to "swing like Indiana Jones," "strike in any direction" and "wave the whip around," and the game having "vivid graphics" and "double-scrolling backgrounds."

I obsessed over every new nugget of information.

Though, the previews' storyline explanation left me feeling confused. According to them, the game starred Simon Belmont, and its events were said to occur a century after Castlevania II: Simon's Quest's.

"But how can that be?" I questioned in a perplexed manner. "How can Simon still be alive 100 years later?!"

It was a baffling contradiction.

But I wanted it to be the true story. I wanted Simon Belmont to be the hero again. I desired it so much that I went as far as to entertain the idea that time flowed differently in the Castlevania universe. "It might be the case that 10 Castlevania years are equivalent to one real-life year," I theorized, "and that Simon might only be 35 or 40!"

My other theory was that Simon had obtained eternal life via his "curse" and was thus doomed to fight Dracula forever. "The curse might have helped him to gain certain vampire traits!" I thought.

By then, I'd become aware of localization teams and their habit of changing storyline facts for the purpose of putting their own personal stamps on products, so I knew that it was possible that a lot of what I was reading was complete nonsense; but still, I was hoping that it was the true story and that Simon would be returning. I loved the character and wanted to see its story continue.

At the worst, I thought, it would turn out to be the case that the "100 years later" bit was simply a mistake and that the game's story was actually set a few years after Simon's Quest's. (This was the only explanation that could satisfy my continuity fixation.)

As did most kids in the area, I first saw Super Castlevania IV in action at the Toys R Us over at Caesar's Bay Bazaar. It was one of the games that was playable via the SNES kiosk that had become a fixture in the store's video-game aisle.

The game's demo (most famously) showcased a stage section in which Simon was being pursued by a colony of bats as he attempted to traverse a collapsing bridge. And what was wild about the scene was that the bridge's falling rubble was, apparently, magically transforming into the bats that were pursuing him! (I realized, years later, that the bats were actually perched on the bridge's underside and merely flying in from below.)

That scene was instantly iconic to me. From that point onward, it would immediately play in my head anytime I thought about the game. (The same is still true 24 years later.)

In the months that followed, similar kiosks began to appear in every local electronics store. The whole time, though, I chose not to interact with any of them. I'd decided that my first experience with the game would feel more special and more genuine if it occurred within my home's familiar confines, where there would be no distractions. It would be personal and private and consequently all the more indelible.

So I decided to wait until Christmas Day to play it. That's when I expecting to finally get my hands on it.

Still, though, I was concerned about the fact that the game was only weeks from release and still none of the previews were making any mention of certain important gameplay elements.

"When are they going to start telling us about the new ally characters?" I kept wondering. "And why haven't they said anything about split paths or alternate routes?"

To me, those two gameplay elements had become essential to the series and its evolution, and I felt as though Super Castlevania IV needed to build upon them and advance them further if it wanted to have any hope of surpassing the brilliant Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.

Nintendo Power Volume 32's in-depth coverage of Super Castlevania IV was worryingly bereft of any such information, and as I skimmed through it, I started to fear that the game might not be the Dracula's Curse follow-up that I had dreamed about.

"What if it eschews the ally system and alternate routes and aims to be nothing more than a standard Castlevania game?" I nervously wondered. "Would it even be possible, under those conditions, for it to raise the bar and achieve true greatness?"

Well, all I can say is that my first Christmas Day session with Super Castlevania IV completely allayed all of my fears and doubts. I was so entranced and captivated by what the game was showing me that I never felt to inclined to stop and worry about the lack of ally characters and alternate routes. I forgot all about them.

That's how blissful the experience was. I was engrossed from start to finish!

Immediately I was entranced by the game's intro. It was a grippingly eerie scene in which a tattered tombstone could be seen resting beneath an ominous ash-brown sky, which promptly grew pitch black and became filled with storm clouds. Moments later, the chillingly foreboding music was interrupted by an extremely violent lightning strike that pulverized the tombstone and liberated the underlying grave's occupant: Count Dracula, who appeared in bat form. He flew around for a few seconds and then took off.

Then as clouds began to flow in from the screen's left side, the music turned spooky and menacing and gained the power to evoke dark thoughts; and its sinister influence imbued the proceeding text scroll, which provided the grim details of the Count's latest resurrection, with dire energy and potency.

Dracula's reemergence, the scene inspired me to imagine, was the most the most bleak and most distressing occurrence in series history. The situation was never more serious.

"What an incredibly evocative opening scene!" I kept thinking.

As the intro's events played out, I became more and more immersed. Each fascinating visual element and compelling line of text pulled me in further and further. I was so consumed by what I was seeing, in fact, that I couldn't even find the time to be bothered or confused by the text scroll's restating that it had been "100 years since the last confrontation." I simply ignored that bit (and I maintained that it was likely a translation error).

And by the time the intro concluded, I was fully captured. I was completely under Super Castlevania IV's control. And I felt confident in thinking that it had many other amazing things in store for me.

It was normal that I'd watch a game's intro a single time and then skip over it in every subsequent session, but that's not what I did with Super Castlevania IV's intro, no. I watched it every single time. It was a special breed of intro, I felt. It was so profound in the way in which it went about setting the atmosphere and defining the mood that I considered it to be an essential part of the experience.

That's how powerful it was.

And it was correct in its indication: There were indeed some truly special things waiting for me beyond the game's title screen.

I spent the next few hours being thoroughly impressed by the game's every quality. I was amazed by how it looked, sounded, played and controlled, and I was absolutely astonished by all of the advanced special effects that it was displaying.

I remember stopping for a minute at Stage 1's starting point so that I could take in and fully appreciate the stage section's eye-catching background visual: a mountain whose face was formed from a giant stone skull! It was striking and entrancing in the most wonderfully bizarre way. I was fascinated by it. I loved looking at it and thinking about what its presence suggested. And I especially loved that bats could be seen emerging from the skull's eye sockets! "That's a small-but-very-meaningful world-building element," I thought. "It says that the world displayed in the background is alive and rife with activity."

"They nailed this," I thought as I gazed at the skull mountain and observed what was happening around it. I marveled at the game's parallax effects and how background elements like the mountains and the distant crescent moon scrolled independently of each other (this was right around the point in which I started to become obsessed with games that had support for multiple scrolling background layers).

But the skull mountain was the star of the show. It was a delightfully creepy visual, and I perceived it as a preview for what was to come. It gave me a strong idea of the types of wonderfully freaky, imaginative visuals and ideas that I should expect to see in Super Castlevania IV.

I certainly remembered that Super Castlevania IV's advertising was based around the game's spectacular graphical effects and the wow factor that they produced, but I never expected that the game would have such an abundance of special effects and that it would be throwing them at me at a constant rate. Going in, my thinking was that the game would probably have only a handful of big special effects and that it would save them for big spots.

But that obviously wasn't the case. This game had, from what I could see, a great many graphical tricks up its sleeve, and it was intent on displaying them for me early and often.

And I was awed by all of it. Every single graphical effect caused me to stop and look on in wonder.

I was super-impressed even with the basic effects, like the castle drawbridge's slowly raising and closing and therein completing a 45-degree turn in smooth-looking fashion. It was the most awe-inspiring special effect I'd ever seen in an SNES game, and it served as the most impressive demonstration of the SNES' ability to tilt and rotate even the largest of objects.

And the closing drawbridge, like so many of the game's other environmental effects, was as fun to experiment with as it was to watch. From day one, in fact, it became customary for me to try to remain on the drawbridge for as long as possible--to try to resist the force of its upward movement and find a way to be still be on it as it was completing its rotation.

Early on, Super Castlevania IV was basically a highlight reel of its creators' greatest technical achievements. It was continuously hitting me with awesome graphical effects and mechanics.

It showcased its breathtaking panoramic map, which dramatically zoomed in and traced the path to your destination. It gave me the time I needed to experiment with Simon's advanced whip controls, which allowed him to swing the whip in all 8 directions and execute brandishing movements that enabled him to wildly flail the whip (and do so in way that made me wonder, "How is this effect even possible? Do pixels even work that way?"). It had a section in which I could use a fence's numerous gates to switch between two separate planes (which was a mechanical effect that even most arcade games couldn't pull off). And it introduced floating rings and invited me to discover that you could latch the whip onto them and subsequently swing back and forth, lower and raise yourself, and build whatever amount of momentum was necessary to clear gaps.

And that was just the start of it. There were still so many other cool things to experience.

When you dispatched enemies, they didn't simply vanish, no; rather they'd meet their ends via spectacular explosions, fiery disintegrations, and animations in which they'd shatter to pieces! Extremely precise jumping controls allowed you to fully modulate your jumps and thus rapidly turn back and forth and weave your way through the air! And new stair controls granted you the ability to jump onto stairways.

And, really, nothing said "next generation" quite like the ability to jump onto stairs! By granting this ability, Super Castlevania IV solved a longstanding series issue, and it did so in a way that seemed miraculous!

And there were other greatly appreciated refinements: Simon would automatically step onto the top stair of a unembedded stairway, whereas in previous games you had to hold downward to get heroes to begin descending (if you weren't holding down, you'd miss the top step and likely plunge to your death). You could toss sub-weapons by pressing the right shoulder button, which nicely simplified the weapon controls and eliminated the series persisting stairway-sub-weapon control conflict. And you could tactically moonwalk up and down stairs!

"These designers thought of everything!" I said to myself.

They really did. They addressed all of the series' enduring issues and solved them. And their solutions had the effect of making Super Castlevania IV feel like a next-level game.

And as I advanced forward, I continued to marvel at their work. I continued to be enamored with the world they had created.

I loved how the backgrounds' multiple scrolling layers worked in harmony to provide the stage environments an immersive sense of depth and thus create breathtaking views that had the power to stir my imagination and help me to form vivid mental conceptions of the game's world. How new enemies like the decapitated horse heads ("Mr. Heds," as the pun-happy localizers named them), snake swarms, camouflaged plant creatures, and self-replicating stone men had natural connections to their environments and consequently enriched them and helped them to feel all the more distinct. How the boss music's thunderous intro initiated boss encounters in an intense and epic way. And how bosses' deaths were spectacularly explosive and thus satisfyingly climactic.

I was enjoying every aspect of the game. I was having great fun playing it, observing it, analyzing its mechanics, and thinking about its characters and environments.

I couldn't deny that Super Castlevania IV wasn't breaking any new ground in terms of gameplay variety, but still I felt that its powerfully enchanting visuals and marvelous stage design more than made up for its lack of ally characters, alternate routes, and such. They provided it some serious graphical variety. They rendered a game in which every section of every stage had something unique to show you.

A dilapidated courtyard would give way to haunted, neglected barn. A graveyard would spill into a dreary swampland. A series of rickety mountain bridges would grant you access to a river whose tides would shift on a moment's notice. And a claustrophobic cavern would exit out into a basin whose environments were shrouded by waterfalls.

And though I never knew where I'd wind up next, I was certain that the place in which I'd arrive would be visually distinct, and it'd capture my imagination in a wonderfully new way.

And it wasn't as though the game was completely slave to convention. It broke the rules at times. Most notably, it put Stage 2's boss, Medusa, in the middle of the stage! "That so strange," I thought to myself, "and yet so interesting!"

It was only a small deviation, sure, but I was excited about it because it told me that the designers were willing to experiment and at least stretch the mold.

Then there was the game's other highly impactful element: its music! It was incredible! It was superbly composed, its quality was amazing, and it was evocative in the most spellbinding way. And its influence was profound. It heightened the action. It invigorated and inspired you. It imbued environments with life. It created a mood and told you everything you needed to know about the state of your surroundings. And consequently it connected you to the action on an emotional level.

Super Castlevania IV's was, I already believed, the most evocative of all Castlevania soundtracks. None of the others could do better to immerse you and inspire you to wonder about the spaces you were traversing.

And what was also great about Super Castlevania IV's music was that it didn't sound anything like the music I'd heard in other SNES games. Its instrumentation was entirely distinct, and it had a style all its own. It stood out in a powerfully distinguishing way.

And that would forever remain the case.

And then came the defining moment of my first Super Castlevania IV experience. It involved my initial exposure to a graphical spectacle that had been hyped up and heavily promoted in gaming magazines. Sidebar after sidebar had been dedicated to it, and the accompanying text descriptions always made it sound so incredible that I couldn't help but break my "avoid engaging with material that spoils surprises in anticipated games" rule and look at and eagerly examine the images that previewed it. I simply couldn't avert my eyes from it.

The spectacle in question occurred in Stage 4 (the "Death Tower," as I called it)--the stage whose opening segment featured walls whose recesses contained giant skull heads that creepily tracked Simon's movements. (Whenever I traverse this section, I'm reminded of the time when my brother's friend Jeff saw one of the skulls for the first time and dryly remarked, "That guy had a big head." That made me laugh.)

After I defeated the stage's mid-boss--the long-tongued Puwexil--the action shifted into a seemingly empty room whose walls were formed from red blocks. This, I was quickly realized, was the room that all of those magazines had depicted!

As soon as I finished making my way up the nearby stairway, the camera locked in, and the entire room, as I was told it would, began to slowly turn counter-clockwise! Because the motion was occurring at such a slow speed, I had enough time to understand what was happening and find safety via the room's floating ring. I latched onto it and then went into full "intent observation" mode.

In that moment, my mind was blown. I was in a state of complete amazement.

I could hardly fathom what I was seeing: An entire room was rotating. Pixels and sprites were shifting about and doing so while somehow remaining consistent in look and form! And walls and vertical objects were turning horizontal and becoming entirely traversable!

This was the most astonishing scene I'd ever witnessed in a video game. I was absolutely blown away by it.

And this was the point in which I finally saw the SNES' true potential. Only a few months prior, I was treating this console as though it were an oncoming plague. I was questioning its existence and expressing nothing but resentment for it. But now, thanks to what Super Castlevania IV had just shown me, I had completed a 180-degree emotional turn.

I was now a firm believer in the SNES. I was excited to say that it represented the future of gaming. And I couldn't wait to see what else it was capable of doing!

I don't recall how I performed in that moment. I don't remember if I first-tried that stage section or if I got knocked into the spikes by one of the incoming Medusa Heads (if it was the latter, I'm sure that I didn't mind, since the "punishment" was being granted a second opportunity to witness the room's awe-inspiring rotation). All I know is that I spent the entire time being astonished and amazed by what I was seeing.

On the strength of this single event, Super Castlevania IV moved up to an even higher tier and thus instantly earned itself a spot on my list of all-time-favorites.

And the game wasn't done there, no. It had another graphical spectacle waiting for me in its very next section!

This one was another first: a room whose concaving background rotated vertically and created the illusion that you were operating within an enormously large, rapidly spinning cylinder!

And once again, I was astonished by what I was seeing. The spinning animation was awe-inspiring and utterly hypnotic. All I could think while I intently observed it and tracked its movement was, "How?! How did they do this?!"

It was an awesome, breathtaking effect.

And it was different from the previous room's rotational effect because it was designed to place you in a specific emotional state. Its intention was to evoke feelings of disorientation and discomfort. It conveyed to me that I shouldn't be fooled by the straightforward-looking nature of the section's level design. "Some unsettling things are going to be happening in this space," it said.

And it wasn't lying. As soon as I moved beyond the section's opening screen, skeletons began to burst out from the spinning background's stone-covered fissures and drop directly onto the sprite layer!

Though, honestly, I was more wowed by the skeletons' entrances than I was startled by them. Most of my energy was spent trying to figure out how the effect was possible--how a spinning background could contain animated elements whose explosions caused instant changes on the sprite layer. "This has to be the product of some next-level programming sorcery," I thought.

The next section wasn't quite as impressive as the aforementioned. The only thing that it had on display was a comparatively mundane cycling-platform gimmick. Though, it wasn't lacking for a cool surprise. It had something special waiting for me at its endpoint: a culminating battle with Koranot--a gargantuan rock golem whose appearance would change over the course of the encounter! Each time I struck him, he shed some stone and consequently lost mass! And eventually he crumbled and shrunk down so much that he was virtually the same height as Simon! And when I killed him, I triggered a death animation that saw him expand epically and then suddenly spin away into the distance!

That effect, on its own, did an amazing job of demonstrating for me the incredible range of the SNES' rotating and scaling abilities.

Stage 4 was the developers' shining moment. It was what they had been building toward since the game's title screen came into view. The entire time, it was what they were excitedly prepping me for.

There was no pretense here. They were, discernably, open about the fact that every element of this stage was designed specifically to amaze me. They made it clear that they were intent on thoroughly impressing me with their spinning, turning and rotating rooms. And they succeeded masterfully in their mission. I was captivated and blown away by everything they did here.

Consequently, they managed to do two things: They produced what I felt was a wildly unique, standout Castlevania game, and they cemented my faith in the SNES.

Those developers, in their zeal, made an indelibly seismic impact on my life.

Everything that followed was gravy. It helped to further sweeten an already magnificent dish.

I loved, in particular, the game's interpretation of the famous main halls. The halls' environments were striking in appearance, and many of their rooms showcased even more graphical spectacles like series of giant swinging chandeliers, stretchy glowing phantasms, and a rotating circle of coffins. These cool graphical displays sent the message that the designers still had plenty of tricks up their sleeves and that the game was going to continue being a visual feast.

I wasn't a fan of certain design choices (like the Dungeon stage's disappearing-reappearing block segment, which had no obvious pattern to it, and the Treasury stage's cruelly designed disintegrating-platforms segment, the end of which hit you with a near-impenetrable wall of enemies), but I never spent any time being angry at them. I couldn't be bothered to do so because I was too busy being amazed by the game's brilliant visual and aural qualities, which had a way of preoccupying me and suppressing my ability to critically assess the game's level design.

Konami's masterpiece was topped off by two fantastic final stages that won points with me for a variety of reasons. They had beautiful introductory ditties, which were wonderfully soft, wistful versions of their musical themes. They had outstanding music. They had inventive level design. And they had great boss battles.

The Clock Tower stage, in particular, became instantly memorable to me because of its musical theme, which was a phenomenal remix of Bloody Tears. I was pleasantly surprised not only by tune's return but also by the power of its instrumentation. It had a great many strengths. It was all at once empowering, stirring, highly evocative, incredibly invigorating, and just plain fun to listen to and absorb. And quickly it became one of my favorite series tunes. In my subsequent play-throughs, I couldn't wait to make it to this stage so that I could stop and listen to the music and let it shape my thoughts.

The final stage, in not wanting to be outdone, brought back two series classics. It had excellent remixes of Vampire Killer and Beginning. And I loved both of them, too. They were fun to listen to, and they created the type of nostalgic energy that was appropriate for a stage that contained returning elements like the Dhurons from Dracula's Curse and the collapsing-bridge segment from the Super Castlevania IV store demos.

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the final stage's chase sequence. For the longest time, I was frustrated by it because of the many instances in which a staircase's bottom step would break off the moment I landed on it and drop me to the ground. Then I'd be dead in the water. I'd have no choice but to wait for the large spiked ring to catch up to me and one-shot me.

I liked the idea, sure, but I had problems with its execution. The stairs' physics just didn't always work correctly. That's why I'd become filled with dread every time I neared that stage section. It was fearsome partly for the wrong reasons.

Also, I found the tower's diagonal-moving-platform segment to be inexplicable. I didn't know how, exactly, it was meant to be handled, and the only way I could get through it was by hugging the screen's left side and repeatedly jumping leftward while hoping for the best.

I mean, I appreciated the designers' creative spirit, but I kept wishing that they had come up with an idea that felt less random and weird.

Though, I loved the stage's newly debuting bosses: Slogra and Gaibon. They were visually interesting characters, and their fights were the game's most creative and well-designed. They were, in my mind, symbolic of the game's values. They were an intrinsic part of its fabric. Whenever someone would mention Super Castlevania IV to me, images of Slogra and Gaibon would be the first things to pop into my head. That's how much they meant to the game. Had they not existed, I would likely have become filled with the sense that something important was missing from the game every time I arrived at the stage's end portion.

The Death battle, which was prompted by the most chillingly epic of boss-theme intros, wasn't quite as tough as I expected it to be. The advanced whip controls helped to make the fight more manageable than any of the previous Death encounters, and I was able to achieve victory pretty quickly (it took maybe three or four attempts).

And I loved the Dracula battle, too. I was disappointed that the Count didn't have a truly distinct second form, yeah, but still I considered his fight to be one of the series' best. It was intense and well-scripted, and it felt amazingly climactic. It was exactly the type of final battle I expected from a game of this caliber.

I don't remember if I beat Super Castlevania IV on that day or on the next day, but I know for sure that I loved every second of the experience. And I remember that I already considered the game to be one of my all-time favorites. It was that great.

In the days and weeks that followed, I played it on a constant basis, and in each play-through, I became more connected to its richly designed world. And during that period, it, likewise, became more and more connected to mine. It became a big part of my personal culture: I thought about it regularly. I routinely wrote about it in my video-game-themed "Superbooks" and otherwise expressed my fondness for it by drawing its characters and tracing out its stages and background visuals. I recorded its entire soundtrack with my tape recorder and listened to it every day. I filled the back of my school notebooks with theories pertaining to its story (mostly, I tried to find ways to make sense out of Simon's seemingly contradictory return). And I included all of its enemies in my "Masters of Evil" card series and gave special preference to Slogra and Gaibon.

And for years, I consistently placed it at the top of my Superbooks' monthly "Top 20" lists and ranked it above SNES powerhouses like Super Mario World, Final Fight, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario Kart and Final Fantasy II.

That's how much I adored it.

It wasn't my absolute favorite Castlevania game (I still considered Dracula's Curse to be the series' best entry), but still I considered it to be as good as a series game could get. It was, as far as I was concerned, a first-class Castlevania game and a god-tier video game in general.

I was always eager to return to Super Castlevania IV and find new ways to enjoy its action.

In the early days, in fact, I would often excitedly return to the game merely for the purpose of experimenting with all of the secrets I'd learned after I went back and read all of Nintendo Power's coverage of it (all of the feature specials and Classified Information bits that I purposely avoided).

I'm talking about the secrets that every kid knew: The hidden rooms in the Main Hall and Treasury stages. The Castle Keep's invisible platforms and special item-storm trigger. And the process in which you could earn a pot roast in the Treasury stage by jumping on any of its treasure chests 256 times.

Each time I'd play the game, I'd make sure to exploit these secrets and get the most out of them. (Well, honestly, I never really bothered with the treasure-chest secret. Spending several minutes repeatedly jumping up and down in one place wasn't exactly my definition of "fun.")

And for the rest of the 16-bit era, Super Castlevania IV continued to be one of my go-to games. I turned to it whenever I desired to have a fun, satisfying action-game experience or whenever I had time to fill and there was an SNES nearby. It was, in all such instances, always one of my top choices. And that's how it remained until the mid-2000s, when I got burned out on the series.

Now, I can admit to the fact that Super Castlevania IV isn't a perfect game. It has its flaws: Most of the boss battles lack any type of strategy element and are apt to degenerate into damage-race slugfests. It's too easy to overwhelm bosses with triple-shot-powered boomerangs and promptly destroy them. The axe, dagger, holy water and stopwatch sub-weapons are pretty useless. Simon's ability to whip upward and downward allows him to cheaply take out higher- and lower-positioned enemies and thus trivialize many of the game's platforming challenges. Some of the backgrounds are sparse, spotty or middling in quality. In some cases, the enemy design is flat, and certain characters aren't easily identifiable (the gargoyles, I feel, look more like flying Ninja Turtles). And some stage segments are plagued by slowdown and consequently diminished.

But really, none of Super Castlevania IV's flaws prevent it from achieving greatness. They don't prevent it from accomplishing its goal of delivering (a) fast-paced, highly engaging action; (b) an alluring, imagination-stirring game world; (c) amazingly evocative visuals and music; (d) stunning and captivating visual effects; and (e) a continuous series of awe-inspiring occurrences.

It succeeds in doing everything that it wants to do, and resultantly it earns the right to be called one of the best action games ever.

I often talk about how certain games succeed at capturing the spirit of their respective eras and encapsulating the qualities that we loved most about our favorite platforms, and whenever I do that, I always make sure to bring up Super Castlevania IV. It's one of the best examples of their kind.

The 16-bit era was, as we know, a time of experimentation and invention, and Super Castlevania IV was one of its biggest drivers. In its zeal, it came to define a series, a genre, an entire console, and the technologically advancing medium on the whole. It represented everything that was great about that era. It epitomized 16-bit gaming. And it still does so two decades later.

And for me, it provided a reassuring preview of what the SNES was going to be: It told me that Nintendo's new machine wasn't going to abandon the old values, no, but instead evolve them in novel and fun ways. It was going to be a platform for ambitious, passionate developers who were seeking to explore new ideas and impress us with their unrestrained creativity. It was a platform that was going to welcome auteurs who desired to craft new worlds and reinvent old ones and win our hearts with the most awesomely inventive video games we'd ever play.

Super Castlevania IV symbolized the SNES' values. And it continues to do so in the current day.

  
So that's the story. Super Castlevania IV, much like its NES predecessors, stood among giants and played a major role in defining what a console generation was going to be. And most importantly, it inspired me to embrace change and eagerly look forward to what was to come.

Super Castlevania IV, you could say, turned my world completely on its head.