Oh, the noble JRPG.

So, while I'm currently in the throes of unbridled Skyrim addiction, I've been made aware that the RPG gods have deigned to deliver to us a new chapter in the enigmatic Xeno series, titled Xenoblade Chronicles (née Xenoblade in Japan). I approach this news with a bittersweet apprehension, somewhat akin to hearing that an old flame is in town, and she wants to meet up and have coffee. It seems like everything would be cool, and you want to see her, but there's a sting from the past that just won't go away.

Anyone who's played a JRPG in the last five years knows what I mean. The meaning is particularly relevant if you've played a JRPG in the last five years (hell, ten), and you previously loved the genre. In the 90s, I must have played or contemporaneously perceived (see law school, terms integrated from) every major JRPG that was released. I can still remember a time when a Final Fantasy release was like the turning of a century, ushering in a new era, almost like the realization of a spiritual movement into actual being. Sound hyperbolic? Good. In the land of the JRPG, hyperbole represents the natural state.

A full history of the JRPG would be fun to chronicle, but I lack the time or the sufficient interest to sustain such an undertaking. Instead, let's just focus on what the JRPG used to be, and what it became. There were certainly a lot of good JRPGs in the late 80s and early 90s (I've encountered some people who still swear that Final Fantasy IV is the best the series ever offered; I think of these people the same way I think of people who think Kill 'Em All was Metallica's best album, but I digress), but the genre truly flowered in the mid to late 90s. The time period from 1994 to 1998 saw the release of Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire II, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy VII, Suikoden, Vandal Hearts, Xenogears, Wild Arms, Suikoden II, and Final Fantasy VIII. Of course, there were others, but those stick out as the most important, and were mostly brought to us by the RPG monolith, Squaresoft (now Square Enix).

There was something powerful about these games. Looking back, I find it difficult to remember how I was able to ignore terrible localization, childish plot contrivances, and paper thin characters, but I know that I still look back fondly on them, and the nostalgia for some of the more iconic events and characters remains palpable. I think the reasons the JRPG worked so well in the 90s include (1) comfort and inticement developed by linearity of storyline, (2) maximization of hardware limitations through diminution of player choice, resulting in polished, accessible gameplay, and (3) blank slate main characters onto whom the player could easily project intagible personality traits in the absence of actual customization. The third point is particularly prevalent in Chrono Trigger (Crono was taciturn) and Final Fantasy VII (Cloud's nature was so vague that the game's ending was rendered incomprehensible, and he has inspired something akin to hero worship among the game's hardcore fans).

Things were good. Xenogears pushed the envelope in terms of how deep a story could get, exploited religious zealotry in a very Japanese way, and, though the second half collapsed in what can only be attributed to programmer burnout or a Neon Genesis Evangelion styled response to running out of money, it delivered a solid 70 hours of somewhat adult gameplay. It seems hard to believe now, looking back, but at that time it seemed Square could do no wrong. Its imprimatur immediately denoted excellence to a legion of fans, myself included. I played 40 hours of SaGa Frontier because I was convinced that it was a good game and something was wrong with me. But then something happened. Not all at once, mind you. It was a slow happening, and we all missed it as we burned through hundreds of hours of gameplay in successively unimpressive JRPGs.

I have often attributed the genesis of the collapse to Final Fantasy VIII, a bombastic and garishly empty game that was so focused on looking good that it forgot to tell a proper story. Where FFVII's Cloud was as blank as his name suggests, FFVIII's aptly named Squall was an unrelenting jerk surrounded by an impossibly unlikable cast of companions. The game showed flashes of brilliance in its Garden War sequence, and had a few genuinely memorable moments, but the whole is not greater than the sum of parts in a game where the primary antagonist can't be accurately identified at any point until the end, and even at that point defies all logical description. At the time, as I began to understand the game's crippling shortcomings, I thought it would be an outlier, that the next Final Fantasy would reverse the overreach. I was right, to a point, but I was wrong in assuming that the trajectory of the genre would return to the sanity of the early days.

I would love to see the office memos at Square from between 1998 and 2000, just to get a sense of the tension between the camps vying for the future of the Final Fantasy franchise. Final Fantasy IX, with its muted advertising campaign, its unfinished feel, and its promise to hearken back to the spirit of earlier games, felt like a final capitulation to the traditionalist element at the company. Even that didn't really address the underlying issues. FFIX claimed to be an old-school 8-bit reboot, but it wasn't anything of the sort; the antagonist was sexually ambiguous to the point of true Crying Game confusion, the token inclusions of 8-bit nostalgia (the squat characters, Vivi, the ostensibly tweaked difficulty) seemed half-hearted, and, Christ, the main character had a tail.

Apart from some notable gems like Vagrant Story and Brave Fencer Musashi, the empire of Square, like the Roman Empire, was collapsing at the moment of its apparent height of strength. I'm not going to say that Final Fantasy VIII poisoned the pudding, but it did drop the gauntlet at the feet of any other company wanting to cash in on the newly mainstream genre. In short, it upped the ante, and thumbed its nose at the industry, essentially daring anyone else to go so dizzingly high over the top. SCEA answered with the dismally ostentatious Legend of Dragoon, a game that famously claimed to be "the Final Fantasy killer." It wasn't, but it sold well, and was so daring in its awful presentation that it goaded the higher ups at Square into doing two fatal things: (1) It jettisoned the teams responsible for Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, and Xenogears, and (2) it elected to entertain delusions of grandeur that Square could morph into a hybrid video game company / movie studio.

The results were immediately successful beyond Square's wildest dreams. Final Fantasy X was a blockbuster smash on the PS2. It was also an awful game that I spent over 100 hours convincing myself was the greatest achievement ever committed to pixels. How obsessed was I with this game? I paid my brother $5 an hour to play blitzball for me while I was at work. I beat every boss in the Arena. I blithely ignored that Tidus was the most unbearable main character ever foisted upon an RPG audience (worse than Dragoon's Dart; there, I said it), that Wakka was a borderline offensive character that was unambiguously high for the entire game, that the plot was intangible while being harshly linear, and that the music was surprisingly unimpressive (Nobuo Uematsu has been on auto-pilot for more than a decade). FFX was a watershed for the JRPG. It marked the new standard: style over substance.

If you'll look back to my three elements of early JRPG success, you can see how each element has been diminished over time. With the release of the Xbox and the PS2, hardware limitations were beginning to allow for expansions of possibility. The first element, that the linearity of plot secured a player against ambiguity of purpose, still ruled the day, but was implemented for reasons beyond the needs of cohesion, lending credence to a sense that the developers were becoming lazy, and simply did not want to deal with peripheral events. Second, the diminution of player choice began to become a clear choice rather than a necessity. JRPG developers focused on creating inert but beautifully painted backgrounds rather than employing the hardware to expand the interactivity of the player experience. More on that in a minute.

As to the third point, the main characters were no longer blank slates. Tidus was an oblivious time-displaced-surfer-phantom that was so shrill and lighthearted (apparently the establishment's reaction to the complaints about Squall) that he defied any attempt at vicariism. I hesitate to offer other examples from the time period because Final Fantasy, especially at that time, was so enormous that any other game attempting similarity was dwarfed and pulled into the FF series' gargantuan orbit. If you yearn for specificity, see Grandia (any of them), Star Ocean (any of them), and Xenosaga (Lord have mercy). In fact, shortly thereafter, Square opened its gaping jaws and swallowed its only feasible competitor, Enix. This union produced the genuinely fantastic Dragon Quest VIII, but nothing else of note. 

The result, especially with Xenosaga, was the sense that games were being played in a yawning vacuum. They were very pretty affairs, and dressed up in overheated dialogue (still terribly localized, but now with equally terrible voice acting), but there was no there there. Meanwhile, at the edges of the genre, something else was happening.

Bethesda Softworks splashed onto the RPG scene with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in 2002, and broke every rule of the console RPG experience. What PC gamers had been experiencing since the days of Return to Zork (that is, open-ended gameplay, a deep, detailed world, and encyclopedias worth of lore) suddenly became available to a whole new audience. It's hard to explain the effect this had. True, it wasn't very pretty, but the freedom of action and choice made for an intensely personal experience. This is an example of taking the three elements of old-school RPG success and effectively throwing them out the window. The erasure of barriers (wanna eat that? okay, it's your funeral) presented a stark contrast with the beautiful, but tightly controlled worlds being mass produced in Japan. A year later, Bioware released Knights of the Old Republic, riding the coattails of the Star Wars universe to create a semi-linear experience with the focus on the character. It can be said that where Bethesda has liberated the RPG world, Bioware has liberated the RPG character, allowing for customization of behavior in a story-driven manner (where Bethesda's efforts have created a truly blank slate main character, allowing the player to slip into the character's skin within a highly interactive world).

The point is, while Square was tilting at windmills and breaking the bank producing Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the revolution had taken place, and it took them years to recognize that they had lost their audience. One would think that the JRPG developers would have adapted, rather than continue to produce derivative nonsense. While Bioware and Bethesda released KOTOR II, Oblivion, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age, the JRPG titans persisted in pushing the envelope of embarrassing excess. Square shocked fans by releasing a sequel to Final Fantasy X, apparently inspired by a Destiny's Child music video, trotted out a parade of unimpressive peripheral titles, and continued to milk old classics on re-release. Final Fantasy XII was refreshing, and a good game, owing largely to the removal of Hironobu Sakaguchi as director. However, Final Fantasy XIII looked so bad that I never even thought to rent it. And, would you look at that? In the wake of Skyrim, Square is planning another sequel game, this time for FFXIII. Why revisit the worst of the lot?

So, that's my extended rant. Xenoblade looks promising, and that's my trouble. I look at the trailer, and I can't seem to shake the feeling that I'm about to be hoodwinked. So, I'll tell you what. I'll get back to you in April. For now, I'm going to work on my smithing in Skyrim.

Why Twitter is (much) better than Facebook.

I remember it quite well. It was 2005. My sisters were going nuts over a website called MySpace, and so, apparently, was everyone else. It was an instant window into other people's (night) lives! You could see what your favorite bands were up to and listen to their music! You got to be friends with Tom whether you liked it or not! It was a paradise burrito wrapped in a tortilla of pure joy. And I just didn't get it.

Sure, I opened up an account and put a few pictures up. I posted updates every now and then and became instantly sad to know that no one cared. Mostly, I remembered sitting up at 3 or 4 in the morning, pirating (I mean downloading) music from Limewire, filling out inane quiz after inane quiz and re-posting my results simply to feel as though I was participating in whatever was happening.

Around that time, when I was absolutely desperate for some kind of social networking service that would allow me to chase after girls without feeling like a sexual predator, a friend of mine introduced me to a new website that required a college email address to join. I was elated. Finally, an escape from the ugly, jumbled, teenage-dominated MySpace. Facebook was the new, shiny savior.

It takes some effort to recall a time when Facebook was the coolest thing there was, populated by college kids eager to meet other college kids and post pictures of drunken parties that parents would never see, but it did exist, circa 2006.

Now, five years later, Facebook is the biggest thing there is. Everyone has a page, and I mean everyone. It's actually a strange thing to meet someone who doesn't have a Facebook. It is ubiquitous.

Then, a few years ago, a new social networking service emerged. Twitter was immediately dismissed as inconsequential, a passing trend. No one seemed to understand it. I was certainly among those who didn't get it, though it was amusing to watch major news organizations flail about, trying to be on the cutting edge by integrating Twitter into their broadcasts. It's easy to see why. Facebook is a simple concept. Twitter is very abstract. Even now, it's difficult for industry analysts to predict the long term growth of the service, while it's a cinch to see the trajectory Facebook is plotting. However, I'm here to say that I'm a Twitter convert, and that it's easily superior to Facebook. You don't have to take my word for it. Let me tell you why.

1. Twitter is brief

This is huge. Many people, myself included, first balked at Twitter's miniscule character limit. At 140 characters, it's shorter than a single text message. As you may be able to surmise, I'm not a short-winded writer. I like to let my sentences breathe. Facebook has no such limit outside of original posts. Replies can be novel length, so far as I can tell, and if you're talking about politics with your right-wing relatives, they often are.

And that's the problem. Facebook has become, more or less, a late 90s email inbox that everyone can share. Because of the lengthy character allotment, inane, eye-melting bullshit has become the norm. I swear if I have to glance at another wall post that includes a poem about a courageous soldier or a sob story about someone's dead pet that is a re-posted chain message from someone I cannot unfriend, I might inflict serious harm on myself or bystanders.

This is Twitter's strength. It forces precision. Lacking that, it encourages restraint and editing. Furthermore, since there's no native ability to wax loquacious, one has to include links to outside websites to post something of excessive length. Hence the power of tl;dr. If you don't know what that is, Google it.

2. Twitter is the social network for introverts

Facebook has always been about popularity. "How many friends do you have? I have (insert absurdly unrealistic number)! Wow, you don't have that many? People must think you suck!" Try to imagine that with art from Matthew Inman, and you'll get my point.

I've always hated the friend aspect of Facebook. If that sounds ridiculous, fine, but hear me out. Facebook requires you to be friends with someone in order to see their posts, which then populate to your wall, and vice versa, once a friend request has been completed. The problem with this is that you can't filter annoying posts from people without unfriending them, a crime akin to infant murder in some circles. This effectively paralyzes your whole Faceworld. If your Great Aunt Mildred continually posts mildly offensive comments about immigrants or your 6-year old nephew's Farmville account blasts your wall with links imploring you to take up virtual animal husbandry, your choices are: 1) Unfriend. 2) Fuck you.

More often than not, the practical answer is choice 2, as someone you know will get offended that you removed them (or someone they know) from your Facelife.

Twitter employs a different feudal structure. First, Twitterers (?) don't have friends, they have followers. You can follow as many people as you like, and those people's tweets will populate your timeline. If the people you follow don't want to follow you, they don't have to. And vice versa. This allows you to filter what you're seeing without filtering the folks who may be interested in what you thought about over lunch. Essentially, it allows users to remain introverted and social. No small feat, that.

3. @anybody can talk to @anyone about #anything

This aspect is the reason people use Twitter. When you want to talk to someone on Facebook, you can shyly request the chalice of friendship, send them a private message, or hope to contact them through an existing member of their coveted inner circle. It's like the cliques in high school, and like then, the things people say remind you of just how little you know (or want to know) a given person.

Handles (@) and hashtags (#) allow Twitter users to exist in a larger space than the cozy friend groups of Facebook. By mentioning someone's handle, they will see the tweet, whether they follow you or not. Including a hashtag will allow anyone to search the tagged subject, regardless of when or by whom it was tweeted. Essentially, this builds on the previous point. There's no need to commit your timeline (read: wall) to a particular user permanently like Facebook requires, unless you want to. You can be as attached, or unattached, as you want to be, and still be a participant.

4. Facebook is getting kind of fucking weird

Is it just me, or does Facebook seem to be getting more megalomaniacal lately? I mean, in addition to integrating itself into seemingly every aspect of web life and mobile application development, they're toying with media streaming services to rival Netflix, VOIP calling to rival Skype and Google Voice, and even teaming with HTC to make a phone that is more or less a Facebook device (and dubiously named the Cha Cha, no less).

I'm not saying that megalomania is in itself a bad thing. After all, I wrote half of this post through Evernote on the iPhone and I'm currently finishing with Blogsy on the iPad. And if anyone knows megalomania, it's Apple. Maybe that's why, rather than integrate iOS 5 with Facebook, Apple instead chose to go with Twitter as it's social network of choice. When you think about it, it makes sense. Apple and Facebook teaming up would have been like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signing the non-aggression treaty prior to World War II. There are only so many walled gardens that can occupy the same space.

I guess my issue with Facebook trying to infiltrate every aspect of social interaction is that I find their MO rather tiresome and mundane at this point. Drunken college parties have given way to albums of church barbecues and endless reams of kitten and puppy snapshots. I'm not advocating the re-hedonization of Facebook (that was the death knell of MySpace, after all), but I do lament its domestication, and it's that aspect of domestication that make its forays into world domination seem so pointless and unnatural.

In closing, I'm not giving up my Facebook account, and I don't have an enormous Twitter presence like some do. But that's the point. With Facebook, my reach always seems so limited, regardless of my participation. With Twitter, I feel like I'm a part of something, even if no one else cares.

Thoughts on Castlevania, Part 3: Simon Belmont

So, it's been awhile, but I've had things to do. Having a 6 month old, a full time job, and having to beat Lords of Shadow have kept me swimming in obligation. However, I have work to finish. Back to the gates of Castlevania. Back to Simon Belmont.

Let's just get something out of the way right now. This is Simon Belmont:



This is not:




And never, ever, let me see this again:




The last image, from Castlevania: Judgment, is the very exemplar of bad design, and light years away from the original intentions of the mythos. But, then, that game was the culmination of nearly a decade of poor decisions and lackluster heroes. Simon Belmont is different. One need look no further than the development of Lords of Shadow to understand the importance of his story. Konami's original intention was to remake the story of Castlevania. That's right, the tale of Simon Belmont scaling the heights of a dark castle to battle the scions of evil is so compelling that the bosses at Konami wanted to make it again, for the eighth time. Spanish developer MercurySteam was on board with the idea. In fact, the model that became Gabriel Belmont was based off of the design for the sprite in Simon's Quest. Observe:







Some imagination is necessary, but notice the similarities in color palette and posture. That isn't a coincidence. However, this is digression. Konami backpedalled, MercurySteam had to make some changes, Hideo Kojima was called in from his secret Mt. Fuji fortress for guidance, and the rest is history. But the fact remains that the original intention for Lords of Shadow was to remake the same story that was told in 1987, and no one batted an eye. It was a no-brainer, a done deal, a guaranteed hit. The question is, of course, why?

To reiterate, the Simon Belmont saga has been told and retold seven times.

Castlevania:




Castlevania for Commodore 64:




Castlevania for Commodore Amiga:




Vampire Killer:




Haunted Castle:




Super Castlevania IV:




Castlevania Chronicles:




Granted, the Commodore ports contained largely cosmetic differences and diverged very little as far as the progression of the game is concerned, but the others represent serious changes to the story told in the original game. In Vampire Killer, Simon traverses a lot of the same areas of the castle, but he's forced to find keys and certain items in order to progress. In Haunted Castle, he's out to save his lady love from a giant grayed out Dracula head:




Seriously.

The point I'm trying to make is that unlike any other video game hero, Simon Belmont is epic. I don't mean that in a "weekday afternoon in a comic book store" way. When I say epic, I mean epic in the literal sense. The way that Simon Belmont's quest has been told and re-told directly mimics the the oral history tradition of the epic poem. Sound a bit over the top? I know, it's crazy, but look at the precedent. In each iteration of the story, something is added, altered, or modified. Even Koji Igarashi admits that the two versions of the story considered canon (Castlevania and Castlevania Chronicles) are interchangeable even though they contain considerable deviations. Chronicles even contains two versions of the game: an extended version of the original and a remix version featuring an Igarashified pink-haired Simon who's really into leather. Every iteration of the story contains a slight twist, a re-imagining of the tale. Like the epic poems that are passed down through oral tradition, the assault on Dracula's castle by Simon Belmont changes with each telling.

The important thing to remember is that there exists no hero in the video games of the time that approaches the profile of Simon. In the late 80s, video game heroes, with some notable exceptions, almost always quested against evil to rescue a girl. This is not limited to Ghosts 'N' Goblins and other quasi-medieval fare. Both Mario and Link were ostensibly out to save a princess, though Mario is more about wacky fun, and Zelda has an air of grand antiquity with its rich Hyrule mythology. Castlevania has a different theme altogether: a lone warrior must defeat the ultimate evil because he's the only one who can. True, Haunted Castle featured a Simon Belmont who was out to save his fiancée from the clutches of a tuxedo clad Dracula, but that game is so far out of canon that it's remembered by series fans the way Star Wars fans think of the Christmas Special.

What I'm getting at is that there is something visceral about this story. It keeps getting re-told. Like the best stories, the journey changes, but the end is the same. Simon always defeats Dracula and the castle always crumbles to the ground, but sometimes Simon travels through the catacombs and encounters Frankenstein's monster. In some tellings he leaps from giant chandeliers above the entrance hall. Sometimes he must battle a Slogra and Gaibon before facing Death, and other times he traps the Reaper with holy water after fighting through a hallway patrolled by axe knights (though, God help you if you miss just once; those fucking scythes are diabolical). The story is not just a series of levels in a video game. It's legend, pure and simple.

Simon Belmont differs from other heroes of the time because his quest is a dark and uncertain one. He is the heir to a great power, but cursed to have to face the darkness alone. It's telling that the first story is about the rebirth of Dracula after his first defeat, and that this is at least the third time that he's risen from the grave to wage war on mankind. What makes Simon special is that his odds are the longest. He has no help, no aid from the outside. He has no allies. Trevor and Richter Belmont both had help from friends. Simon is alone, and to add insult to injury, he's the only Belmont unlucky enough to have to face Dracula's evil twice.

It would have been enough if Simon's story ended with the slaying of Dracula at the end of the first game, but Konami decided, even if it was likely an unwitting act of brilliance, to bring him back for more. Unlike other video games of the era, which tend to suffer from amnesia, Simon's Quest picks up seven years after the end of Castlevania. Simon's victory was not complete. In his battle with Dracula, he was wounded and cursed, rendering him unable to father an heir. Don't even ask what part of Simon was injured because I'm not going to comment on such things and shame on your juvenile, dirty minds.

But I'm guessing it was probably his junk.

Anyway.

Simon's destiny is to travel the blighted countryside and reassemble Dracula's corpse, complete the rite to revive him, and slay him again. After barely surviving the first time. Epic? Epic.

Compare that to, say, the events of Mega Man 2, in which Mega Man must fight Dr. Wily and a cast of elementally specific robots in the year 20XX.

Again.

Or the events of The Legend of Zelda II: Links Awakening, wherein another Link (not the same from the first game) must save another Zelda (who's cursed to sleep until Link finds a cure; also not the same Zelda) in a Hyrule in the future and unite the Triforce (somehow broken up again) and prevent the return of Ganon (who is the same from the first game).

My. Head. Hurts.

Despite the rampant and well documented flaws of Simon's Quest, the concept is fantastic. In the previous post, I waxed quite philosophic on the notion of expanding the quest outside of the castle. Here I want to focus on the quest itself. True, the game is artificially lengthened by heart farming, is needlessly obtuse when it comes to progression, and lacks the level design expected from a Castlevania entry, but it completes the story of Simon Belmont in a much more pleasing way than to simply close with a Happily Ever After following the death of Dracula.

Even considering all that, Simon's Quest is something of a melancholy experience. Simon is the only person capable of extinguishing the curse that's rotting both the land and his body. If you don't finish the game fast enough, you're treated to a grayscale image of a headstone and some music that manages to sound mournful and triumphant at once. If you haven't seen it, it looks like this:




The good ending looks like this:




There's a middle ending, too, that tells you that Simon dies due to his cursed wounds. That's pretty brutal. Even the good ending is circumspect as to Simon's fate, though it's clear through later games that later married, produced an heir, etc. Otherwise we wouldn't have Juste or Richter Belmont.

No other Belmont really matches up to Simon, though great pains are taken in the Igarashi era to crown Richter as the greatest of all the vampire killers. There's also a suspicious dearth of mentions about Simon in the rest of the games. Curse of Darkness and Symphony of the Night both expand upon the events surrounding Trevor Belmont in Dracula's Curse, and other games mention Richter and even Christopher Belmont, but outside of the original Castlevania and Simon's Quest, Simon's memory remains something akin to sacrosanct, as though the developers of new games are afraid to trample on his heritage. Not that I blame them. Trevor's game might be the best of the lot, Richter's and Alucard's the ones with the most depth and replay value, but Simon was first, and it was his example and courage that led the way from the gates of the castle to the highest keep, to the very heart of darkness.

Tune in next time, when I dissect the rest of the Belmont clan, and the other miscellaneous heroes that have donned the mantle of vampire killer.

Thoughts on Castlevania, Part 2

I feel if my comments are to take on any semblance of order, they should be structured with a mind toward categorization. My goal here is to delineate why Castlevania works so well, and why I feel that what was once so great is now lost to a certain degree. To illustrate, let's start with the constituent parts of the series:

The Castle (and environs)

More than almost any other feature in a Castlevania game, the castle itself is paramount. Each Castlevania game presents its own riff on the way the Count's home is presented. Of course, this is Dracula we're talking about, and the castle has been privy to its share of cinematic interpretations as well. In Tod Browning's original 1931 film, the castle is cobwebbed and immense, but still retains trappings of finery. Both versions of Nosferatu present the castle as crumbling and defunct. The Hammer Horror collection presents the castle at the height of gothic finery, withered and decayed.

What Konami did with the first Castlevania was realize the potential of video games to fill in the gaps left by various literary forms. No matter how elaborate the set design of any film or play, Dracula's home never gets explored much further than the entrance hall, the dining room, and various bedchambers. This is due to the art form. The story doesn't require a room by room tour, and so, we are left to imagine what crawls in the dark places. The novel sheds little further light. Jonathan Harker is confined mostly to his room and the adjacent dining area. He visits a library, and on his one venture from his chambers, encounters Dracula's wives. Stoker is not forthcoming as to much else, though he does give us a wonderfully malicious scene at the castle gates in which the Count offers to let Harker go free while reminding him of the dangers of the surrounding countryside (he displays his power over the wolves).

From the very first, Castlevania removes notions of powerlessness. Simon Belmont is not Jonathan Harker. He is unafraid to enter the castle and storm through the halls on his way to his final encounter with evil. Konami's programmers had to give him a journey to undertake, and so six levels were crafted, using the license given them by the book's vague descriptions.

It goes without saying that this is as simple as the castle ever gets in the Castlevania series (okay, I'm forgetting Simon's Quest, but more on that in a minute).

If you take a close look at the map above, you can see that the designers did not really intend for this to represent a complete castle or even a particularly habitable one. It is a ruined castle, held together by the will of its master. Maybe this is ascribing too much to the intentions of the original programmers, but it makes sense inasmuch as the game ties into the Stoker novel. It also ties in well with Dracula's Curse, as the castle is much more intricate in that earlier time. What really matters here, though, is a sense of scope. Simon Belmont's assault on Dracula's lair is not a straightforward one. He has to make his approach through the lower keep, across the drawbridge, through catacombs, up into the clock tower, and finally to the precariously arranged inner sanctum in the highest tower. Dracula does not come to meet this man. He bids him come forth and prove himself.

This is a fairly extreme re-imagining of an established character. In every other iteration of the Dracula mythos, the Count is portrayed as a monstrous figure, but is menacing in the way that a disease is menacing. Castlevania transforms him into a towering lord of darkness, something that is inferred in Stoker's novel, and reinforced by the next few games in the franchise.

But enough about the Count. I'll have extended thoughts about him later.

Castlevania introduced the idea of Dracula's castle as something more than just brick and mortar. It is an indelible character in its own right in the series. This is a theme that would be seized upon by Koji Igarashi in Symphony of the Night and other games of its kind, but Konami's original Castlevania team had a different idea in the immediately proceeding entries to the series.

What's most striking about Simon's Quest is the fact that the castle is hardly there at all. While the game deservedly takes its lumps in the retrospective critical community, it took a bold step in examining the possibilities of exploration beyond the castle walls. Taking place several years after Simon Belmont defeated Dracula, Simon's Quest examines the notion that Dracula's evil endured, and that by cursing the entire countryside surrounding his castle, and Simon Belmont with it, he would finally be rid of his preternaturally gifted vampire slaying foes. The following is the entirety of the castle in Simon's Quest:

Yup. That's it. Number of enemies: zero. The entire, sprawling game takes place outside the castle, in the wasted, hopeless lands under the thrall of Dracula's curse. This, in itself, is a massively ambitious move. The cowering, superstitious folk of Transylvania are only glimpsed for a few pages in Stoker's novel, and films use them almost exclusively as extras intended to ratchet up the tension. Simon's Quest, flawed as it is, gives insight into the reasoning behind the inhabitants' dread. It displays the aftermath of Dracula's war, and gives life to the legend of the Belmont clan in their effort to end the Count's poisonous influence.

The reason why I'm focusing so much on the setting of the game is that Konami's original decision to look at Dracula prior to the events in the novel was groundbreaking, and by expanding beyond the walls of the castle, it expanded the scope of the ambition. What was dispelled was the notion that Dracula's castle existed in some other space, beyond the world of men, and was only the source of distant superstition. Simon's Quest gives depth to the experience of the first game, and provides a good precedent for Dracula's Curse.

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is viewed by many as the true sequel to Castlevania, as the gameplay is intentionally similar, and this leads many to view the more esoteric Simon's Quest in the cold as something of an outlier. I contend that without Simon's Quest, there could be no Dracula's Curse, because the former had already broken the boundary of the castle walls. Indeed, where Dracula's Curse could have easily aped the original game by limiting action within the castle, it instead makes great use of the approach to the famous gates through which Simon Belmont will eventually cross. More than half of the game takes place in the dark places, marshlands, caverns, sewers, and ruined keeps that surround the Count's home. If one is so inclined, a haunted ship will provide passage from the closed drawbridge to the castle port.

The point, belabored though it is, is that there is much more than the castle going on here. There is a feeling that something outside the castle matters, that it's not just an insular world with no consequences. In fact, just the opening image of Dracula's Curse, of Trevor Belmont praying before a giant crucifix before heading out for battle, indicates that he is fighting for his people, and that the oppressed masses are counting on him.

This is important because it's a theme picked up for the remake of the first game. In Super Castlevania IV, Simon undertakes a solo quest (unlike Trevor, who gets the option of some limited help), just like the first game, but has to approach the castle in much the same way as his grandfather did, making his way through the desecrated lands surrounding the castle before entering.

Here's where the major split begins. After this point, Konami had two separate teams working on Castlevania titles. The two games they produced, Castlevania Bloodlines and Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, were very dissimilar in feel and approach. Where Bloodlines attempted to further integrate the Stoker novel by inserting the son of Quincy Morris (the slayer of the Count in the book) into the timeline, Rondo of Blood dove straight into the continuing tale of the Belmonts, one hundred years after the end of Simon's Quest.

Bloodlines took a stab at expanding the world of Castlevania even further, taking place in multiple locations around Europe. Unfortunately, the game was less than memorable, and the lack of a castle (sorry, Carmilla's Mansion doesn't cut it) makes it feel second rate.

Rondo of Blood, on the other hand, is a stunning masterpiece of gaming. Richter Belmont is a worthy successor to Trevor and Simon, and his journey through Dracula's castle is memorable and unique. In Rondo, Richter must make his way through linear levels, but which have multiple exits, making for an enormous number of paths which all lead to the same place: Dracula's inner sanctum. Though the game does make the player at least consider rescuing Richter's girlfriend and a number of other distressed damsels, it maintains the look and feel of the first games, and replicates the same winning formula: Belmont. Whip. Subweapons. Kill Dracula.

That having been said, Rondo of Blood is the first game in the series to initiate a subtle paradigm shift. Never intended for the eyes of western audiences, Rondo has numerous anime-styled cutscenes, and utilizes some tropes from that genre in telling the story. In fact, Konami was so sensitive about this that when they agreed to port the game to the SNES, the resulting attempt to westernize the game was the undercooked embarrassment that was released as Castlevania: Dracula X. If you want any pair of images to show what a diversion the games were from each other, check out screens from Rondo's final battle, and then Dracula X's:

Don't ask. Not worth the effort.

What I'm driving at here is that the Castlevania series, based originally on the effort to pacify western audiences with a re-imagining of a familiar story, was becoming more eastern in style and feel. This may seem fait accompli considering it was being developed entirely in-house in Japan, but it wasn't until Rondo that these elements began to take hold.

By the time Symphony of the Night rolled around, all vestiges of the original concept had been revamped or discarded. Though the game itself is an unchallenged classic, it drastically altered what the castle in Castlevania was meant to suggest. In the first games, the castle was menacing, decrepit, dangerous, and shrouded in mystery. In Simon's Quest, it's a collapsed ruin, and it's still creepy as hell, if only because it's so empty. And in all of the early games, the castle was synonymous with its master and the curse he represented. In Symphony of the Night, the castle is the only battleground. No stone is intended to be left unexplored. The entirety of the structure is in tact, other characters traverse the hallways and meet Alucard as though they're extras in a remake of Clue, and, most annoyingly, the castle is then flipped upside down to double the play time.

Don't get me wrong. I love Symphony of the Night. I love it good. But it introduced the precedents that have fueled the 2D Castlevania games since. The castle is no longer the seat of an ancient evil, but the transmogrified representation of the age it infects, or something like that. I believe Death tells Juste Belmont in Harmony of Dissonance that the castle changes every time it re-appears due to the ever-changing nature of evil or Dracula, or something. Hell, in most instances, in the new games, the castle appears before Dracula ever awakes, and it's the player's job to prevent that from happening. But more on that in the section on the Count himself. I need to wrap this section up.

The overall point I'm making is that by reducing the scope of the game to transform the castle into a supernatural event existing outside of space and time diminishes the impact of the very quest. When Simon Belmont marches up to the gates of the castle in Castlevania, whip in hand, ready to join battle, it means something. But when Soma Cruz stumbles upon the castle in the year 20XX in Japan because of some solar eclipse, there is something lost.

I'll elaborate on those thoughts in the next section, when I analyze the heroes of the Castlevania series, starting with the one who got this whole business started in 1987: Simon Belmont.

Thoughts on Castlevania, Part 1

So, I'm sure that my first post should be something about myself, a brief explanation of the title (hint: read some poetry), or something vaguely didactic about the purpose of the blog or anything that could be considered introductory.

Nah. I'm going to talk about video games. More importantly, I'm going to use this space, today, to talk about the video game that shaped my first impressions of an entire genre. I'm going to talk about Castlevania.

Now, there have been many and varied commentaries about the Castlevania series, including some rather famous ones by the Angry Video Game Nerd and other YouTube luminaries. Most of these have been about the genius of the first game, the failings of the second game, the controversy over the transition from linear action gaming to the Metroid-vania trappings of Symphony of the Night and the other Koji Igarashi titles, and snarky asides about the utter ruin of the 3D games during the late 90s. I'm not going to focus so much on those topics, as they have been examined thoroughly. I'll touch on them a bit, but my purpose is slightly different.

I suppose my fascination with Castlevania is something that ought to be qualified. I am a huge fan of many other video game series. I have devoted countless hours to Mario, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, The Elder Scrolls, Metroid, and even Zelda, which I have never really connected with on the level of some of my peers. However, there's something different about Castlevania, especially the early games. I could never quite put my finger on it. All I knew is that I loved it, played the original game, Simon's Quest, and Dracula's Curse for hour upon grueling, uncompromising hour not only as a child or teenager, but quite often as an adult as well. The common accolades of the early games have to do with the gothic atmosphere, expertly planned level design and the great music. YouTube artisan egoraptor has a great rundown on the advantages of the first game over the second, including rhapsodizing about the control and level design here.

While I agree that these elements contribute to a great game experience, the lure of the first Castlevania is not in its atmosphere, its music, or its control scheme. I contend that the longevity of the series, indeed its refusal to die, is rooted in the endurance of literature and the incredible courage of the game's original creators.

To adequately explain what I mean, consider the popular titles of the time. Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were on top of the heap in 1987. Mega Man and Metroid were soon to come. All contain great gameplay, level design, and lasting backstories. What these games have in common is that they are original stories, born of the video game age, with no connection to previous works. Where Castlevania differs is that it is based on a previous work, and not any previous work, but Bram Stoker's Dracula.

It's easy to counter that this is not exactly rocket science. Dracula is an intellectual property that has been used more often than a rest stop toilet, and has been appropriated by as varied sources as Andy Warhol and Abbott and Costello. The original story of the novel has been twisted and modified unrecognizably by countless directors, authors and playwrights, and the title character has been played by innumerable actors, including Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, Klaus Kinski, Udo Kier, and, yes, Leslie Nielsen. Dracula, since the original scuffle over licensing between Stoker's widow and F.W. Murnau over royalties on what became Nosferatu, has preyed upon our natural fears of darkness and vulnerability in ever-changing forms.

What I've noticed about most expansions on the Dracula mythos is that they tend to linger on what happens after the events in Stoker's novel. Indeed, from the Hammer Horror films to Son of Dracula to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the appearance of the Count tends to involve him rising from the grave to feed on the blood of the living in our century. Very few of them look into the most thrilling aspect of the novel, and, indeed, of most honest attempts at adapting the story to film: the castle, and its history.

What Castlevania dared to do, from the very first, was attempt to fill in what Count Dracula was doing before Jonathan Harker made his fateful journey to Transylvania in hopes of making his fortune as a real estate solicitor. And what the team at Konami decided was that the Count was very busy indeed, waging a centuries long war against mankind, and, in particular, the Belmont family, who were tasked to send him back to Hell every hundred years or so. In addition, Konami has always maintained that the Stoker novel is very definitely a part of the Castlevania timeline, though excessive Japanese influence on later titles has admittedly muddied the waters somewhat in this respect. More on that later.

When reading the novel, one gets the sense of deep forboding and danger surrounding Dracula's castle. Jonathan Harker is trapped in the castle and knows that he will soon be left as a meal for Dracula's vicious wives. The Count himself is portrayed as a wizened shadow of ancient glory, hungering for new environs, far away from the decay of his homeland, a decay for which he is largely responsible. Everything about the castle and the demeanor of the Count indicates a deep well of power and darkness that was once even more terrible. The genius of Castlevania, while playing to rather boyish interpretations of what ought to be present in the castle (Frankenstein and Igor? Really?) lies in the expansion of an already potent legend, tapping into unexplored possibilities that rested dormant in the stones of a crumbling castle.


The way that Castlevania began, and its continuing tale of a cursed land in Simon's Quest, is light years away from the ridiculous permutations of the Aria of Sorrow age, in which Dracula's castle appears due to an eclipse in Japan and involves a spirit vessel for Dracula... and I'm already bored. The point is that the original design was simple and alluring. The Belmont family is doomed to prevent Dracula from exerting his dark will on the people of Southern Europe, and armed with a whip and their wits, must venture into the castle to send him back to restless slumber for about a hundred years. The reason the story was set up this way was to appeal to fickle Western audiences, and thus, the scenario writing team attempted to use Western sources to mollify the target demographic. As time has gone by, and the Igarashi team has taken over, the 2D Castlevania games have taken on an increasingly Japanese bent, introducing anime elements and unnecessarily tangled plot contrivances. Linear progression has given way to open exploration (not dogging this aspect, just wondering if it's gotten out of control), and what worked in Symphony of the Night is becoming increasingly stale.


This is why I'm a big fan of the recently released Lords of Shadow. While other 3D efforts at making a Castlevania game have gone awfully awry, Lords of Shadow goes back to the original concept: Belmont with whip goes forward relentlessly to destroy evil. The formula is compelling and effective. As one reviewer (I believe this was Joystiq's review) noted, Castlevania is about being the only good guy in town, the only one with the stones to walk up and knock on Dracula's door.

I'm realizing this is getting prohibitively long, and I have much more to say. Guess this one's gonna be a multi-part series. Tune in next time.