(takes you by the hand)
(leads you down a flight of stairs)
(opens the door to a dark, grimy alley)
(whispers in your ear)
...Super Castlevania IV isn't very good.
Yes, this is my opinion, but yes, it is counter to the cultural narrative that surrounds such a long-running and well-loved series of games. Am I saying this just to be adversarial to popular opinion? Mmmmno; the entire world seems to love it, but it's not like some classic piece of art that's stood the test of time to become a bonafide masterpiece like, I don't know, For Whom the Bell Tolls or something. If that were the case, me saying that I don't like it is just being contrarian for it's own sake. I'll admit that it has such a pervasive feeling of fond remembrance, though, that it's coming close, but when it comes down to brass tacks and you feel the need to play through every Castlevania game prior to 1997, I'm going to get you good and drunk so you have no choice but to tell the truth, and I'll put 100/1 odds that you'll find it about as mid-tier in this series as most of the handheld entries (at best). This whole paragraph isn't meant to hold a finger in front of your nose and repeat that I'm not touching you, but if I get through to even one of you that Castlevania IV is overrated, I feel as though this holy mission has been worthwhile. I also think that the second Bloc Party record is every bit as good as the first (though, for totally different reasons). Fight me.
WAIT. That isn't to say that it's godawful by any stretch, and there has been a frustratingly large minefield of lousy Castlevania games in the past (The Adventure, I'm looking right at you). As most know, it was a launch title for the Super Nintendo in 1991 and did its best to shoehorn in eveything that what was under the SNES' hood as far as Mode7 programming tricks were concerned, but to the game's detriment. I've always found the pace to be strange and haphazard, and aesthetically gross to look at with its sort of marionette-style sprites. The difficulty is also all over the goddamn map, making some of the later levels downright impenetrable compared to what Simon runs into even five minutes earlier. However, and this is where I'll give its proponents their druthers, it's just experimental enough as a piece of the series to be interesting with the multi-angled whipping and slightly altered jumping physics. If anything, I absolutely love that Konami had decided to do a remake of the first Castlevania from the NES, while also (at least from my perspective) tossing in some of the quirks from the lesser known entries of the series like Haunted Castle and Vampire Killer, and is still better than both of those by a country mile. I've heard people say that it's something of an evolutionary dead end of a franchise that continued to grow, and that's a fair assessment. I don't think it's an unequivocal piece of shit, but I do not think it's all that great. But I'm glad it exists, I suppose.
Alas, this was what I needed to put myself through for the second time in six months last weekend when I realized --because I'm stupid-- that I didn't get nearly enough footage from C4 as I originally thought, which is why Episode 5: The Long Library went up on Monday this week as opposed to last Friday. The whole thing was done, but after extensive checking and copious swearing, I found that I had zero footage of the enemies that originated in the Super Nintendo mediocrity. Lucky for me and my sense of good taste that I could easily look up where the Une, Ectoplasm, and Spellbooks where and just use codes to start at those levels (also so I could get footage of the guy and his dog, which will make sense later). Anyway, Episode 5 is now a thing that can be consumed like the insatiably filthy savages that you are, you beautiful internet goofs. Go watch it.
As far as actual stuff going on in the video, this one was hard to make because of the Librarian alone. Since I'm probably never going back to this guy in future videos, I had to recount all of what he sells as the game goes forward and give enough time to say something interesting about them, but close to none of the stuff I mention is on his list of goods at such an early point in the game. It was a pain, but that's how it goes. Luckily, this episode was super straightforward, though, because there really isn't a lot of ground to cover without the form of bat. There was some dead air on the mic as I backtracked a bit, but like I said in an earlier Appendix, sometimes, there just isn't a way around that, unfortunately. Hopefully, the Royal Chapel will be better in that regard.
PS-I'm finally getting shit for my mispronunciations of certain words. I guess only one linguistics class from my undergrad just wasn't enough. One more step to Making It!
No comments:
Post a Comment